LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP - BONUS BEATS [1986-92]

1. The New Style – Beastie Boys

2. Public Enemy No. 1 – Public Enemy

3. I’m Not Going Out Like That – Run-DMC

4. Doomsday of Rap – Hijack

5. Stylin’ Lyrics – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

6. The Way We Swing – Digital Underground

7. Find a Way – Coldcut featuring Queen Latifah

8. Wonderous Dream – L.A. Star

9. Pollywanacraka – Public Enemy 

10. Youthful Expression – A Tribe Called Quest

11. Doing Our Own Dang (Do It To The JB's Mix) – Jungle Brothers

12. Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em (45 King Club Mix) – Eric B & Rakim

13. Portrait of a Masterpiece (CJ's Ed-Did-It Mix) – The D.O.C.

14. Just Kickin’ Lyrics – Above the Law

15. No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop - No Rif Raf Mix) – Three Times Dope

16. Money Mad – London Posse

17. Movin’ On – Masta Ace

18. Wake Up (Reprise in the Sunshine) – Brand Nubian

19. Ebony – Paris

20. Execution of a Chump – Gang Starr

21. Guns of Mind Alone – Silver Bullet

22. Homey Don’t Play Dat – Terminator X (featuring Bonnie ‘N’ Clyde)

23. The Funky Cypress Hill Shit – Cypress Hill

24. The Badman is Robin – Hijack

25. Morals – The UMC’s

26. 3rd Base Theme A.K.A. Portrait Of The Artist As A Hood – 3rd Bass

27. For Pete’s Sake – Pete Rock and CL Smooth

28. No Shame in My Game – Gang Starr

29. Theme from Marxman – Marxman

30. Stand Together – Beastie Boys

In 1987 my father took me and my brother to Thornbury, where I was born, to see his old friend, Andy. Said friend had a son called Richard, who I’d been mates with prior to my family leaving Thornbury and moving to Plymouth in 1982. We’d met sporadically in the intervening years but this was the first time I’d seen him since starting secondary school.

We still got on; played football in the garden until it got too dark, whereupon Richard took me and my brother to his bedroom to listen to music. I would have been into Prince back then, but not much else. I liked music but not to the extent that I’d devote myself to a particular artist, let alone want to look like them – I didn’t want to be Prince. All that changed when Richard put on Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys.

I was aware of the Beastie Boys but hadn't liked their singles '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)' and 'No Sleep till Brooklyn'. I didn't like 'Walk this Way' by Run-DMC either, released a year earlier. Loud guitars were not my thing. The minimalism of tracks such as 'Posse in Effect', 'Slow Ride', 'Paul Revere' and 'Slow and Low' evidently were. On returning to Plymouth it materialised that my friend Ed possessed the same album. I cannot say whether he’d owned it since its release or if it had been recently acquired. In any case, he made a copy for me and it wasn’t long before a poster of the Beastie Boys together (forever) with Run-DMC adorned my wall, possibly to my father’s horror. In 1988 I purchased the Run-DMC album Tougher than Leather.

The Beastie Boys and Run-DMC were gateway bands. There were people who liked them who weren’t especially into rap/hip hop and others who got into rap/hip hop precisely through listening to them. With Public Enemy it was different. You couldn't really be into them and ambivalent about hip hop; they were too earnest and musically more complex. (The same might be said of Eric B & Rakim.) I went through all of 1987 oblivious to this and Public Enemy’s debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, escaped my attention, which is why my original four-part anthology begins in 1988 and 'Public Enemy No. 1' appears here. Moreover, the music I played didn’t necessarily direct me towards the people I wanted to hang out with. For illustration, my three closest pals were into Queen (Mike), Level 42 (Neil) and Eurythmics (Dan), and in 1987-88 I wasn’t adverse to any of these three groups either. I remember other people in my class liking INXS, U2 and Bon Jovi. Who knows what else kids were listening to in private.

These Bonus Beats are a collection of tracks that I have gathered together retrospectively, some of which I owned at the time and others I came across later. Because of this, my fifth volume in the Golden Age of Hip Hop series cannot be ascribed to singular phases of my life. Individual tracks can but not the compilation as a whole.

I don’t remember who it was but somebody acquired a very bad copy of J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.’s album Doin’ Damage. It sounds old school, but 'Stylin’ Lyrics' – as with 'Strong Island' – contains the type of samples that would come to typify hip hop’s golden age: a crescendo of horns and a lilting piano lifted from 'Ike’s Mood 1' by Isaac Hayes. [When I moved to London in 1993, I found a copy of Doin’ Damage on vinyl in Camden Market, and snapped it up.]

I never had a job while at school. This might not seem so unusual now but back then it was. Mike had a paper-round before picking up an evening gig behind the fish counter at his local supermarket. Ed also had a paper-round, and Dan ended up working at Burger King. Neil did not have a job, probably because his parents had a bit more capital than the rest of us and he could afford not to. Really, I did need one but couldn’t be bothered. Time is scarce enough when you’re a teenager without having to give up your Saturdays or get up early to deliver newspapers. I’d get by on birthday money and the fivers slipped to me by various relatives, and preferred to play football above all else, which cost nothing. The downside to this was that I couldn't afford to buy as much music as I would've liked. The only album I remember purchasing throughout the whole of 1989 was Club Classics Vol. One by Soul II Soul. The next cassette I bought was Sex Packets by Digital Underground in 1990. In between I relied heavily on the radio – Jeff Young’s National Fresh – and the generosity of friends. (I say generosity but so long as you provided a blank tape nobody thought twice about recording stuff for each other.) So Sex Packets was probably the fifth actual album I owned and only the second that fell under the umbrella of hip hop/rap, and I'd already turned 15. And it's raunchy stuff, although 'The Way We Swing' is more of a straight-up rap tune. It’s also quite long, so when I was putting together my anthology I went for 'Underwater Rimes' instead (see The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 1).

The Coldcut tune, featuring Queen Latifah, is indicative of the tacit relationship between hip hop and house music. 'Hip house' as a genre never really took off, but it left its mark. The Jungle Brothers had a hit with the Tod Terry produced 'I'll House You' in 1988, while the likes The 45 King and CJ Mackintosh would remix rap tracks to make them more dance friendly. Jeff Young, who was himself a club DJ, loved all this, and he would always play the remixed versions of 'Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em' by Eric B & Rakim and 'Portrait of a Masterpiece' by The D.O.C. rather than their originals.

A Tribe Called Quest had other ideas, steering hip hop in a jazzier, more laid back direction, and in doing so pathed the way for the likes of Main Source, Gang Starr, Brand Nubian and Black Sheep (as De la Soul had before them). Alongside all that was the harder stuff, much of it coming out of the West Coast. Three Times Dope (who, incidentally, were from Philadelphia) and Masta Ace didn't really fit into any of these approximate categories, which goes to show how diverse hip hop was as a genre, before gangster rap began to predominate in the early-to-mid nineties. (If you need further evidence, I present 'Pollywanacraka' by Public Enemy.)

'No Words (Pump ‘N’ Hip Hop)' by Three Times Dope is actually a fairly recent discovery of mine. In trying to establish some sort of chronology, I uncovered a few of Jeff Young’s National Fresh sessions on the internet that inadvertently led me to archive recordings of Tim Westwood’s show on Capital, which is where I discovered this specific mix of 'No Words'.

I recorded Paris's debut single 'The Devil Made Me Do It' off of radio and included it on a mixtape I entitled National Fresh Volume 4. When Ed bought the album of the same name I then added the tune 'Ebony' onto Hip Hop Volume 5. The Golden Age of Hip Hop Volume 3 is cobbled together from the fragmented memories I have of these original compilations, but I couldn't include both so opted for the former. The same goes for Brand Nubian. 'Wake Up' was the first single from their pending album, followed by 'Slow Down'. 'All for One' was the third, and is more well-known. One way or another, I've incorporated them all.

'Execution of a Chump' is from Gang Starr’s second album, Step in the Arena, but I don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio. Gang Starr, who contribute two tracks to this anthology of odds and sods, would end as one of the genre's preeminent acts, and one of my favourites.

In my liner notes to The Golden Age of Hip Hop Vol. 3, I write that Silver Bullet’s album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a highly sophisticated piece of work and that any one of 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' could have made it onto my compilation. 'Legions of the Damned' did and so here you’ll find 'Guns of Mind Alone'.

Cypress Hill is a very different proposition to the group’s second album, the bass-heavy and overrated Black Sunday. The first 10 seconds of 'The Funky Cypress Hill Shit' is a case in point. It’s as if they’ve sought to use the most poorly recorded sounds – or to re-record them poorly – to create a mise-en-scène that evokes the sounds of 1960s/70s Los Angeles. The samples flow thick and fast before settling on the funk of 'Fencewalk' by Mandrill and the Latin-jazz of 'Hector' by The Village Callers. Cypress Hill were part of a surge in the genre’s popularity that would establish itself in 1992, by way of Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E, Da Lench Mob, Redman, Naughty by Nature, The Goats. In other words, the signs were there that hip hop was getting harder, rougher and, ironically, more popular.

I have found an old diary from 1992, and it shows me buying an album by Ice Cube on 16 January – presumably Death Certificate – and then returning it on the 21st. I recall doing this sort of thing when an album didn’t quite live up to my expectation. I’d make a copy in between, and would then normally receive a credit note – I wasn’t claiming that the goods were faulty in any way, just that I’d changed my mind. The next entry in my diary (it wasn’t a ‘dear diary’ sort of diary, just full of random notes and essay deadlines) tells me I’d acquired something by the Ruthless Rap Assassins, which must have been their second album, Think, It Ain't Illegal Yet. I wasn’t overly enamoured with this record either but the whole buying and returning scam was by no means guaranteed to work, so I kept hold of it.

The diary offers up other intriguing vignettes: a trip to Torquay; pitch-and-put in Central Park; haircut appointments; the Conservatives winning yet another general election; items of clothing bought in Bristol; scores from the European Championships in Sweden; the opening of Virgin Records in Plymouth Centre and going there on the first day with Mike; seeing Ecuadorian folk group Huellas play at Plymouth Arts Centre with Neil; the Olympic Games in Barcelona; turning out for Moses, a 5-a-side team some guys at school put together and for whom I provided the name; going to watch Plymouth Argyle; numerous visits to some club called Fliks, as well as Ritzy and Expose. Clubbing at this point was nothing more than a rites of passage. The music these places played didn't interest me, which was generally house. The situation would improve significantly in 1993 when I discovered 'Jelly Jazz' at the Quay Club, but in the meantime I’d have to go along with it and do my best to avoid getting punched by anyone looking for a fight, which seemed to me almost everyone male outside of my extended social circle.

Cobi welcomes you to Barcelona.

I can remember reading about the Beastie Boys’ new album, Check Your Head, in Hip Hop Connection. This would have been early 1992, but I didn’t then buy the album and nor did anyone else I knew. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally got hold of it, off the back of Ill Communication, which the lead-single 'Sabotage' had propelled to the fore. An exploration of Paul’s Boutique ensued.

Brother J from X Clan once said he could stand the Beastie Boys muscling in on hip hop because they never posed as black men and behaved as who they really were: white guys getting drunk. The Beastie Boys dropped the getting drunk thing very quickly, but they never adopted a persona that was outside of their own, which might explain their longevity. It’s a shame that I didn’t return to them sooner, but I’ve kept up with them ever since, conscious that it was the Beastie Boys who introduced me to rap music, even if it was Public Enemy that sealed the deal.

[Listen to here or here.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 3 [1990-91]

1.     Jazz Thing (Movie Mix) – Gang Starr

2.     The Lost Tribe of Shabazz – Lakim Shabazz

3.     Treat 'Em Right – Chubb Rock

4.     100 Miles and Runnin' – N.W.A.

5.     The Devil Made Me Do It – Paris

6.     Freddy’s Back – The Royal Family (featuring Daddy Freddy & Duke)

7.     Mind Of An Ordinary Citizen – Blade

8.   My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style (The Next Definition) – Dream Warriors

9.     Looking at the Front Door – Main Source

10.   All For One – Brand Nubian

11.   Black Whip – Chapter and the Verse

12.   Jump Around (Nomad Soul Remix) – London Posse

13.   Pages and Pages – Caveman

14.   Green Grass – Cash Crew

15.   Check the Technique – Gang Starr

16.   My TV Went Black and White on Me – Young Black Teenagers

17.   I Got to Have It – ED O.G. & Da Bulldogs

18.   Slow Down (Pete Rock's Newromix) – Brand Nubian

19.   Just Hangin' Out (Your Hood Remix) – Main Source

20.   Pass the Plugs – De La Soul

21.   Mr. Hood at Piocalles Jewelry/Crackpot – KMD

22.   N-41 – Son of Bazerk

23.   Legions of the Damned – Silver Bullet

24.   Good Life – Pete Rock & CL Smooth

25.   Derelicts of Dialect – 3rd Bass

My Fifth Year (Year 11 in today’s money) and we’re in C-Block, which is preferable to D-Block. The building feels lighter somehow, and more open. Humanities are taught there, rather than science, and it's where the school library can be found, as well as the staffroom. Our form tutor is a jaded and irritable geography teacher by the name of Graham Sandercock. He is Cornish, can speak Cornish, reeks of fags and looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Maybe because our GCSEs are upon us there seems to be less larking about, or maybe it’s just our age – 15 going on 16. That being said, one lunchtime Jamie Slater sets off a fire extinguisher in a side room, can’t get it to stop and so shoves it behind a bookcase; I somehow manage to fit an actual printer into Mike’s bag without him noticing, which he then carries home; aware of Mr. Sandercock’s habit of throwing marked exercise books across the classroom, Jamie and I glue together a pile we find on his desk, the idea being that when he goes to launch the first one it will create a sort of concertina effect. It does, or so a third former who was present in the event tells us. Unfortunately our reputations proceed us and Mr. Sandercock intuitively knows who’s responsible. He is not impressed, although really he should be, but nothing much comes of it other than a stiff talking to. I think he’s past caring.

'Jazz Thing' by Gang Starr was written for the film Mo’ Better Blues, appeared on the soundtrack, and was also released independently as a single. I may have included it on National Fresh Volume 4 or tacked it on the end of Volume 3. This was in August 1990, around the same time N.W.A put out their EP 100 Miles and Running (co-written with The D.O.C.), their first record since Ice Cube quit the group towards the end of 1989. There must have been a censored version of the title track doing the rounds, because its littered with curses. Either that or the BBC employed a certain technique whereby offensive language was distorted to render it unidentifiable, although you could normally guess. I was more impressed with '100 Miles and Running' than I was 'Jazz Thing', but ultimately Gang Starr would win the war. Jeff was all over them. On 30 November he played two of their tracks on the same show: 'Just to Get a Rep' and 'Who’s Going Take the Weight'. Gang Starr’s album was to be released in January, as we shall see.

DHS: D-Block in the foreground

Paris was a west-coast rapper, not from LA but San Francisco. 'The Devil Made Me Do It' was his breakthrough single and he followed up with an album of the same name in December. In terms of delivery I’d have thought Paris’s primary influence was Rakim. They both employ a similarly deep tone, although Paris is slightly more aggressive with it. I like the organ sample in the chorus – origin unknown – and the general sense of menace it foments.

The British hip hop scene was a multi-faceted thing with Britcore operating at one end of spectrum, acid jazz/nascent trip hop at the other, and ragamuffin in between. In October 1990 Massive Attack released 'Daydreaming', a track that I would have liked to have included on this compilation but cannot. If Jeff Young ever played it then I must have been out that night, because it didn’t appear on any of my tapes and this anthology is supposed to reflect what was. Which is not to say that I hadn’t heard the track; I was aware of what was going on when Massive Attack temporarily rebranded themselves as simply ‘Massive’ in the wake of the Gulf War, but I didn’t get around to buying their album for some while.

Daddy Freddy isn’t strictly British, he's Jamaican, but much of his output was released through the imprint Music of Life, and he’d previously collaborated with London ragga artist Asher D (the original Asher D, not the guy from So Solid Crew). Music of Life didn’t have much clout – part of the reason why Hijack signed up with Ice T’s Rhyme Syndicate, backed by Warner Bros. – but without it 'Freddy’s Back' may never have seen the light of day.

Had Armenian-exile Blade met with commercial success would he too have felt the need to change his name? Possibly not, for Blade had no record company behind him. His material was self-financed, sold out of a bag slung over his shoulder on the streets of Lewisham. 'Mind of an Ordinary Citizen' was his second single and deserved wider recognition.

It’s at this point – late 1990 – that I embarked upon what was supposed to be the fifth instalment of my National Fresh anthology. As it turned out, Jeff Young would leave Radio 1 at the end of the year, his Big Beat Show, incorporating National Fresh, to be supplanted by Pete Tong’s Essential Selection. All appeared to be lost. Then, in April 1991, Tong began hosting The Rap Selection every Thursday night between nine and ten. This lifeline was finally severed in March '92, but it was better than nothing. In the meantime, rather than start a new series of mixtapes named after this new show, I unimaginatively followed up National Fresh 4 with Hip Hop 5. Regardless, it was one my best.

Three groups stand out from this transitional period – Main Source, Brand Nubian, and Gang Starr – and Jeff got there first. 'Looking at the Front Door' by Main Source kicked it off, and when Tong took over then came 'Live at the Barbeque', 'Just Hangin' Out' and 'Peace Is Not the Word to Play'. Their album, Breaking Atoms came out in July 1991, but not in the UK – couldn’t even get it on import. 'Looking at the Front Door' appeared on The Rebirth of Cool Too compilation I purchased a year later, but I would have to wait another 15-odd years before I finally got my hands on Breaking Atoms. Fortunate, then, that Young and Tong stood behind them.

'All For One' is the first track off of Brand Nubian’s debut album One for All, which I acquired with ease. I very much liked the way the group presented themselves, the record's artwork and how they dressed. I really wanted a short-sleeved shirt like the one DJ Alamo wore on the album cover but didn’t know where to look. I had the pin-rolled, loose fitting jeans (Go Vicinity), paired them with a pair of Avia ARC trainers, and wore Italian football shirts in lieu. Brand Nubian also struck me as one of more lyrically accomplished rap acts doing the business – example: 'Then I get my gear and I give Trev a call, 'cause he works in the barbershop right behind the mall.'

On that same 30 November edition of National Fresh, Jeff Young played 'Black Whip' by Chapter and the Verse. From Manchester, their sound leaned towards the same sort of territory as Young Disciples or Galliano, but 'Black Whip' is straight up jazz-rap, taking its name, and the groove, from the tune of the same name by Ivan ‘Boogaloo’ Jones, as well as 'Dem Tambourines' by tenor saxophonist Don Wilkerson.

London Posse’s Gangster Chronicle is often cited as the British hip hop’s finest moment. I purchased it at the end of 1990, off the back of hearing the singles 'Money Mad' and the Nomad Soul Remix of 'Jump Around' on the radio. The latter was included on both the 2001 and 2013 extended iterations of the same album and is the version I have included here. London Posse exemplified a tendency within British rap to look towards Jamaican music for inspiration, rather than the funk, jazz and soul that formed the basis for most American hip hop (KRS-One would soon buck this trend). Bionic and Rodney P also made a point of rapping in their local vernacular, embracing their London accents.

The genius of the track 'Green Grass' is not that Cash Crew sampled Gwen McCrae’s '90% of Me is You' but how they sampled it, like it’s being played through a set of headphones on a cheap 1980s Walkman. Cash Crew performed 'Green Grass' on the programme Dance Energy, which was part of the BBC’s DEF II. In the days before the internet, Dance Energy was an invaluable resource, offering rap acts the rare opportunity to perform live on UK television. (Channel 4’s The Word would occasionally allow for it but more normally favoured indie-rock and grunge music.)

In January ’91 Gang Starr put out Step in the Arena, and I immediately set about buying it. Mike and I went to Our Price, and while I combed the shelves Mike asked the guy behind the counter for assistance: 'We’ve got Gang of Four and Gang Green but no Gang Starr.' (Incidentally, I’m now quite into Gang of Four.) It turned up somewhere – maybe in Rival Records, which was slightly more cutting edge. 'Check the Technique' samples the intro to Marlena Shaw’s 'California Soul' but Gang Starr more usually borrowed from jazz. Jazz-rap was a nebulous concept because few artists relied on jazz exclusively; funk and soul and R&B were utilised with the same regularity. Indeed, most jazz-rap might also be referred to as alternative hip hop, although this term is more often used retrospectively. Nonetheless, a mellower sort of vibe began to pervade.

Young Black Teenagers were signed up to Hank Shocklee’s (of Bomb Squad fame) MCA Records’ subsidiary S.O.U.L. and it was he who gave them their name. Nothing particularly unusual about that, except Young Black Teenagers weren’t black (or even teenagers for that matter). Their self-titled debut shares the same musical discord found on Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk, albeit in a slightly more restrained manner. I was ambivalent at the time, but both these albums have aged very well and are worthy of our attention now.

I procured Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs’ Life of a Kid in the Ghetto in mid-1992, more than a year after its release. I can be sure of this because I have it on vinyl and I didn’t start buying vinyl until after I invested in a turntable. Due to the amount of time that had elapsed, Life of a Kid in the Ghetto was now reduced to £3 in HMV. 'Be a Father to Your Child' was the track that received the most airplay, but 'I Got to Have It' is for me the album’s standout track.

Pete Rock’s remix of 'Slow Down' provides an excuse to include a second track by Brand Nubian. Released as a single in March 1991, this mix appeared on the B-side. I don’t consider Pete Rock’s adaptation to be an improvement on the original necessarily, although I’m very fond of the tambourine that shakes throughout. Lyrically, it represents another tour de force. Sadat X this time: 'Now Woolie Willie got a pair of my sneakers. Wonder where he got 'em 'cause I hid 'em behind my speakers.'

De La Soul’s second album didn’t sell quite like the first one did. The received wisdom is that it’s actually the better album, although I’m not sure I would agree with that. As with Life of a Kid in the Ghetto, I picked up De La Soul is Dead on sale in HMW – maybe even the same sale. Because of De La Soul’s higher profile, Tong played more of it on his show, and so tracks like 'Pass the Plugs' featured prominently on the mix-tapes I compiled throughout ‘91.

KMD were signed to Elektra Records, the same label as Brand Nubian. Their first album, Mr. Hood, fits the jazz-rap template, although 'Mr. Hood at Piocalles Jewelry/Crackpot' is built around Eddie Floyd and Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson samples, guys that played 1960s soul and 1970s blues respectively. It also samples from a language-learning record. These exerts form the basis of the character Mr. Hood, who wanders in and out of the album to humorous effect. As with Brand Nubian, the group's levity belied a more serious dimension (both groups took inspiration from the Five-Percent Nation, to varying degrees). 

The piece de résistance: 'N-41' by Son of Bazerk, built around nothing more than a simple drum beat and synthesised bassline (is it even sampled?) with the crew bickering in the background. The rumble of what sounds like an underground train pulling away from its platform can just about be made out behind it all. SOB’s debut album, Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk, exemplifies Hank Shocklee’s assertion that music is simply the ‘manipulation of noise’. There’s an abstraction to the chaos that begins to make sense the more one listens to it. But 'N-41' is tame by comparison, although no less beguiling – a Rothko set adrift among a sea of Pollacks.

Britcore was fast establishing itself as British rap’s preeminent sub-genre. Silver Bullet doesn’t get as much credit for this as he deserves. The album Bring Down the Walls No Limit Squad Returns is a frenetic beast, for sure, but it’s also a highly sophisticated piece of work. 'Raw Deal', 'Attitude Academy', 'Undercover Anarchist', 'Guns Of Mind Alone' and 'Legions Of The Damned' are all so distinct, so relentless in their sonic imposition, that one has to entertain the possibility that this may in fact be the best British hip hop album ever recorded.

After building a reputation as one of hip hop’s leading producers, Pete Rock teamed up with rapper CL Smooth to release the All Souled Out in the summer of ’91. Its opening track, 'Good Life', blew me away, or rather the trumpet sample from jazz guitarist O'Donel Levy’s version of 'I Wanna Be Where You Are' did. Pete Rock & CL Smooth would come of age in 1992, but All Souled Out was a fantastic introduction to another one of the Golden Age’s major players.

'Derelicts of Dialect' by 3rd Bass samples two tunes by obscure funk/soul outfit The 9th Creation: 'Bubble Gum' and 'Falling in Love'. I recall this track playing out The Rap Selection, Tong wrapping things up as DJs do. 'Derelicts of Dialect' was also the title of 3rd Bass’s second album, released in June 1991.

[Listen to here or here.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 2 [1989-90]

1.     Fade to Black – L.A. Star

2.     Brothers Gonna Work It Out – Public Enemy

3.     Footprints – A Tribe Called Quest

4.     Verbs of Power – X Clan

5.     Untouchables – Eric B. & Rakim

6.     One Time Gaffled Em Up – Compton's Most Wanted

7.     We're All In The Same Gang – West Coast Rap All-Stars

8.     Untouchable – Above The Law

9.     Come on Let’s Move It – Special Ed

10.   La Raza – Kid Frost

11.   Untitled – Hardnoise

12.   Black and Proud – Intelligent Hood
13.   Me and the Biz – Master Ace

14.   Rock Dis Funky Joint – Poor Righteous Teachers

15.   Slipping Into Darkness – Queen Mother Rage

16.   Crumbs on the Table – D-Nice

17.   Music Man – Master Ace

18. Put the Squeeze on ‘Em – The Jaz

19.   Mr. Sandman – Three Times Dope

20.   We Go Subsonic (Underwater Mix) – Subsonic 2

21.   Streets of New York – Kool G Rap & Polo

22.   Black Man in Effect – Boogie Down Productions

23.   Wisdom (Single Version) – The Sindecut

24.   Step Right On (Vocal Dub Mix) – Young Disciples

25.   Welcome to the Story (Peace Go With You Mix) – Galliano

This second volume of my anthology reminds me of the 1990 World Cup, the lead up to it, and my burgeoning fondness for Italian football. That might seem an odd connotation, but in 1990 Beats International wore various Serie A football shirts on Top of the Pops, so I obviously wasn't the only one associating Italian football with electronic music. 'Fade to Black' by L.A. Star is particularly evocative of this period, and a very strong tune in and of itself.

The sense of anticipation that awaited Public Enemy’s third album, Fear of a Black Planet, was not dissimilar to the hype that built up ahead of the World Cup in Italy. In contrast to the football tournament, which didn’t meet expectations, Fear of a Black Planet would not disappoint. (Italia 90 was very exciting as an event but many of games were played defensively, England v Germany being one of the few exceptions.) Jeff Young dedicated a show to the album, with Chuck D and Flavour Flav in attendance to discuss its imminent release, but was playing tracks from it long before that. 'Brothers Gonna Work It Out'– eventually released as a single in June 1990 – is the first tune proper from the album. The instrumental outro to 'Let’s Go Crazy' by Prince is sampled way down in the mix, looped throughout, descending into a crescendo of white noise at the end of every bar. There’s bits of George Clinton, James Brown and Otis Redding to be found in there too.

I cannot say at what point I started editing the recordings I made of National Fresh into formal compilations. I do remember, though, that when I did the track I used to introduce National Fresh Volume 1 was 'Push it Along' by A Tribe Called Quest. I wouldn’t have done this by virtue of the fact that it also kicks off People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, because that hadn’t been released yet. When it was there were at least six tracks – 'Push it Along', 'Luck of Lucien', 'After Hours', 'Footprints', 'Youthful Expression', 'Description of a Fool' – I would have deemed worthy for inclusion on one of my compendiums. This would have defeated the object, for my mix-tapes were derived exclusively from my radio recordings. Actual albums were to be listened to independently. Unfortunately, appended to 'Push it Along' comes a large portion of dialogue that cannot be separated from it in its digital form, so instead I've gone with 'Footprints' which quickly became a favourite of mine.

Where Public Enemy formed sound collages out of disparate snatches of funk and soul, A Tribe Called Quest borrowed more melodious, often jazz-based phrases, which engendered a warmer listening experience. I didn’t buy the album, my brother did. I couldn’t really afford to purchase that many records, which made National Fresh all the more vital. 'Can I Kick It?' – the tune that made the Tribe’s name – wasn’t released until October 1990, so for a while all this felt under the radar.

X Clan were interested in the more mystical (5%) elements of Islam. They wore African tribal dress, would talk about ‘the red, the black, and the green’ (the colours of Pan-Africanism) and make cryptic allusions to keys, crossroads and Egyptology, which was an emerging trend in rap music at the time. 'In The Ways of The Scales', 'Funkin’ Lesson', 'Verbs of Power'… Jeff appeared to be quite the fan and played them all. I acquired a vinyl copy of the album To the East, Blackwards some years later, but I believe it was 'Verbs of Power' that I included on the attendant cassette back in the day.

Eric B and Rakim were integral to hip hop's development, maybe even the seminal act of the genre's golden age. Unfortunately their first two albums were before my time – or maybe my hip hop loving cadres weren’t as knowledgeable as I thought they were. Yet I was aware of the duo’s reputation when Jeff started dropping tracks from their forthcoming album, Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em. He played 'In the Ghetto' and 'Untouchable', although the tune that really seemed to excite him was the '45 King Club Mix' of the album’s title track (see Bonus Beats).

All three of these albums were released in April 1990 but in my mind date back to the previous year. Whether the BBC received promotional copies as early as ‘89 is possible. In any case, for the sake of continuity, Volume 2 of my anthology represents my fourth year at school – September 1989 through to the summer of 1990 – for my memories from this time are beholden to the academic calendar.

I don’t recollect my fourth year at school as clearly as my third. I know that our form room was in D-Block, rather than the purgatorial portacabin it had been the year before, but I don’t recall who my form tutor was or of spending much time there. (I do have hazy memories of bags being thrown out of the third-storey window, and of their contents being emptied onto the floor and kicked around a bit, but that could just easily have occurred in my third and fifth years.)

1989 was the year I embarked upon my GCSEs, dropping chemistry, geography, music, art and Latin and electing to pursue history, physics, biology, design and communication, and business studies. (Maths, English language, English literature and French were compulsory, as were religious studies and the waste of time that was general studies.) I wasn’t remotely interested in business studies and would have preferred to carry on with geography, but the timetable wouldn’t allow for it. I tried to drop physics to make room for geography but the school insisted that everyone study at least two sciences, and I rather enjoyed biology, didn't like chemistry. As it turned out, my physics teacher, Mr. Harrington, was a lovely man and I got on with it, whereas the geography department was never the school’s strongest suit. Where I think I did go wrong was dropping art for design and communication. The art department wasn’t all that either but it would probably have been more fun. Instead I was taught to draw technically, by a man who bore a vague resemblance to the comedian Jasper Carrot but shared none of his humour, and not much else.

The teachers of the compulsory subjects were a mixed bag. Mr. Bowden taught English. If he caught anyone napping he’d launch a blackboard rubber in their general direction, leaving a chalk dust imprint upon the unsuspecting pupil's torso. I liked Mr. Bowden very much. Mr. Sanderson took French and possessed a dry sense of humour; appropriately, he looked a bit like Victor Meldrew circa One Foot in the Grave. Unfortunately I never paid his teaching the same respect I did his comedic monologues.

The rotating cast responsible for directing general studies is barely worth a mention. A guy who looked like the actor Alan Alda taught religious studies, and was all right. My maths teacher, however, was a total burk, a pompous fellow who I disliked strongly. I don’t believe he even knew me by name. In my fifth year, in the lead up to our actual exam, he was signed off sick for about three or four months and ineffectual supply teachers deployed in his place. In the event, I passed the exam and doubt I’d have done any better if he’d been around.

Youth is indeed wasted on the young. The idea of going to school now seems like heaven. I responded well to teachers I liked (Mr. Sanderson excepted, which I regret) and lost interest where I didn’t, but generally I found school to be a drag. I had better things to do with my time, like playing football, watching football, reading The Football Grounds of Europe by Simon Inglis, designing imagined football strips and trainers, and putting together new mix-tapes.

The next eleven or twelve compositions were all included on the original mix-tape I put together over the summer of 1990: National Fresh Volume 2. Compton’s Most Wanted probably saw themselves as contemporaries of N.W.A. and the rest of the hard-bitten L.A. scene, but to my ears they sound more like EPMD, which is no bad thing. 'One Time Gaffled Em Up' is notable for incorporating censorial beeps into the rhythm of the track. This means MC Eiht had to time his curses so as not to disturb the metre to maintain the flow of the thing.

'We're All In The Same Gang' by the West Coast Rap All-Stars is a collaborative work intended to deter black-on-black gang violence, inspired by the East Coast scene’s similarly motivated Stop The Violence movement. Contributing artistes of note include Ice T, Digital Underground, N.W.A. and Above the Law.

Above the Law were genuinely the contemporaries of N.W.A. and as surely responsible for developing the West Coast G-funk sound as Dr Dre’s mob. 'Untouchable' is built around a sample from Young-Holt Unlimited’s version of 'Light my Fire' by The Doors. I possessed a copy of the affiliated album Livin' Like Hustlers but the recording was so bad that I could barely stand to listen to it. (My brother kindly gifted me a secondhand copy on vinyl some years later.)

Special Ed hailed from Brooklyn but 'Come On Let’s Move It' has a jagged edge that could have come straight out of Compton. (Perhaps Special Ed and Compton’s Most Wanted were swapping notes?). Bobby Byrd’s 'I Know You Got Soul' provides the foundation, 'Miss Broadway' by French disco act Belle Epoque the vocal flourishes.

The Latino rap of Kid Frost paved the way for the likes of Cypress Hill, and 'La Raza' was the track that broke the mould. I actually find Frost’s delivery a bit reedy, but he’s got good flow and the Spanish lingo makes for good rhyming.

Not being native to London at the time, I couldn’t reliably inform you how and when Britcore came about (by and large it was a metropolitan phenomenon). I was unaware of the epithet when listening to Hijack, Demon Boyz, MC Duke, etc. back in 1988 and probably none the wiser in 1990. However, I could certainly identify the style that the term Britcore is supposed to encompass: the hard, fast and rough manner evinced by acts such as Hijack (by way of their 'Hold No Hostage/Doomsday' of Rap 12” released in 1988, for example), Silver Bullet and Hardnoise. Hardnoise split up after two singles, but 'Untitled' could reasonably be described as the genre’s archetype.

'Black & Proud' by Intelligent Hoodlum received much airplay, sampling 'UFO' by New York post-punk group ESG. The number of artists who’ve sampled this song is legion, but I’m not sure if it’s ever been as pronounced as it is here. The track’s lyrics are also evidence of the growing preoccupation with black, and sometimes ancient, history: 'Find your ancestors and what they did, ‘cause intelligent blacks built pyramids. Seek and obtain, you'll find descriptions, pyramids were built by Egyptians.' Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey are also mentioned.

I regret turning down the opportunity to purchase a copy of Poor Righteous Teachers’ Holy Intellect when I came across it in a record store in Soho during the early 2000s. I must have been short on disposable cash because the ‘Rock Dis Funky Joint’ would have justified every penny. Like X Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers were Five Percenters, but musically they came off more like Brand Nubian or KMD. Queen Mother Rage was into it too. As a member of the Blackwatch Committee – a political and musical collective led by X-Clan’s Professor X – she released the album Vanglorious Law in 1991, which featured contributions from the aforementioned organisation.

Boogie Down Productions affiliate D-Nice with 'Crumbs on the Table', a solid tune that exemplifies my leanings at the time: punchy beats off-set with a left-of-field staccato sample of indeterminable origin. Master Ace’s 'The Music Man' adheres to a similar format. I believe Jeff Young played these two tunes together during the summer of 1990 – or at least I placed them together on the tape I pulled together. Both had albums out in July of that year.

National Fresh Volume 3: The Jaz was once mentor to the infinitely more well-known rapper Jay-Z. Apparently, the two fell out after The Jaz refused Jay-Z’s offer of a recording contract with his imprint Roc-A-Fella Records. Before all that happened Jay-Z made a couple of guest appearances on The Jaz’s 1990 album To Your Soul (check out the video to the single ‘The Originators’ if you’re interested). ‘Put the Squeeze on 'Em’ is the only record of The Jaz that I can recall, but it’s a good one.

'Mr. Sandman' by Philadelphian act Three Times Dope borrows substantially, and very cleverly, from the weird and wonderful 'Funky Worm' by the Ohio Players. My mate Ed liked their baggy, corduroy trousers. I don’t remember hearing anything else from Three Times Dope, which doesn't mean that I didn't.

Jeff Young described Subsonic 2’s 'We Go Subsonic' as one of the better singles he’d received that week, 'in their thousands.' I picked up a copy of the Nottingham duo’s debut cassette, Include Me Out, after finding it on sale in Our Price. It’s not a bad record, but the album version of 'We Go Subsonic' is nowhere near as good as the Underwater Mix that had so impressed me and Jeff.

Kool G Rap & Polo’s 'Streets of New York' takes a darker turn. How’s this for a stanza:

A little kid says yo,

I’ve got a colour TV, CD player and car stereo.

And all I want is a castle.

I’ve also got a .38, don’t give me no hassle.

The tune samples 'Got To Learn How to Dance' by The Fatback Band and sounds accordingly upbeat. The same cannot be said of 'Bad to the Bone', which was the other track Jeff liked to play from Kool G Rap & Polo’s affiliated album Wanted: Dead or Alive [August 1990]. This was not uncommon of the man; if he took to a particular artist he’d find time to play a number of tracks from their latest work, helping the listener to get a feel for what they were about.

I was intent on buying the album, Boogie Down Productions' Edutainment [August 1990] but it proved impossible to track down in Plymouth and my relatives couldn’t find a copy in Bristol. Moreover, my tape ran out about half way through recording 'Black Man in Effect'. Anyway, this is the third number on this volume to mention Egypt. I doubt KRS-One is much of an authority on the subject, but I take his point: that history has been distorted by whites to the detriment of blacks.

The Sindecut were from North London and occupied the same space as groups like the Young Disciples, Dodge City Productions, maybe Cavemen. This sort of thing had more in common with the Bristol Scene of Massive Attack, or even Soul II Soul. That said, 'Wisdom' is very much a rap track, and a hugely underrated one. The group’s only album, Changing the Scenery, was another that I’d fail to get my hands on, although I did eventually succeed in finding a 12” copy of 'Tell me Why?' with 'Wisdom' on the B-side.

When I finally acquired a turntable in May 1992, the first two records I bought were the first two instalments of a series entitled The Rebirth of Cool. These compilations incorporated (superior) remixed versions of a number of tracks I’d heard played on National Fresh; for instance, 'Step Right On' by Young Disciples and 'Welcome to the Story' by Galliano, tunes that sample Roy Ayres and The 24-Carat Black, and John Coltrane and Stevie Wonder respectively. Both groups were signed to Talkin’ Loud, a label more closely associated with that strange hybrid known as Acid Jazz. As with The Sindecut, neither Galliano nor the Young Disciples were pure rap acts, but the tunes I’ve included here are as good as anything recorded by groups that were.

[Listen to here or here.]