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.]

LINER NOTES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF HIP HOP, VOL. 1 [1988-89]

1.     Strong Island – J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E.

2.     Freedom of Speech ’88 – Just-Ice

3.     See More – Kool Rock Brothers

4.     Strictly Business – EPMD

5.     Beats to the Rhyme – Run-DMC

6.     Something Fresh to Swing To – Levi 167

7.     Bullet From a Gun – Derek B

8.     Talkin' All That Jazz – Stetsasonic

9.     It Takes Two – Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock

10.   Terminator X to the Edge of Panic – Public Enemy
11.   Follow the Leader – Eric B & Rakim

12.   Give it a Rest – She Rockers

13.   D.C. Jail – DJ Daddy

14.   Free – MC Duke

15.   Northside – Demon Boyz

16.   Style Wars – Hijack

17.   Express Yourself (Extended Mix) – N.W.A.

18.   Bring Forth the Guillotine (Darkside Mix) – Silver Bullet

19.   Eye Know – De La Soul

20.   What U Waitin’ 4 (Jungle Fever Mix) – Jungle Brothers

21.   We Rock the Mic Right (12" Mix) – Redhead Kingpin and the FBI

22.   You Played Yourself – Ice-T

23.   The Formula – The D.O.C.

24.   Underwater Rimes – Digital Underground

25.   I Come Off (Southern Comfort Mix) – Young MC

My early forays into musical archiving consisted almost exclusively of hip hop, in particular ‘golden age’ hip hop running from the late 1980s through to the early ‘90s. This span was a prolific and innovative period for the genre but not so successful commercially. Although some acts undoubtedly prospered – Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, De La Soul – hip hop was generally a minority interest. My fandom had been initially based on the fact that a lot of this stuff was actually fairly popular among my peer group, but prevailed merrily once the cool kids dropped hip hop for house, leaving me perplexed that a liking for a particular kind of music could be repudiated on an apparent whim. (Later, some of these same lads, who maintained a lesser interest in parallel, would end up borrowing from my collection, as opposed to the other way around, which had previously been the case.)

Mix-tapes have since been superseded by the digital playlists, and my old compilations need re-compiling, for posterity and to collate lost fragments. The original cassettes went missing a long time ago. I’m no hoarder but nor do I ruthlessly dispose of things as poignant as mix-tapes, so I’ve no idea where they went. (It’s possible that I still have them somewhere, buried deep beneath less interesting detritus.) Because of this, I’ve had to work from memory, but I've done my best to arrange the songs in the order I came across them. The Golden Age of Hip Hop – Volume 1 covers a period beginning in early 1988 that runs through to late 1989, whereupon I discovered Jeff Young’s 'National Fresh' on BBC Radio 1 and began to put some effort into making my compilations.

Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys was the first rap album I possessed, but there was never a question of me nailing colours to any mast; I didn’t identify it as being part of a scene. I recall liking 'The Show' by Doug E Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew, released in August 1985, and Run-DMC’s mash up of 'Walk This Way', but both were perceived as novelties, by myself and probably the general British public. As was '(Nothing Serious) Just Buggin'' by Whistle and 'Wipeout' by The Fat Boys – rap tunes enjoyed by people who didn’t really like rap music. This might apply to Salt-n-Pepa. ('I Need Love' by LL Cool J had the capacity to be taken seriously, but not by me.) The point being that hip hop wasn’t respected in the same way other musical forms were. It was nothing more than a passing fad, and often derided (see Morris Minor and the Majors).

Public Enemy changed all this. Their first album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, passed me by, but their second, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back changed my life, awakening me to the genre’s wider, more serious potential. One of the cool back-row boys recorded it for me onto a TDK 90 that I would later pad out with tracks recorded off the radio. In the meantime, I began scouring the local record shops for complementary material.

Plymouth's 'Graffiti Hall of Fame'.

Whenever I hear the opening bars to 'Unhooked' by Freda Payne I automatically expect 'Strong Island' by J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E to kick in. I came to know this tune by way of a Street Sounds compilation prosaically entitled Hip Hop 20, purchased from a small record shop in Plymouth’s old Drake Circus. This tape also included 'It Takes Two' by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, which will be well known to anyone around at the time and many more who weren’t. The kid who lived across the road from me then invested in Hip Hop 22 (didn’t either of us fancy Hip Hop 21?), from whence 'Strictly Business' by EPMD, 'Freedom of Speech ’88' by Just-Ice and 'See More' by the Kool Rock Brothers came from. The former is a bona fide hip hop classic built around Eric Clapton’s cover of 'I Shot the Sheriff' by Bob Marley. Just-Ice had connections with KRS-One, as well as an aggressive delivery – ahead of the curve in that respect – and a moderately successful musical career. The Kool Rock Brothers are more obscure and don’t seem to have released much else beyond the track I’ve included on the first volume of my anthology.

I was mesmerised by the graffiti clad covers of these compilations, for it wasn’t just the music that appealed but the clothes and the accompanying subculture. This was early 1988, during my third year at secondary school. It was quite normal to try your hand at a bit of graffiti on paper, and a few of us even gave it a go on actual walls (at the dilapidated former zoo around the back of Plymouth Argyle’s football ground where the council dumped wood-chippings, compost and suchlike, which was I suppose still technically illegal). Trainers were coveted, especially Fila and Troop, although most of us wore Adidas, Nike or Reebok. Silky tracksuit tops were worn, or hooded sweatshirts. Again, Nike and Adidas were standard issue, and later Champion, Stussy and Russell Athletic (aside from a myriad of obscurely labelled clobber bought from places like JC Conway on Cornwall Street). In winter, Capri ski jackets, for school children only ever wear coats in the most inclement of conditions.

As with sport, such enthusiasms can cut across classroom hierarchies, making you less vulnerable to being picked on. I was probably immune to this anyway due to the fact that I liked football and was prone to a bit of mischief (although everyone gets beset upon on at school at some point or other). For myself and the disparate crowd of inbetweeners I hung out with, a typical lunchtime might include: water-fights in D-Block toilets; collecting jars and bottles from around the place, taking them down to Stonehouse Creek and throwing stones at them; depositing empty deodorant cans on the fire lit weekly around the back of the school canteen and waiting for them to explode, which they did; heading down to the rarely used weight-lifting room in E-Block, lining barbells up against the wall, spinning the weights on their axis, knocking down said barbells to create a hellish racket, and then running for our life; chucking fruit through open windows, preferably two or three storeys up.

The water fights in D-Block toilets were a particularly common occurrence. About six or seven of us would enter tentatively, probably because one of our number actually needed to utilise the antiquated facilities (our school – Devonport High School for Boys – was a former military hospital built in 1797 and moved into after World War II). Generally, whoever it was that needed to would be allowed to relieve himself before battle commenced. Rough paper towels would then be cupped under a tap, filled with water, tied off to form a sort of grenade, and then thrown at one another. Someone might pick up the permanently plumbed-in hose and twirl it around their head to release the water that trickled steadily along its serpentine length. If someone happened to be sitting in one of the cubicles then our missiles would instead be lobbed over the top onto the unsuspecting, helpless student.

I look back upon such waggery with both fondness and approval. Despite its benefits, formal education is not the natural state of things. A child (because adolescents are still pretty much children) is not designed to keep still and concentrate for hours at a time; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a reasonable condition. The best teachers were those that recognised this and said things along the lines of, 'I know you’d rather be doing something else, but we’ve got to get through this,' as opposed to censuring the apathetic individual as some sort of miscreant and an affront to authority.

Yet I never viewed my liking of hip hop as an act of defiance or rebellion, even though it obviously was from the point of view of many of those who were making it. I saw it as an art form, and an ingenious one at that. Take Public Enemy's 'Terminator X to the Edge of Panic': a strange, minimal fusion of staccato horn samples, sparse beats and ambient noise; a collage of sounds that seems increasingly abstract the more you listen to it. Nothing in the charts sounding anywhere near as sophisticated or as odd.

Run-DMC’s Tougher than Leather, released in May 1988, was the first rap album I actually owned, as opposed to being taped off of someone else. The general consensus among the cool/hard kids in my class (it’s hard to know exactly how they wanted to be perceived) was that Run-DMC were passed it, that it was all about Public Enemy and NWA. Chuck D of Public Enemy begged to differ and rated Run-DMC’s fourth album very highly. I wasn’t so impressionable that I'd take everybody else’s word for it, and the guy I caught the school bus with – one my closest friends – was as impressed with the record as I was.

'Something Fresh to Swing To' by Levi 167 was made available on Street Sounds' Hip Hop 20 in 1988 but released as a single a year earlier. Levi 167 had been a member of the short-lived Scott La Rock and the Celebrity Three along with KRS-One, and his career as a solo artist appears to have been equally brief. Unlike that of Eric B & Rakim, who Chuck D, no less, credits with changing hip hop. 'Follow the Leader' was certainly ahead of its time.

Tracks 11 to 15 were taken from the same Music of Life compilation, entitled Hard as Hell Volume 2. Music of Life was a British record label run by DJ, producer and remixer Simon Harris and provided an outlet for British rap which it probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. For me, Hijack’s 'Style Wars' was the stand-out track. It sounded weirder than other tunes included on the compilation, but musically they weren’t doing anything that PE hadn’t done already. Style Wars even mines the same sample as 'Public Enemy No. 1' – Fred Wesley and The J.B.'s' 'Blow Your Head'.

Acid House, rave, the second summer of love. It escaped us, we were too young – 13 going on 14. Nor do I recall anyone being into The Stone Roses or Happy Mondays. The tunes doing the rounds were things like 'Beat Dis' by Bomb the Bass, 'Good Life' by Inner City, 'Keep on Movin'' by Soul II Soul, 'Pump up the Jam' by Technotronic – early signs that hip hop was on the way out, to be displaced by various forms of dance music.

But not just yet. The guy I caught the school bus with returned the favour and bought the album 3 Feet High and Rising. De La Soul, alongside the Jungle Brothers, represented an emerging strain of rap that would assert itself towards the end of 1989 and into 1990, paving the way for groups like A Tribe Called Quest and a whole sub-genre of hip hop offhandedly referred to as jazz rap. This was the sort of hip hop almost anybody could get on with.

It was about now that I discovered National Fresh. I assume one of the cool/hard kids let me in on it, although it was unclear as to whether anybody else in my class – or even school – was tuning in as religiously as I was about to. I knew of Silver Bullet because he’d managed to make the Top 40, and because '20 Seconds to Comply' contained a sample from RoboCop, and I loved the film RoboCop. I didn’t like 'Bring Forth the Guillotine' at first but the Darkside Mix that Jeff Young played was a big improvement. So too was the Jungle Fever Mix of 'What U Waitin’ 4' by the Jungle Brothers, although I didn’t know this because I hadn’t heard the original.

Redhead Kingpin and the FBI were part of that 'new jack swing' scene, where hip hop and R&B coalesced. It wasn't my thing, but the 12" remix of 'We Rock the Mic Right' errs towards the side of hip hop. Ice-T's song 'New Jack Hustler', written for the film New Jack City, has nothing to do with this sub-genre, although they probably share an etymology. 'You Played Yourself' is from Ice T's third studio album, entitled The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! and is indicative of the man's style.

The D.O.C. was an original member of Dallas act the Fila Fresh Crew. This credential brought him recognition and he was soon penning tracks for N.W.A. before going it alone and releasing No One Can Do It Better in the summer of 1989. (Although not initially released as a single, the album track 'Portrait of a Masterpiece' was later remixed by the London-based house DJ CJ Mackintosh, acquiring the status of 'hip-house’ classic in the process.)

What on earth were Digital Underground all about? Ostensibly they were a substantial collective. However, Shock G, the group’s de facto leader, would adopt a miscellany of personas, Humpty Hump being the most readily identifiable (due to the comedy Groucho nose-and-glasses set and his nasal delivery). 'Underwater Rimes' features another Shock G alter-ego, the underutilised MC Blowfish. The group were mired in a different sort of funk to Public Enemy – P-funk, which means anything associated with George Clinton and his twin acts, Parliament and Funkadelic, although Public Enemy certainly borrowed from this genre too.

Young MC’s original version of 'I Come Off' was nothing special but CJ Mackintosh and Dave Dorrell’s Southern Comfort Remix was, utilising the bass-line from 'Hercules' by Aaron Neville. Despite the house music connection, this is pure hip hop, anticipating the trend for jazz rap that was just around the corner. 

[Listen to here or here.]