DJ Surrup & Makeda Iroquois - Demo (Chopped Not Slopped)

It's been nearly seven years since #BarcelonaBrazy3 dropped. Though long gone from the internet, the genre-defying mixtape has stayed in heavy rotation 'round here. Oh, you don't rip streams so you can return to them long past their DMCA-allotted shelf life? That's wild to me. It's been almost three years since Zero Klique songstress Makeda Iroquois released her Demo album and over two since DJ Surrup gave it his Chopped Not Slopped treatment. You could say we slept 'round here. But then, you might also say all time begins and ends with zeroes — what goes around comes around like. 

Kai Fortyfive - Dinner at Lonely's

The sun is an 865,000-mile ball of gas 93 million miles away from the Earth. The moon is a 2,159.2-mile ball of rocks 238,900 miles away from the Earth. It just so happens that our moon is one 400th of the size of the sun and one 400th as far away from us. This is essentially the definition of a cosmic coincidence, true for no other no other planet's moon(s) across the solar system. Try telling all that to the average human walking the Earth 400 years ago. In 2024, doomsday prophecy still makes for an easier sell than math and science. As for me, I'm just thinking back on Stop 20 solo visits—late night burgers and early morning Benedicts, with only the Criterion Channel for companionship.

Chuck D on the struggles of Black and American Indian peoples, mixed with commentary from a renowned Indigenous Canadian writer, soundtracked by an international dub outfit, later remixed by Mad Professor

Sometimes, the title says it all. Sometimes, it says a lot and there's still more. 

In 1988, a man named Pat Andrade produced and put out a cassette titled The Secret War Against The Black Panthers And The Indian Movement In America. It was one of the first releases on Maya Music Group, an independent label based in Canada, founded by Andrade and the Spirit Voice aboriginal radio collective. Andrade himself is Canadian-Jamaican, but had enjoyed a formative stay on the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Arizona. The music of The Secret War is dub-reggae, performed primarily by a group called the Neo-Mafia (likely this Neo Mafia), with drums recorded in Budapest, Hungary, and guitar and harp in Ottawa, Canada. The vocals are spoken word from Indigenous authors Lee Maracle and Ward Churchill and yes, Chuck D. Where his vocals come from is unclear, but the record label's radio origins suggest it might've been an on-air interview. (Indeed, one might be tempted to take all this a step further, drawing some interesting parallels between Chuck D and Pat Andrade's broadcast origins.) At any rate, Maracle and Chuck D's voices appear together over two Neo-Mafia tracks on this release. However, only one, "Are You Comfortable," appears to be floating around the internet. And in fact, the version that's out there is taken from another Maya Music Group tape, 1989's Your Silence Will Not Protect You Volume 1. In 1991, "Are You Comfortable" is remixed by dub great Mad Professor, given the much more revealing title "At Least American Indian People Know Exactly How They've Been Fucked Around," and released on a 12" of the same name. Both tracks appear below.

 

That's all I've got. For more about Andrade and Maya Music Group, check out "Radical Rhythms: 'Dancing on John Wayne's Head'" from the September-October 1995 issue of Against the Current.  

BAIBEEBEAN - "Dream" / "Safe & Sound"

Sports bar physicists double down on IQ-genics like the guy who runs that other Long Island rap site isn't illiterate. How's that for Double Negative?

Then again, if I'd said "is literate" instead, cornhole league mathematicians might've come around screaming about an anagram for Israelite.

What did Wesley tell Woody? You can have a view of me, but you can't see me.

The view looks something like this, like Wednesday night at McMurphy's after too many $4 Millers and ¢25 wings. If only the library would stay open so late.

Roc Marciano - Marciology

Less than seven months ago, John Caramanica authored an article titled, "Sean Combs Doesn't Need to Ask Anyone for Anything." Talk about aging horribly. 

While some may have been shocked to learn of the latest allegations against the artist who recently changed his middle name to Love, one Long Island Rap Records source was not. "Remember when he mentally tortured people on national television, and everybody was like, 'Oh, he just knows what it takes to make it in music, he's just making DA BAND," recalled the source. That reminded us of the time Combs turned a song about stalking a woman into an ode to his dead employee. And, of course, who can forget how he tarnished both of said employee's only two studio albums by saying "Uh-huh, yeah" and "Take that, take that, take that" on every song therein? 

To be fair, Caramanica is at least half-right insofar as he did write, "Combs Doesn't [...] Ask Anyone for Anything." And as far as mankind's oldest profession goes, even Robert DeNiro was once questioned in connection with a French prostitution ring. Of course, contrary to what internet conspiracy theorists would have you believe, he was never charged. DHS hasn't raided his Tribeca penthouse. 

The moral of the story? If you're going to engage in sex trafficking, at least check everyone's ID at the door. Leave all grooming to Merrick Road's pet pampering sector. And avoid incorporating reality-bending psychedelics into the mix. Toad venom and all-ages parties a happy marriage don't make.

Hundred block.

Crack Val - Rap for Ordinary People

Nowadays, everyone's extraordinary. We all have beautiful homes, giant televisions, and luxury vehicles. Or, at least, we can all convince each other that we have these things. But long ago, in the 2000s, we had only our aspirations. This isn't some social critique of influencer anti-culture or late-capitalist lamentation for the American dream. It's a blurb for a mixtape that never was. 

If Crack Killz Vol. 1 ever was released, Crack Val isn't around to tell us about it. The I.G.T. co-founder passed away seven years ago this month. He left online about a dozen solo tracks. Most are about money and women, especially the joys they bring and the fearful pain of losing them. Most have beats with the kind of 2000s mixtape-era magic today's producers yearn to recapture. The beats on here that don't fit that description are still ahead of their time. All of these songs are best described in Crack Val's own immortal words as "rap for ordinary people." I present them to you here in a continuous mix, with the blessing of Val's longtime partner in rhyme, Lagato Shine. Be grateful for everything and everyone in your life, with the understanding that all we ever really have is us.

1. Caviar

2. Bentley

3. Hate Yourself

4. R.O.A.E.

5. She Know

6. Top Notch

7. Rope-a-dope

8. Get Money

9. I Live It

10. Opposite of Found

12. In My Zone

$cottLaRock - If Love Could Kill

Symbol cheating like an unscrupulous Scrabble player, $cottLaRock remains the first name in Long Island Rap. Say what you will about board game night. 

If Love Could Kill, it would. (Would.) Imagine the body count. It would rap under the name Mass Grave. Peace to YoungBeenDead. It would say something dramatic before doing the deed. "If I can't have you, no one will!" And then, my friend, you die. It would assassinate, denoting the stature of its victim. It would slam the door behind it. 

If only...

Whirlwind D - Long Island Pioneers Hip Hop Show

Great Britain's affinity for Long Island hip-hop goes back decades, to the 1987 Def Jam tour if not longer. I dare say the connection has roots in the culture's progenitors. Indeed, recent posts here waxed philosophical on genre- and medium-spanning cross-pond collaborations, like Rakim's with Art of Noise or De La Soul's with the Grey Organisation. In our current century, Roc Marciano has produced an entire EP for UK rap duo The Planets and received nothing short of a hero's welcome on English tour stops. I even remember hearing somewhere that the famously purist P Brothers, who'd featured Roc on their 2008 Gas album, held Long Island up beside the Bronx in terms of hip-hop bona fides. I say all of this to say that much like the Germans go nuts for obscure Southern horrorcore and West Coast g-funk, the Brits love them some Long Island rap. Now, Salisbury, UK rapper/DJ Whirlwind D has compiled all that respect and admiration into a multi-decade history lesson of a megamix for the Pioneers Hip Hop Show on England's 103.7 Kane FM. Regular readers will no doubt recognize that Long Island Rap Records postings and musings served as a big source of inspiration for this mix. That said, regular readers may in fact be Whirlwind D and his fellow countrymen, and to them I say cheers, bruv, dun know.

 

Fire Arson - "His Apartment" ft. Kiko

How destructive rages Fire Arson? Not even the DATPIFF Hip-Hop Mixtapes Archive could salvage her releases. Instead, the lasting embers of her discography flicker about long-dormant Soundcloud and YouTube playlists titled FireHouse Classics and firearson, respectively. Yet this jewel survives neither. "His Apartment" sprays resource-guarding affirmations in the vein of "Territorial Pissings." Hell, as it happens, one of her mixtapes is called Nirvana. The Godmother reigns silent. The ocean is on fire.

Ray Robinson - Yasiin Ray

Placing Talking Book and In Control, Volume 1 toward the front of their respective stacks for the first-time shoppers, filing the Juggaknots single in its rightful place, the 12-inch crate, not pulling it or The Leon Thomas Album just to claim doubles: a man got to have a code-type beats.

There are no windows, but every LP in the room costs $5. These are the breaks? To be clear, I don't work here: a man got to have a hobby-type beats. 

Dust settles like collective unconscious. Day vanishes. Emerge into evening like a time traveler. Head home: a man got to eat-type beats.

(See also Essentials.)