MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA: LIKE PLIERS ON YOUR NUTS

I remember one night my homie Stinkweed and I were sitting out in front of KFJC, listening to one of his skitzo pause mixtapes on his old doombox (if you've heard, you know), getting faded when the intro to the Blahzay Blahzay LP came on. We used to bug out on how dope that loop was and wondered why the fuck Outloud just talked over such an ill sample. Gary from Noothgrush popped out of the studio and said, "Wow, these guys sampled Mahavishnu Orchestra?" and we were like, "Maha-whatta-WHAT?!?"

Blahzay Blahzay - Intro (Blah, Blah, Blah, Fader, 1996)

SURVIVALIST, BASING MY LIFE ON RAP LOOT

This has always been one of my favorite Tragedy verses since I first heard it on Stretch Armstrong and DJ EV's classic "Back 2 Back" mixtape. You can't really go wrong when the Foul Mahdi teams up with the soul brother Pete Rock to give a state of the union address on the hip hop industry in the late 90's. There was a slightly different version on "Soul Survivor" with additional verses by Cappadonna and Sticky Fingaz, but I've always preferred this one (who's the last MC on this version?). Fucking Pete Rock, man. Dude takes the very last couple of seconds of David Axelrod's "Smile" (as it's fading out, no less) and comes up with this. "Awake to harps and flutes and eat strange fruits."

Tragedy Khadafi, Pete Rock & ??? - Strange Fruit (white label version)

FREE TRAG!

QUESTOSAHN: A DOCUMENTARY

Questosahn: A Documentary from MOF on Vimeo.

Check out this DJ Quest documentary by the homie Matt Oner.

MYSTERY SOLVED: STREET BEAT RECORDS, SF

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My homie Walter sent me this note after reading my BBO post:

Hey,

Just a quick note... that record shop on Market and 6th was called Street Beat, run by this white dude from FL named Chuck. That place was great, totally ghetto! I used to go there all the time because he used to sell releases way before the release date, he used to bootleg stuff too, until he got roughed up by an unnamed SF hip hop group. Word on the street is that he owns a store in L.A. now.

Holla!

Walter