DJ QUEST NEW VIDEO "WHO!WHAT!" FEAT. BAS1

Fresh off the hella fresh Questolous cd:



DJ Quest is the dopest hip-hop DJ ever born. I saw him two Saturdays ago on Oct. 17th DJing for TopR, proving that he is the last master of the scratch showcase routine right in the middle of TopR's set (props to Topski for givin' my man the much deserved light!). Why'd the rest of you scratch DJs stop doing that shit? Got tired of practicing for DMCs and started playing dubstep, huh? Y'all should take some advice from Gingerbread Man's record company and: Don't Fall Off! Long Live Bulletproof Scratch!

THE DRUM: KZSU NINETEEN NINETY SIX

Here's another rip of a tape of a Drum show from sometime in 1996. Not sure on the month, but Mad Skillz was playing Club Deco in SF, anyone remember that show? Kevvy Kev goes for delf for a bulk of the tape playing lots of the hot 12"'s of the time. Dan Charnas strikes through with Chino XL who drops a bit about his forthcoming solo joint and plays what sounds like a cassette copy of "Waiting To Exhale". Whatever happened to the other MC's in Gravitation? I always thought the B side won on that 12". This all leads up to a freestyle session with Chino and Saafir which our homeboy Kurlee Daddee threw up on his blog here. Redwood tape heads in the house!

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Q-BERT’S CRIB DECEMBER 26th, 1994 3/3: SAAFIR IN THE CHAOS

Outside takin’ a smoke break and… Next thing you know, up walks a West Oakland soldier in a burgundy lumberjack and beanie; it’s fuckin’ Saafir!, just 4 months into the release of his debut, “Boxcar Sessions” and fresh off the battlefield from picking Casual’s pocket at Crash Palace and cutting heads against Hiero with his crew on the radio, like an ancient warrior still bloody and fuming from the carnage. Had ‘Menace’ come out yet? Hell yeah, it had. Hobo Junction was so dangerous back then, cockiness and bravado with all the skill and innovation to back it up, Fondouglas just had to grab him for an impromptu and totally chaotic interview, and he was more than willing to oblige, jumping right into it with all the disrespectful vigor and arrogance required of a hungry MC on the come up in the grimey 90s. He speaks on all sorts of topics, with a ferocity and velocity that has to been seen and heard for itself, from doing time for poisoning his group home leader as an adolescent to explaining that his concept of respect hinges on who will fight next to him. I really like what he says about, “fuck fame; it’s all about skills,” and I think it’s hilarious when he says, “And Domino rolled up under a car,” and Kwanz chimes in “my boy did a rap about that.” Dang, Bay hip-hop was such a small world back then. I had to break it into two parts and sorry for the shitty quality, but the only person I could find to convert it from vhs for me was ThuggyFresh from SF’s booze-cartel Gurp City, and he was black-out drunk from beerandrap.com's Pork In The Park and forcing me to shoot Jameson the whole time and blabbing on and on about how he wanted to go to the Mission Hill Saloon to beat up the bartender chick’s boyfriend. Yeah, right. To make up for that genius, I’m also upping my advance promo copy of “Battle Drill” b/w “Rock The Show (I Wanna Know)”-- the first Hobo Junction posse-cut on wax-- to remind everybody how raw the saucee general stepped on the scene and left everything in his wake demolished. Fuck it, I’m also throwin’ on the “Just Riden’” 12” (with the end-to-end DreamTDK freight on the back cover dedicated to HJ founder Plan B) and the bonus “Pull Ya Card” and album version of “Hype Shit” on the B, because this interview is just that… hype shit. Check it when Saafir explains why his style was too futuristic and over-the-head of the average rap listener back then, because everybody’s so “saturated with dank.” Now ask yourself: as we move full-fledged into the legal dispensary era, can we ever hope to be blessed with an original, and downright mean talent like Saafir again? I suggest you get stoned, listen to Saafir, and contemplate that shit, homey. You gotta love the chaos. BTW- My intention for posting this is NOT to rekindle any bad feelings for Saafir or between him and any of the people he talks about (it can come down just as fast as it went up if that's the case), but rather to document a primary source of Bay Area hip-hop history. Personally, I don't think Saafir should be held accountable, in retrospect, for any of these statements he made almost 15 years ago when he was young and making a name for himself, that's just how it was. I doubt Tyrell Biggs is still mad at Mike Tyson for saying he screamed like a woman, so I think we as well can all be for-the-moment-grown-ups here and take the highground (link will only make sense to FTA heads who were major HJ fans) and just enjoy this for what it is: a cool slice of the chaos that was our past and that hardcore attitude before anybody let themselves get called some lameshit like a 'backpacker' or worse yet a 'fashion-savvy, swag-havin' hipster.' And while we're on the positive tip, here's a bonus in-depth story of Saafir's career and life that was posted in 2006, proving a soldier's been tested in the flame (from jailtime for mobbing a stolen rental to fucking spinal cancer) and stepped from the ashes healthy, relaxed, and enlightened. Well worth the read right down to the part where an older, wiser, self-disciplined Saafir offers the interviewer lady (who naively compares the rapper's look to that of Morpheus in the Matrix and says in her article: "Listen to the first verse of 'Worship the Dick' and you'll feel as if you've choked on young Saafir's favorite appendage.") a Kleenex and says, "You got lipstick on your teeth." You gotta love the chaos.

12" tracks

Q-BERT’S CRIB DECEMBER 26th, 1994 2/3: BORED STIFF MEETS TMC

A bevy of all kinds of hip-hoppers (not just DJs) came thru to represent in Q-bert’s catacombs of records that day. Here Kwanz (aka Dubstar now known as Rick Flare) an original member of the legendary Bored Stiff rap crew from the Lower Haight fresh off mentioning that he drops tons of acid on the song "Therapy" off the Bomb Hip Hop Compilation came thru to bust a freestyle with MC Chill (I think, please correct me if you know his real codename??) from the equally legendary TMC crew (rulers of Mission District bombing all thru the early-nineties and beyond; peep “Piece-By-Piece” for the full history lesson). The two street rappers had never met before that day, and I don’t know if I’m being a race-obsessed whiteprick for pointing this out, but I think Kwanz’s seemingly unconscious and casual tolerance of the Filipino dude’s liberal use of the N-word let’s you know it’s a ‘Sco thang, SF b-boys of all races (Bored Stiff itself is a good example of the Filipino, Asian, South American, Caribbean, Black, White, etc. melting pot the SF hip-hop scene was and still is) rarely tripped on that shit back in the nine-quad when real recognized real from 50 blocks away (folkers from other parts of the country used to trip hard on that shit when they visited back then, unless of course they were from NY). I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, I'm just saying that's how it was. But hey now, you Menlo Park breads don’t go gettin’ all loose-lipped with the racial epithets in your freestyle ciphers just ‘cause I said that, ‘cause these days most people assume yer fake from jump and you’d get snuffed on GP, besides drunk ass peninsula whiteboys never really got a pass anyway (firsthand experience speaking, ain’t that right Z-Man?). For writer heads: you might be able to do a “Where’s Waldo?” on other members from TMC [like Spie, who was also a member of TDK and did cover art for Q-bert's Dirtstyle records as well as various Hobo Junction releases along with MikeDreamTDK before he passed R.I.P.-- hint: this is foreshadowing for round 3 y'all!] and DJ MykeOne maybe?) poking into the frame for cameos, but I ain’t saying what’s what, those dudes still got burners running, and I don’t wanna get my ass kicked. That crew had a reputation ya know. Their name: TOO MUCH CRUSHIN’ didn’t just apply to “gettin’ up," you smell me?

Q-BERT’S CRIB DECEMBER 26th, 1994 1/3: BIONIC BOOGERS

DJ Fondouglas (formerly of Sacred Hoop) and good friend Todd Hurvitz (aka Hurb, recently a co-producer for the show Punk’d) shot this footage for a long defunct documentary project that never got off the ground way back in the hoodies and Tims days. Q-bert’s stoner jean jacket with the sheep wool lining means absolute business and nothin’ else. Also peep how DJ Disk has his old real-as-fuck, dirtstyle Gemini-mixer turned sideways so he can bust his line-switch in an up-and-down fashion. Watch the residue from Disk’s white tallcan of contact spray fly (remember that shit !?!?! fully bonk! I love fast as all hell, glitchy overused line-switch scratching, bring it back!!). Watch till the end, ‘cause shit gets faster than bathtub crank!