LAWS ARE FOR THE RICH

I discovered this 12" through my buddy Ken Prank (locals may know Ken as a record swap regualr as well as the mastermind behind the killer punk/hc label Prank Records). I snagged a few cheap lp's off one of Ken's recent set sale lists and he warned me that they were not in the best shape. To make up for that and the fact I was paying for him to ship them 20 miles, he said he'd throw in a rap 12" he'd found a bunch of sealed copies of at Goodwill. It "isn't a heavy," he told me, but I still curious to see what it was as Ken digs for records in the Bay harder than most dj's and producers I know (if you put an ad on craigslist with the word "records" in it, you can almost guarantee a response from Ken). I wasn't sure what to expect, but when the package arrived and I saw the DFTC 12", the cover hit me like a ton of black bricks: a dope line drawing of a b-boy with a gun to the head of a fat pig cop. Damn! What a sick cover! I flipped it over to see who drew it and low and behold it was Dug One TMF. I glanced over the credits and none of the names rang any bells except for Ken Lee being the mastering engineer. I threw it on and the first thing that popped in my head was PARIS. MC Mike P., "The Mex In Effect", was obviously feeling P-Dogs black empowerment vibe and flipped it Mexican style for DFTC (Down For The Cause). From the Black Panther samples to the tempos to Mike P.'s cadence -- Paris. "Bring It On" is an uptempo call for revolution: "This is war / and I'm in it to win it / I'll drop the mic and grab a gun in a minute". The 808 on this is relentless and I can't help but imagine that co-producer J-Spina was using a Nissan minitruck as his monitor speaker when laying this down. And the drums hit hard, really hard. The kick rhythmically knocks a wheezing robot in the chest, apparently hanging on just to bust a fresh rhythm scratch and let everyone know that, while the revolution will not be televised, it will indeed test the engineering of various imported chassis rolling Vogues up and down Mission St. The flipside, "Laws Are For The Rich" is a bit slower and has more of a Public Enemy with it's Bomb Squad style production. That fucking 808 is still there, booming like a mother fucker, upsetting uppity neighbors all over the 415. "Go ahead and call the cops on me and my boys for beatin' out my Maxell copy of this 12. I got my 9 stashed in my Kangol under the seat." At least, that's what it sounds like the song is telling me. And check that breakdown out, this track megamixes itself! So after wiping the drool from my chin, I set out to google this lil guy. I was already bugging because there is no date printed anywhere on the sleeve or label (I'm guessing 1991), but when I discovered there wasn't even a discogs entry for this I was further intrigued. In fact, the only mention on the web I could find was an old Hip Hop Slam post by Billy Jam which mentions "writer/emcee Michael Perry (formerly of DFTC)" as author of the childrens book Turntable Timmy. Suddenly I flash back to the last bookstore job I held (working for one of the biggest assholes I've ever had the displeasure of working for) where I was consistently trying to stretch three hours of work into an eight hour day, the only male working in the store, trying to down out the menopausal crying and ex-husband phone calls of my worker who sat behind me. One day I was doing some mindless data entry at my desk when I overheard "...and the artwork was done by Doug Cunningham, a local graffiti artist." My ears pricked up and I started eavesdropping on the conversation. Turns out it was Michael Perry (aka Mike P.) trying to hustle his book to our childrens book buying mess of a human. I waited till he was done with his pitch, she agreed to buy a few books and got up and introduced myself. I told him I overheard him talking about Dug One and Q-Bert to which he responded, "You write?" We chopped it up for a bit before and Mike was mad cool. I wished him luck with his book and went back to my desk, realizing that I just let my annoying ass coworker in on some shit we typically keep secret. I wish I would have been hip to this DFTC 12" then. That would have added a bit of extra irony since the owner of the store was a filthy rich former attorney who probably grimaced the minute he saw the Turntable Timmy books The Mex In Effect had just snuck in through the back door!

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MALICIOUS MISCHIEF

For those keeping track, I gave a brief mention of the Wreck Shop awhile back on here. During one of my trips there I picked up an unassuming graffiti video called Malicious Mischief put together by the TMF crew. Little did I know how much of an impact that tape would have on my friends and I for the years to come. After seeing all the East Coast folks in Video Graff, it was nice to see some of the home team shining through our cathode ray tubes. Eventually it seemed as if I was the only person in my circle who actually owned a copy of the tape and most people who had seen it had seen my copy. I'd always wanted to run a post on it here, but being the luddites we are, I had no idea how to convert my vhs tape to the interweb. One morning while hazily sipping coffee I got the bug up my ass to search for it on youtube. Of course it's on there, right? So I posted a clip on facebook to have my homie certone inform me "It's from your video!" So it's here that I present to you, the OG San Francisco graff video, MALICIOUS MISCHIEF (most of it, at least):

Nice intro montage of early-mid 90's Bay ish. These were the days, boyee! Seemed like the entire City looked like this. Then some mellow felon's let you follow them on a journey to play in the land of forgotten Munis. Peep the OG SF Derby.

Wim FSC drops some science on the art of letters. Nice montage, so much history there. Then, the highlight of the video, UFO and Bum bomb a freeway sign during the day. I remember seeing that run and then to see it being done, during the day, in the video blew me away. "To the extreme," as Bum puts it.

The format of the footage of Bum and UFO bombing with the interview audio going is really dope. "Making your mark on the system" in the spirit of Koch's famous flub. Then we have a production that really sums this scene in the 90's, which included Twist, Dean, Bisaro, Dug, KR, etc. Cypher interview with some bombing footage. "The new wave is old wave." Another montage, some BART lurking, etc. And then, that's it. At least that's all that certone has up. Hopefully we'll have a chance to up the remainder at some point in the future.

I should also mention that the original beats were provided by UFO. Years later I would buy a DJ Marz tape at Cue's that included those very same beats as well as a UFO penned cover.

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?

SCAMS, SCANS & GRAMS

I admit, I fell behind with working on the blog the past couple weeks. Tomorrow is the two year anniversary of ROBME and it kinda snuck up on us. I had an idea for a special megapost, but it became somewhat of a larger project than I anticipated so it will not see the light of day for a minute. BUT we do have some DOPE exclusive shit that will be dropping later this week. Just need to hook up the RCA's and clean the tape heads. STAY TUNED!! So in the meantime and inbetween time, I figured I'd drop some recent discoveries I made in the mess that is the ROBME archives.

First off is a an old flier from an Rob One appearance at Cat's Alley which was put together by the legendary DJ Stef and her Vinyl Exchange. Next we got a short interview with Kool Keith, TR Love and Kutmasta Kurt circa 1994 from a SF graffiti mag called Hole In The Ozone: In that same issue of Hole In The Ozone there was this cool stream of conscious page put together by DJ Sake 1: "Anyone who has the original colored sleeve Super Disco Breaks (Winley) is like my older brother." Amen to that.
Then we have an issue of the Bay Area Hip Hop Coalition newsletter from September 1998. The BAHHC was a group radio DJ's united together to promote hip hop in the Bay. Check the calendar page to see just how poppin shit was back in 98. Damn...

FUCK A FASHION, WE NEED ULTRA WIDES

I found this going through some boxes in my garage looking for old radio show tapes. It's a business card from the early 90's for a little graff shop that was run out of a small window in the back of what would now be considered a hip hop shop (tapes, leather caps, beepers, incense, etc). Not gonna say who ran it, but real heads will be able to tell from the card. First time we rolled through I remember catching some tips, an ultra, a copy of Skills and the Battle Breaks record. The store was short lived and the location is currently a drapes shop.

I've blessed ya'll with a bunch of treats this past week. Positive or negative, comments are appreciated and encourage us to keep working on this shit. If you are digging what we do, let us know.