The Lost, Lost Rap Returns! I got a disk of the Super Mario Bros Super Show for my sons this Hanuka & was transported back into the world of 1989. The rap on this intro is great. You can memorize it after just a couple listens which is the sign of a "good" rap or jingle or anything. Also, the cartoon is produced in America by DiC which is kind of surprising given they probably could've just converted a Japanese Mario cartoon (not sure if they had one by that time).
The end credits are awesome too featuring Captain Lou Albano (god rest his soul) 'DOIN' THE MARIO'.
The show enters into the classic language of kid's shows by having a cartoon hosted by live segments. Get a clue TV producer people! Here's Mario & Luigi with famous break-dancer Shabba Doo.
Hip House is a truly lost, lost rap form. I was crazy into it back in the days of 1988. Especially when you had a mix that would run from acid house/early techno to hip house, something about the acid electro noise with the house piano with some stupid rap on top of it still gets me. We had a KORG M1 at the time & i learned how to play all the different parts of the songs... my entire family plays piano, most of them professionally & i seem to only be able to make techno songs, can't actually play for shit. Man, you could throw in some KLF, Edelweiss, even some of that German EBM shit & you've got the ultimate in 1988 Megamixin'.
ROCK DA HOUSE - The Beatmasters with the Cookie Crew
Hip House documentary. & house music was born. What this doesn't talk about, is how i actually made the first hip house record called "Bass House".
It Takes 2 - Rob Base & DJ EZ ROCK
Join in the Chant - Nitzer Ebb EBM is a Lost, Lost Rap all in its own. But look, we used to listen to all of this stuff together in the mix & it blended together. That's the whole concept of the good MEGAMIX & before all of these weird subgenres were taken even remotely seriously (not to imply that they are now, but they are way more distinctified), so i'd argue that if you match the beats, Nitzer Ebb works just fine along side with all of this Hip House, this is basically a rap on top of here anyhow.
Headhunter by Front 242 Same thing. Came out in 1988, how is this not a rap over house music?
There was a time when it seemed like every dance single coming out of the UK had MC KINKY on it. The vids weren't played in the states & i didn't buy music magazines (still don't) so i was eventually surprised to find out that she was white, cos she does this whole reggae style toasting rap stuff. I can't seem to find a longer list of tracks she has appeared on, or at least containing the songs that i thought she might be on as well, & it's all mixing together in the mists of time... i'm pretty sure she or someone who copied her is on some of the Madchester sound tunes, like on Happy Mondays or the Farm or wotever. However, i could be totally wrong as well! Either way, MC KINKY totally predated the pervasive introduction of toasting on American rap tracks, doing it on a stadium house track first. EZEE POSEE - Everything Starts with an E
Erasure - Take a Chance on Me cover
Campy! Anyhow, speaking of the Madchester Sound, one might argue that alot of that stuff is a bit of the Lost, Lost Rap innit? The Happy Monday's "Step On" is a rap, a legitimately white rap as well, not white guys copying black Americans, but doing their own thing. The video rules also. Also, gotta love the house piano on there. Happy Mondays - Step On
You'll be proud to know that i was nearly expelled from school for placing, amongst other things, ecstasy references (which i still haven't done! ha ha) in the cover art for my highschool yearbook.
This video is really sad, you gotta feel for this poor little girl with the taunting little shits rotating around her. Still, this song is just like crackheads themselves, pitifully pathetic with just enough absurd humor to keep them stuck in the popular imagination forever. Living in Oregon, having grown up in a CRACK WAR city OAKLAND, CA, i've seen what these drugs do to people. Let me tell you, Oregon has alot of meth heads STILL, still fucking up, still covered with sores, still looking like the wicked witch of the east with those piercing eyes, pointing chins, sunken cheeks & greenish skin, plus the sulphurous smell... i'm melting! melting! It's not funny, but yet, call them THE INFECTICONS. They are like those triple transformers (train, tank, robot) but they turn from normal human to infected meth head to dumpster or garbage can or used syringe. DDDDON'T DDDDDON'T DDDDDDON'T DO IT DO IT DO IT BBBBBBABY.
I'm reading this book called "Signifying Rappers" by Mark Costello & David Foster Wallace, as sent to me by NOYZBOY (THANKS!). It was published in 1990, which to me was the end of the explosive peak of Rap Music, where you had the most styles in the most high quality & the most relevance & the most saturation of the market in a meaningful way, in that it wasn't just pervasive, although it was, it was still dangerous & exciting & people were afraid of it. The book is kind of crazy, i hadn't read any starchy white intellectual/academic analysis of rap, unless you count articles in VIBE. But, despite the weirdness of looking at rap like that & their incredible ignorance of the whole thing (which might make the book better actually), they make alot of very astute observations & helped to bring this 1988 feeling way back into FULL EFFECT. Anyhow, recently KRS-One was on Alex Jones & all of these things are coming into a convergence which i'm still working on, but whatever it is, IT'S TIGHT. Like this track. I remember when it came out, i was hell of excited when Ice-T, Digital Underground, Eazy-E & yes, even MC Hammer made their appearances.
West Coast Rap All-Stars - We're All in the Same Gang
Eazy-E's rhyme is the tightest. Last but not least, yo, Eazy's no sell-out And if you can't hang in the streets, then get the hell out I'm not tryin to tell ya what to do You have your own freedom of choice who to listen to You knew good from bad, fair from foul, right from wrong Now your mother's singing that sad song (My baby ain't never hurt nobody!) But he still got smoked at Baybay's party But you're not the first or the last You're nothin but a short story from the past You're dead now, not number one but a zero Take notes from Eazy-E, the violent hero
"You ask me did I like Arsenio? About as much as the bicentennial." Ice Cube has written alot of my favorite rhymes & this is the most amazing just in terms of seeming non-sequiturs & near nonsense. I'm wondering how the hell he came up with it! More importantly, it's always in my head, probably pops up once a week (what is wrong with me!? NO, ICE CUBE SHOULD BE WRITING ADVERTISING JINGLES!) Anyhow, welcome to a new mini-feature of THE LOST LOST RAP: RHYMING DICTIONARY.
From the track: Ice Cube: THE N*GGA YOU LOVE TO HATE from the album AMERIKKKA'S MOST WANTED. Great record by the way, one of the best RAP albums of all time. Get it if you don't have it.
I think i was mentioning the whole Hip House thing earlier. Technotronic are an obvious & pervasive force in that style. More on this later.
The total absurdity of alot of TV is easy to dismiss as merely absurd, but occasionally, the absurdity is cloaking actual important nodes of cultural information. I'm not enough of a pencil necked geek academic to go into how it works, you know it when you see it is good enough for me. Anyhow, i figure that if i still remember & am amused by Barney Rubble dressing up as "CD RAPPER" & am almost dying while watching Shabba Doo teach Captain Lou Albano & Danny Wells how to breakdance. The insane level of sound effects added on in that last bit is the high point.
Runnin' down the street gotta Squeezit in your hand. BUCKWHEAT. REBEL WITHOUT A SOUL! I taped this song off the radio in 1990 or so, never taped over it because of the sheer HIGH IMPACT NOVELTY VALUE of this LOST LOST RAP. I don't even know if the lyrics are about Squeezits, or squeegees, which would make more sense, but as far as i'm concerned, the image of Buckwheat running through the streets with a Squeezit is way more golden. Anyhow, the whole category of dance music with rap is largely over-looked these days, & might be part of the LOST LOST RAP milieu. I can't find much info on Unity 2, except that they were/are members of THE TOASTERS & had a bigger hit with Shirlee. Shirlee reveals the mystery of the ubiquitous dancehall rap thing in late 80s/early 90s songs. I just emailed Sean Cavo from Unity 2, maybe we'll clear up the whole Squeezit issue...
& here it is!
"Hey Sean...yeah, it was squeegee, as the song was about a friend of ours who became a crackhead. And yeah, we came out of the Toasters in '89 and signed with warners. Lionel and I were already known as The Unity 2 when we were fronting the Toasters (since '85). I was singer and songwriter on many of the songs from Skaboom and Thrill me Up LPs. The Buckwheat version that blew up in dance clubs was a remix by Steve Silk Hurley, and the album version is much different. We weren't really a 'dance' group, but the label wanted that remix done and it worked. Unity 2 was a 7 piece band with a DJ scratching - I think the first lineup like that ever! Hope that helps dude. Peace, Cavo."
My gradeschool banned Squeezits for being "TOO AWESOME", something that most schools do after getting a clue about a trend. "They like it too much, let's get rid of it." Consider it cleared.
You don't see commercials like these for kids anymore. This is out of hand. Stylistically, this commercial is just like Ratt's "Round & Round" video, smoke machines, dramatic lighting, funny angles, totally awesome early 80s horror video style. Also, it has the memorable pitch: "Some guys got it, some guys don't." which i immediately remembered as soon as i found this video. I'm also glad they use an actual commercial voice guy to do the rap instead of trying to find some rap guy. Of course, Spydor would probably be better served by a heavy metal song you know?
Here's Round & Round for you just because. Featuring Milton Berle whose nephew Marshall Berle was managing Ratt at the time of the video's release. This, just for history's sake was my favorite song when it came out.
My little brother Danny James made up this rap called "The Lost Lost Rap", about a rap that had been lost when we were drawing comics in Lake Merritt park smokin' some bammer many years ago. The concept quickly developed into the idea that there are "Lost Raps" which must be unearthed & decoded for their esoteric knowledge. I loved Rap when it came out & for about ten years or so until it became what it is today. Market-saturated, pervasive, boring & boring. So, when something loses all meaning & relevance like Rap or Black slang has, it actually transcends culture & time & becomes something new. It can become something universal & something amazing. This Fruity Pebbles commercial proves my point, by introducing the word "Fruit-a-rooty". So, enjoy this new feature of BRAIN STORM: THE LOST LOST RAP. Speaking of which, my central New Year's Resolution was to more effectively blog, so i'm concentrating on BRAIN STORM as my central blog & creating some features & trying to get a post up here every day. You can reciprocate by commenting more often & becoming a FOLLOWER of DER BRAIN STORM! Happy New Year.
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