Leave Your Nine At Home

Upon request…

One of the greatest concept albums ever. This is the kinda album where the skits are as important as the musical tracks.
I had this up on Escuchebien (before my man Region pulled the plug on it) and it eventually got deleted. So no names this time. Keep it on the DL.

Get it

Peace, 9@home

Before I go on with more “hard to the core” UK music, let’s all relax our tense muscles for a moment, let’s lower our blood pressure again, make that bulging vein disappear from our neck, take a deep breath and kick our feet up. Here’s some miscellaneous stuff that I was gonna call my Jazz Rap Post, but I’ll throw in some more music that’s likely to help your eardrums recover and enjoy the more tender sounds of music from the States, France and Brasil. I may add some more comment on each album, but for now, I’ll just quickly drop them off…

The Meters – Best of

The Meters – Fundamentally Funky

Two parts. Join them manually.
Big Apple Rappin pt. 1 / pt.2

MC Solaar – Qui sème le vent, récolte le tempo (1991)

Soon E MC – Atout… point de vue (1993)

Buckshot LeFonque – Buckshot LeFonque (1994)

Marcelo D2 – Meu samba é assim (2006)

Enjoy…

Peace, 9@home

“Hijack will reign supreme
as the British nightmare to America’s dream.”

Hijack, The Terrorist Group.
(Here’s a name you couldn’t use anymore these days…)

In many ways, this group from South London, consisting of MCs Kamanchi Sly and Ulysses, and the DJs Supreme and Undercover, had the biggest potential in terms of how well they understood the game and how much they’d learned, it seems, from the big US groups of the time. The parallels to P.E. are almost uncanny. The militant pose for shock potential, to express the struggle in their lives and just to be as hard as possible, the stage show with extra members Agent Clueso and Agent Fritz to put on a show with blank guns and fake blood, a logo everybody recognized and of course, at the core of it all: a musical production and verbal delivery that blew everything else off the table.

In 1988, Hijack had released their debut single Style Wars and the following year the 12″ Hold no Hostage / Doomsday of Rap (all on Music of Life) got them Ice-T’s attention, who took them into his Rhyme Syndicate, which, in turn, had a distribution deal with Warner. Their early singles have a striking resemblance with Hardnoise’s material, but it was Hijack that eventually perfected the sound with the album that was going to follow.

(This single is included in one zip with the album, see below.)

DJ Supreme, who did most of the production with Kamanchi Sly and Undercover helping out a bit here or there (according to Supreme), had already pre-produced about half of the material that would later be released on Warner as their first and only album The Horns of Jericho. In fact, Warner took so long to figure out what to do with the material that it only came out in 1991.
There was an early, limited version of the album including The Shogun’s Assassin, which was left out on the official release. The album was never put out on the US market since Warner couldn’t figure out how to sell it to an audience that had never heard anything like that. In Europe, however, Hijack had become so famous on the underground scene that they were invited to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1990. And when the album dropped, they toured Europe with Gunshot as opening act.

Now, should you be that one person who doesn’t know this album… To get into the right mood, and to understand what I was hit with at the tender age of 15, just imagine it’s 1991 (wherever you were at the time, whatever you were doing then) and then, out of the blue…

THIS happens…

Hijack- The Horns of Jericho (1991)
& Style Wars 12″ (1989)

And here are three more tracks I’ve dug up.
One is Shogun’s Assassin, the extra track off the limited album version. The others are Doomsday of Rap (vocal and instrumental) and Murder in the First Degree, which was the very last track Supreme did with Hijack.

Hijack – Singles and Loosies

Unfortunately, the following year, the crew couldn’t decide where to go from there, whether they should cater to the US market or just stay hardcore and eventually, they disbanded. Kamanchi Sly and Undercover have made various experiments in the dance scene under different names. K-Sly is now back to making hip-hop. Supreme went to college and after moving around a bit, he’s currently living in Zurich, Switzerland where he continues to produce for various projects as well as deejay at clubs and battles.

DJ Supreme’s Website (with old video footage)
Excellent interview with DJ Supreme from 2001
Kamanchi Sly’s Website
A Hijack fansite with more detailed history

Next up: Blade

Peace, 9@home

As promised, here are a few more bits and bobs on Hardnoise. The singles are rather hard to get, so these three tunes are what I’ve been able to find online.

After their first unreleased track Pure Destructive Power, they took on DJ Mada and put together the track that would get them signed to Simon Harris’ Music of Life label, which was one of if not the first label to sign British rap groups. (Below are two compilations showcasing some of the better known crews. On the same label, Norman Cook put out his Beats, Breaks & Scratches albums and other DJ tools. He would later be known as the producer of Beats International and even a bit later become world famous as Fatboy Slim… but I digress.) Hardnoise had their first track out called Untitled. A tune that combined a simple stomping beat with a whipping snare and this undefinable clanging thing going on in the background, sprinkled with a horn taking turns with a chopped Apache sample. Somehow extremely simple sounding, but the joint never left my head again. To this day, Hardnoise is credited with having some of the most insane scratching of the time, provided by Son and Mada.

Their second and last release as Hardnoise was the 12″ Mice in the Presence of the Lion / Serve Tea, then Murder. The first was a bit simpler in terms of background production but gave the MC (I think it’s TLP1) the occasion to flex his lyrical muscles. The same goes for Serve Tea, then Murder, which literally kills it with this tremendous bass soundscape and Gemini’s awesome menacing wordplay. Again, Mada’s cuts provide the hook as if he meant to tell all other DJs to retire right on the spot. This tune still sends shivers down my spine now…

Hardnoise – 3 Singles

And finally, here’s an interesting interview with DJ Mada on his turntable skills from 2000.

To give you a bit of an idea what other crews were around at the time, I’ve upped two compilations, both from Music of Life and some of the tracks can actually be found on either albums. Some of the Hardnoise joints are on there, some classic Hijack stuff and more UK groups (duh). Interestingly enough, on Hard as Hell 4, there’s also a track by Professor Griff. Lord knows what he’s doing on that album, but he must have been a bit out of work when P.E. had to drop him after the scandal where he allegedly made derogatory comments on Jews…

Anyway, here are the two compilations, for the second I haven’t been able to find a cover so you’ll have to take it straight, with no ice.

Hard As Hell 4 (1990)

and

Killer Classics (2000)

Now, really… Up next: Hijack.

Peace, 9@home

I know I’m supposed to get with the programme and post lots of summery sunshiny kick-back and relax type of music. But being the rebel that I am, I’ve decided to refresh your memories and drop a couple of hard-ass joints on your ears. The early 90s in the UK saw a phenomenon that’s usually termed “Britcore”, even if I don’t really like the name. By this people mean the appearance of a rough and raw sound, a wall of noise consisting of sirens, gunshots and often just a huge racket to create the background to spout fast-paced lyrics of frustration, war and battle imagery, general pissed-off-ness and anything else that sounds hard and grimey (I’m generalizing a bit). Also, as a new thing, some of the cats started rapping in their own dialects instead of mimicking an American accent. It seemed like hip-hop was finally setting foot onto the islands but it would be a long time before big labels and the public would finally embrace hip-hop made in the UK the way they did with US productions. Some of the names I’m going to cover in my new mini-series is Hardnoise/Son of Noise, Gunshot, Hijack, Silver Bullet and Blade. Here’s an excellent outline of the era, for those who want to find out more.

This post will start out with one of my favourites, namely with Son of Noise, a group that probably best exemplifies the struggle for a record deal and attention that most groups in the UK went through at the time. They started out as Hardnoise, made up of DJ Son, DJ Nyce D, DJ AJ, DJ Mada, and on the mics there were TLP1 and Gemini. They released but a few singles on Simon Harris’ Music of Life label (I’ll post the few that I have as well as two compilations from that label) and then disbanded. DJ Son and his brother DJ Mada, newly joined by Curoc (aka Q-Roc, as he called himself when he was still with Gunshot) and Blade’s former DJ Renegade became Son of Noise and soon got the attention of the Kold Sweat label, which released their first album The Mighty Son of Noise. The album has evolved quite a bit from the rugged sound of Hardnoise to include some melodic bits, hooks and a really funky soundscape. A classic in UK hip-hop.

Son of Noise – The Mighty Son of Noise (1992)

Unfortunately, the crew were soon not comfortable on the label anymore and left. They then decided to release their second album on their own Little Raschool imprint in 1996, the album aptly titled Access Denied: Bullsh*t & Politics pt. 1. The album may not have the bangers they had on their first album, but it’s still worth giving a spin. Unfortunately, there has never been a pt. 2 to this one. The group practically doesn’t exist anymore, even though the people are still around. To find out more about them and listen to some of their classic material, hit them up on their pages and spaces (links below).

Son of Noise – Access Denied: Bullsh*t and Politics pt. 1 (1996)

DJ Mada.com
DJ Mada’s Space
Curoc’s Space
DJ Renegade’s Space

Next up: Gunshot

Peace, 9@home