Wink-D featuring CANDY FRESH
Get Busy (1989 Insane Beat)

What an apt label name. All three tracks on here kill. My favorite is "Revenge", Fresh's hilarious and ruthless attack at any "dirty ass hoes" or "sucka ass niggas" that.... well, really all dirty ass hoes & sucka ass niggas. Hatred never sounded so funky.

Wink-D's proto-bass beats...so weird, so slow. Let me know if you know: is the "440" referenced here some piece of equipment? The drum sounds here aren't the usual 808s. "Get busy" is some great "When I Hear Music"/ Kraftwerk cut-up.

I wonder what Fresh Kid Ice's real role was here. I met him in studio @ Ann Arbor's college radio station. I had him do some drops for me, ultimately featured on my record, finally out. But I left the interview up to someone else. What a goddamn mistake. And I couldn't scrap together enough pennies to see the new 2 live play at whatever fraternal sports bar had booked them. Got a Camo Silver Ice instead.

Females in Charge

Females In Charge:
Kimmy P. & Short T
Where's My Trick
(Pack, 1992) @ 320 kbps

This is ripped from vinyl, not cassette, I just flipped it coverwise cuz the wax has no image and I wanted to give yall a chance to check those starred breast pockets. It does, however, feature a librarian nitemare of a namechange - Kimy P. & Shorty T.

A great record and the best kind of single in the sense that despite its function as a promotional object, all tracks offer something additional to the casual listener. OK, maybe not casual listening, but at least private use of obsessives. The clean-up job is funny and the instrumental works well as like a kind of bounce dub plate, (if it only had a little reverb) and it wasn't until checking it isolated that I really noticed the sung "bitch"s that punctuate the backing track.

Not saying its a direct response, but this track features most of the samples present in Everlasting Hitman's Bounce, Baby Bounce! And it's important to this blog because its the namesake of our gender tag.

Ask how his teeth got chipped, cuz the pussy he ate was whipped.

Looks like they found their bitch after all. At Macy's. With all the cheese.

The Sister Sister

Silky Slim Sister Sister 12"
(Profile, 1992) @ 320 kbps

From its inception T&G has suffered the financial setbacks of relocation, unemployment and other bullshit, but now we're climbing out this hole on a rope ladder made of hospital OT and lined with spare change from the back-on-the-wagon piggy bank. New M44-7 in pocket, hi-fi vinyl rips should be spilling on the T&G dinner table like Bass Tapes were back in March before I discovered how (almost disturbingly) prolific Drop Da Bass had become. I imagine that blog as some pac-man like digital monster that survives on files with "bass" in the title.

Starting off: Silky Slim's (not to be confused with the male rapper of the same name) "Where They At?" response record - context provided by TT Tucker. I'm not sure how many of you are DJs or track-makers, but I can imagine this Acapella put to good use by the right hands.

If anyone can remind me where the circus toy sounding slide melody comes from...

Sissy Roots

Alright, yall. From the margins of the margins, Andy Hopkin's full interview with the original Bounce Sissy, Katey Red, from Roctober zine, #32: Hip Hop [?] Issue. Relevant audio to follow in near-future post. Select articles (not this one, though) from the same issue are here for any nerd interested in a deeper plunge and an unlikely NYT article exists as well. Katey on sex change vacillation, her Whos/Whoas/& Hoes, and punk jealousy. Check it:

Leave it to New Orleans, the birthplace of everything jazzy & funky, the murder capital of the US, where booty-shake Hip Hop is called Bounce, and where there has always been room for cross-dressers.

I was down in New Orleans this past spring and visited Odyssey Records, right on Canal Street. It was right before closing time and I asked the clerk to quickly show me all the best Bounce music they had. As he fanned out about 6 CDs one in particular caught my eye..the one with the green black lady on it posing as the Statue of Liberty in front of New York City. As I read the song titles, the clerk leaned in closer to me, looked me right in the eye, and in a serious whisper said, "you know that's a homosexual don't you?".

Katey Red is the first openly gay or cross-dressing rapper to ever release an album. Hip Hop is a homophobic world, where homosexuals are not only uninvited, but openly and often violently disparaged. So much so that for years rumors have circulated about who the "gay rapper" is, with fans and radio DJs alluding to the scandalous offstage behavior of certain rap superstars.

Enter Katey red, 22, standing 6'1", with short shorts and nicely curled and set hair, Katey didn't plan on being a rap superstar. She used to just do hair and rhyme with her girlfriends around the Melpomene housing projects, until one night her friends convinced a drunken Katey to grab the microphone at a block party. The rest is sissy rap history. Her spontaneous performance that night was enough to convince Take Fo' Records, New Orleans' #1 Bounce label, to sign her on as their newest act. The Melpomene Block Party EP was released and soon afterthat last year's Y2Katey: The Millenium Sissy CD.

The music is everything a block-rocking party mix should be: infectious, intense, catchy, funky, hilarious and sometimes a little scary. For a relative newcomer, Katey's sense of rhythm and phrasing is impeccable. The beats, like in most Bounce music, sample grooves that have been used in so many other songs, that its almost laughable. But while your face is laughing, I can guarantee that your ass will be shaking. The Take Fo' producers can take an old sample like say the Jackson 5ive's "ABC", and flip it, chop it, add percussion to it, syncopate it and next thing you know it's a brand new funky sound, always bubbling up and kicking it down when you least expect it. It's a perfect foil for Katey's excited call-and-response style rapping, where if you didn't catch what she said the first, you might catch it when here dancers, known as Dem Hoes, shout it back to her.

I was fortunate enough to talk to Katey on the phone for almost a hour. She has charm in her voice that even a slight stutter (when speaking, never when rapping) can't subdue. She is a mellow megalomaniac, and I believe she's soon to be the nation's favorite sissy rapper.

Roctober: Tell me about your new album.
Katey: My next CD is gonna be called One Thing About It by Katey Red featuring Big Freedia and KC Redd I have a song "One Thing About It". I have a marijuana song. I have a rest in peace song for a boy who got killed in the projects... he was close to me. I have about 18 new songs coming out.
What does "One Thing About It" represent?
"One thing about it" is just the slang we use, like "One thing about it, whatever happens gon' happen." People like the song because they already use that phrase.
Is it going to be another heavy Bounce record?
It's not just Bounce no more. You know what I call Bounce? Bounce and rap is different. With rap you think about the words you're gonna say and write verses and all that. A bounce song you can just do out your head. And bounce don't have no meaning, you know, as long as you're feeling the beat and making them feel the beat, that's all that matters, if you have a beat they can shake they behind on. So I have a little Bounce on there and I have rap. I don't know which level I'ma go to yet, but I know I got to make a change from just Bounce. I can't go on just like this and get to New York, go on TV and get an award.... (cont. as comment)

Women of Bass: Missy Mist

Missy Mist Gettin' Bass
(1989, Neverstop)
A Side Only, Vinyl rip @ 320

Once Upon a Time, You Never Needed Boom...

First, an apology for the ground-in hiss of this rip, the original owner must have got their fair share of bass out this 12 inch. I'm posting this mainly for the cover which is something like the zenith of bass iconography. Enough speaker power to beat half the county down, Missy like the Vanna White of Boom and the no frills font of cassette tape ubiquity. Its an image that must have had some power to endure, it was remade and updated for the liner notes of Big Boi's Speakerboxxx, though its difficult to compete with Andre's astrological centaur pic in the Love Below - a single image worth more than the entire disc's musical content.

The song itself is something like the Ghetto D of Bass, with Missy listing part for part the recipe for Boom - 3000 Watts, 24 bass bins, 2 Technics 1200s and some records to spin / a disco mixer with faders and switchers and then a cutter and a scratcher with some straight up itches [or maybe inches?].

Ms. Mist is still active, or at least was more recently than this aged release - she was featured under the pseudonym Ms. Houston for several tracks on Bishop's "U Know U Ghetto" record. I posted that single in the early and restrained days of this blog - now seasoned and promiscuous, I think I'll post the whole disc.

Cheeky Black Let Me Get That Outcha
(1995, Tombstone) @ 320 kbps

By request, Cheeky's 1995 format-defying debut. Single? EP? Not sure: 5 street tracks, 2 instr. & 2 clean, though not the same ones. I think a prior version of this may have come out on Mobo Joe vinyl, so this Tombstone release may be an expanded CD version. The focus of the request and as such the reason for my posting is the instrumental version of "Bitch Get Off Me", samples of which you can hear all over the Money Rules Ent. post from yesterday. Think of it as Brown Beat & Triggaman's illegitimate child, growing up in a world of Mannie Fresh flourishes - dog barks, wobbly scratching and hard ass inline eighth notes stabs that sound like someone getting beat down with a baseball bat.

Oh yeah, and a new bounce dump in the hollerbox, pushed to the side because I'm not taking credit for it.

One More 4 the Bassheads

G.A. Girlz G.A. Girlz 'N Da House
(1997, Move the Crowd) @ 320 kbps

Bass is the Place! Sorry to break the vibe, this one's on disc. More tapes to come, though, I'm just tryin 2 preserve my Pause button. I hope last year's self-titled track by these two and the Crime Mob girls is part of some larger in-the-works release and I hate to say it but the Princess solo disc was weak. Anyways, I heard that Diamond got booted out the group and I'm looking more forward to her future output than the Crime Mob trio's.

Holler in the holler box if you have any interest in the second GA Girlz disc.

Sista Sista

4 of the better tracks off Silky's Bouncin in a 6 Tray. Best known for her 1992 "Where They At" answer record, "Sista Sista" (Profile 1992). Not to be confused with Snoop Dog’s character in Doggy Dog World or the male Baton Rouge MC.