Pagan-Worship

Pretty Tony & Block Revelation
(1998, Recognize Records) 420 kbps

Weird silences scatter this record. At the end of the first song there is a 2 second clip of lord knows what. I suppose its the audio equivalent of spelling the album name and title track with different vowels, an also present mis-edit.

Don't know why I'm focused on the boring.... Pretty Tony is the TT Tucker of Memphis Get Buck music and though this is years after the "Get Buck" performance posted last week there are moments almost as good, like "Ten toes down", and even if his rhymes sometimes are so simple they're strange (I'm Pretty Tony and my music don't suck) he has a way of wrapping triangle raps around square beats. Tentoesdown Wheremfound Northmemphisbound andIneverclownaround Wheremfound Wheremfound Northmemphisbound Wheremfound Wheremfound Tentoesdown Wheremfound Wheremfound Northmemphisbound Wheremfound Wheremfound Tentoesdown Wheremfound Wheremfound Northmemphisbound Wheremfound Wheremfound Tentoesdown.. his left pan voice not sure where the right pan one is taking him, punctuating already strange lyrical math with half-spoke syllables.

Memphis: Dec. 7, 1991

The best vintage gangsta-walk footage I've seen web-wise and a good set-up for Pretty Tony's "Revelations" disc soon to be posted. Its hard to remember this was the raw stuff of inspiration for MC Hammer.

Memphis Pimpology

Eightball & MJG Pimpology Collection
(93-94?) @ 320 kbps

This is a meta-compilation of the best tracks from a pre-Comin Out Hard 8ball & MJG, previously compiled (with other material) on Lyrics of a Pimp and Memphis Underworld.

Most tracks are paired duplicates, giving each a sense of some identity that exists outside the single recording. Sitting together, nuances of production & inflection stick out stronger. And you get a second chance to catch any lyrics you may have missed the first time.

listen to the bass / keep the snare in a flash / with a blast / to forever last / my rhymes that move past / these crooks / who just / stole an old ladies pocketbook / jook when you hear my hard rhyme / pass me a book / a Tops / and let me get high / as a raindrop / when I start kickin chicken / tell me why I gotta stop / I ain't / so witness my Memphis Pimpology / don't like chicken / but I smoke it don't follow me / hard black brother / with a curl and a real limp / you're listening to the lyrics of a pimp

Get Buck Funk

DJ Kid Slizzard presents...
Get Buck Funk: Da Mixtape
Side A, Side B

Another non-stop mix set up to fit tight into one 2 sided C-90. Anyone interested in obtaining a hard copy without making it themselves can hit me up at jib.kidder@gmail.com.

Aged and rare hardcore Memphis rap has had a strange life in the internet age. Scarcity must have played its part - where upstart New Orleans labels were able to piggyback on Cash Money & No Limit's respective cash trains (or at least get wrapped up in their cash dreams), local Memphis rap defined itself through infighting and Three 6 beef. This kept labels small, tapes circulating from trunk to trunk and then eventually through online auctions to this dude. Early tapes have become international fetish objects and now Russian Rap message boards are filled with obsessives' alphabetized Memphis collection lists. Shit is constantly clouding up my googling.

Compilers of this shit too often zoom in on the horror/devil shit aspect of the M-Town underground. Though plenty of cuts on here flaunt that darkness it is in no way the binding element. I've always found early Al Kapone much more compelling than, say, Evil Pimp. Instead, I've organized this mix around a different force: the Funk. I'm thinking of 'funk' in this sense as a measure of some rhythmic Gestalt, or the felt presence of some thrust able to propel bodies into motion through sound. The 'funk' of Get Buck Funk is a hard 'funk' - it has to be: gangsta walking is a hard ass dance; a gang is a hard ass kind of family.

The Get Buck sound of Memphis is just as indebted to its Soul past (in both the productive and consumptive sense) as NOLA Bounce is to Second Line, evidenced both through its sample sources and frequent "bumpin Womack" or "bumping Marvin Gaye" shout outs or even just what audio rolls in skits' backgrounds (see the H.O.H. track on here).

Many different kinds of shit on here: SMK's "Fuck All Yall" may be a pre-sippin sampling of Marvin Gaye's "Is That Enough" and his "Pop That Puzzy" almost sounds like a Dance Mania 12". If DJ Diz's black revolution cut-up just had a fucking djembe in the mix it could pass as an interlude off the most recent Badu record. Though all this shit is fairly gutter production-wise, I think the Tom Skee track on here maybe be the lowest fidelity shit I’ve ever given a close listen - I had to triple the volume just to make it audible in context. Oh, and plenty flavors of weed anthem scattered about.

Monkey Nuts is such great crack slang and someone answer me this: does Indonesia actually export any weed to the US? Would it be worth it for any party involved? An Australian woman got the fucking death penalty for weed possession in Bali. Maybe the price paid in lives makes Indo weed a delicacy enjoyed only by the greatest of rap veterans.