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...

Addendum

The real deal for all yall geek smokers:

I like the exaggerated triplet drum fills - it makes up for the weird feel of any rap song that swings and the video's colorized format is an apt translation of what much good rap feels like - limited colorful patches pasted into hard-edged landscapes.

Marrero

A classic NO youtube post (because its easy) - pile of ripped vinyl coming soon (including the oldest NOLA rap 12" to grace this blog as of yet). Stay tuned and let's cross our respective fingers in hopes that youtube poster 1825TulaneAve will keep up the bounce audio vids - the sound quality is pretty good for streaming video and they might just post something I haven't heard before.

Feat. Above:
MC Thick "What the Fellas They Be Yellin"
DJ Duck & MC Shorty "Where My Old Lady At"
PNC & Jubilee "NO Block Party"

Sissy Roots (cont.)

Here are the relevant audio links from the previous homo posting. We're just 4 months shy of having a black president, so I'd like to think we aren't too far off from you bloggees being able to accept a rapping fag. Fairly extensive / researched Sissy article here as well - I was glad to learn that Gotty Boi Chris came up as one of Big Freedia's back-up singers and she has a great quote too: "My mama's heard me say 'dickeater' so much she doesn't even care". Surprised to see a rap artist with a song called "Poo Shooter" nervous about gay-rap's affect on his children, though.

Don't have a copy of Y2Katey or the Battle of the Sissys disc - an upload or active eBay auction link from any holder or seller would be greatly appreciated.

Katey Red "Local New Orleans"
Katey Red Melpomene Block Party EP
Chev "Fuck Katey" (skit)
Chev "Fuck Katey"
Vockah Redu f/ Chev "Avealations"
Big Freedia "A'han, Oh Yeah"

UPDATE: via poster NOLA
Katey Red Y2Katey: The Millennium Sissy

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)

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

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.

Ike Moods: The Mixtape

DJ Kid Slizzard presents
Ike Moods: Da Mixtape
Side A, Side B

I mentioned in my distant but most recent post a desire to unleash some convoluted Bar-Kays rap family tree mixtape, with space allotted for the Bar Kays, Isaac Hayes, Ike Dirty, Gangsta Pat & Jazze Pha - all connected through musical & familial relations - and works related through sampling. But then Isaac Hayes' death became an inspiration to review more closely that life now lost. So in place of something with a larger scope is this mix of Hayes' most trampled breaks in both raw and sampled forms. The fact that samples of Ike's work follow the full trajectory of rap history from the East Coast (Biz Markie, Ultramagnetic) to the West coast (NWA, CMW, Spice 1) to the Southern States (BG, Skinny Pimp) gives some clue as to the weight of his boots in rap annals. I hope this bootlegg cassette shows due respect in a way that only a bootlegg cassette can. RIP.

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.

M-Town Team

M-Team For Deposit Only
(1991, Waylo) cassette rip @ 320

For today's sendoff I first considered Jazze Pha's debut record (as Phalon), Rising To The Top, but backed out both because we don't fuck with major label records here at Twankle & Glisten (its on Elektra), and because I try not to guide anyone's ear toward jams that weak. At some point in the future we might throw up a second generation Bar-Kays mix - Pha is the son of bassist James Alexander and Gangsta Pat that of drummer Willie Hall - maybe a mix of tracks birthed through sampling and those birthed through... um... birth.

In place of that is a different cassette from Memphis Soul progeny: M-Team are brothers Archie & Boo Mitchell, sons of soul artist and Hi records founder Willie Mitchell, and the same production team behind the Radical T record posted a while back (which feat. early raps by Al Kapone and 8ball). It may also be mentioned that producer Phunk Dawg of Ay Bay Bay fame apprenticed under their father as a teenager.

This is going to be a bit too New Jack for most of yall, but its great for a comparative analysis of contemporaneous Memphis releases, like the first tapes of Skaface Al Kapone or DJ Paul's first 4-track fuckings around. Either way this is one of the earliest rap releases out of Memphis, at least in terms of what has survived to the extent that it can written about. Cool K's "I Need Money" predates it by 5 years, though, and if anyone can offer up an MP3 or cover shot of that it would be much appreciated.

Rapidshare raised their maximum upload bar and now both sides of a tape fit in one rar. This is good for you because it means you only have to enter that elusive password one time.

Eatin Brain, Smokin Caine

Lil Goldie & Mobo Click
Brand New Funk
(199?, Mobo Joe) @ 320 kbps
Bounce Side, Hustler Side

Today's upping is more puzzle piece than full meal. Folk over at Louisiana Rap have been spreading Mobo Joe mp3s like a disease. Messy and deadly, but still much appreciated. Both the Lil Goldie full-length and Souljas of Sorrow's Buck 2 the Bang (the former straight and classic bounce, the latter some strange horror-bounce offshoot) are well worth the harddrive space and minimal mouse-click effort. Anyways, this Mobo Click tape rip is intended for filling in the cracks over there. Originally planned for a Take Fo vs. Mobo Joe C-90-sized mixtape, and though its still on the T&G to-do list I figured I'd best post something soon instead.

Such strange childish colored pencillings gracing both this and Lil Goldie's Act a Donkey and I haven't seen an opaque yellow cassette like this since I was a toddler listening to Mousercise on my Walkman Jr. No prison art on the front of any other Mobo Joe release I know of leading me to credit the amateur art to Goldie himself and I like that fantasy enough to stick with it like fact. I do love, however, the airbrushed world on the other Mobo Click joint.

But to get on to the real shit - on the Mobo hunt, pointed googling unearthed a beast that surely outshines the tape here offered. It's a vinyl rip of in house producer Death's banging full-length, Possessed by the Ouija Board - link still hot over at East ATL Theory. One of the first posts of a relatively new blog, but I didn't see much else there of this kind of thang.

Death produced half or so of Brand New Funk, but he's holding something back there that he lets fly free on his own tracks. Maybe its the freedom to venture past straight bounce boundaries or some deeper pact with darkness formed but this shit is fucked in the best way. It shares a lot with the aforementioned Buck 2 the Bang, but on Ouija Board he's further out on his own trip and his vocals go down a lot easier than the Souljas' strange, warbly affectation. I put sugar on your heart so it taste like a donut...

For the Street

Gotty Boi Chris interview from recent issue of Atlanta's Ozone Magazine which in the absence of Scratch is becoming the second most interesting rap mag around. Journalistically less in depth than Murderdog by far, but for some reason the Dog hasn't yet covered any next generation bounce shit. 10 pages each issue dedicated to midwest clown rap but no love shown for America's most in-need rap center?? Click on the image for legible sizing.

5th Ward Weebie, PNC & DJ Money Fresh also up in this issue and this seems like a good time to note the arrival of the Louisiana Rap blog which more or less picked up where Rarenola left off and anyone whose read this far should go cop the Joe Blakk record posted there right now.

I'm interested in Gotty's notion of Bounce as music for the street in the way that Bass is for the car, Screw is for leanin and Crank is for...umm... youtube and anyone interested and patient enough for getting into some relevant rap academia should check T&G homie Matt Miller's Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the U.S. South, 1997-2007 paper on Southern Spaces.

Moments with Screw

Z-Ro on hanging with DJ Screw from Murder Dog Vol. 12, Number 2:

I remember he took me to the Cappa Beach Party and it was my first time going to some shit like that. At the time Screw was a celebrity like a muthafucka and he already downplayed that shit. He would never even trip off that shit. He was like "I'm gonna pick you up and we are gonna go to the beach party!" I was trying to get to the barbershop and get a fade right quick. He came to pick me up and before we even got out of Houston we was sippin lean like a muthafucka. Before we got out the neighborhood we was leanin like a muthafucka! I'm in the back seat leanin, there was someone in the back seat with me and he was leanin asleep and Shorty Mac was in the front passenger seat and Screw was driving. About 15-20 minutes into the ride I fell asleep. I woke up in the back seat and I was looking around. I looked to my right side because I was sitting right behind Screw and I looked at Grace and he was snoring. I look in the front seat at Shorty Mac and he was snoring and then I looked at Screw and he was snoring asleep and he was driving! The shit was so fucked up because Screw had his arms folded like he was the passenger or something, but he was driving. I couldn't do nothing but scream because we were about to go to the guard rail. We were in the middle of the bridge and the guard rail was getting closer and closer real fast. We were in the far left lane, but we were headed for the far right guard rail crossing the whole muthafuckin freeway. I was scared as a muthafucka!

Screw opened his eyes and he was so calm and cool! This nigga put his pinky finger on the steering wheel and got the car under control with his pinky finger. He looked in the rearview and smiled at me real fast. That was my first time going to the ghetto beach party and that whole weekend was full of shit like that. We were coming out of the room going to the Big Pokey concert down there and we were in the elevator all leanin. Once we get to the ground the doors open and we were all asleep in the elevator standing up. The police were standing right there when the doors opened up. They were like "Man, you are all on that shit, huh?" I was tryin to close the doors like a muthafucka! It was funny like a muthatfucka!

Ice Cream Cone Lookin Ass Nigga

Stalling on a pile of new mixes - today's post is a tour of the Hotstyle's Lookin Ass Nigga youtube parody explosion. Best highschool lunchroom recreation since slaps and the first convincing argument for the slideshow format I've come across. These are in reverse chronological order starting with Cornbreadd's Houston Version (probably the best on all fronts) and ending with one that reverse half-abandons the slide for weird personal video.