To say De La Soul means a lot to Long Island hip-hop, this site, and me would be a tragic understatement. If there is such a thing as a Long Island sound, it's to be found in the margins between the group's dynamics. And in case you've never noticed, all the sections of this site's home page are named after De La Soul song titles. As for me, Stakes Is High got me through my final semester at college, and the best concert story I have centers around seeing De La share the Central Park Summer Stage with DOOM and Rakim—a tale for another day. My point is, whatever you and I think De La Soul means, it's bigger.
Since the first time I heard it, I've held the opinion that "Trying People" is one of the best rap songs ever made. "Bigger" shares so much emotional weight with that song that it could've been titled "Still Trying People" and nobody would've raised an eyebrow. That said, one thing "Bigger" has that "Trying People" definitely doesn't is the phenomenal vocals of neo-soul singer Choklate. Though some might be hearing her for the first time now, the Seattle-based songstress has been releasing music since the 2000s and actually featured on a Moby single last year. In fact, calling "Bigger" a previously unreleased song is only half true. A De La Soul-less version of the Vitamin D-produced track appeared under the longer title, "Bigger Than You," on Choklate's self-titled debut album in 2006. For posterity and further contemplation, stream both versions below.
Is there a Long Island sound? There's most definitely a Long Island Sound. And if you live in a desert—say Reno, Nevada—you consider the Long Island Sound the Atlantic Ocean. And you're half right, but it's a shame if you never take the 25-minute drive south to feel and hear the Atlantic Ocean how I have for most of my life. But does an island this long make a specific sound? Well, does this site? Yesterday, G said something to that effect, though his exact words might have been "such a specific lane" or "...view" or "...niche." I can't remember exactly what, but I heard that. And if it's more than just me and what I like, maybe you'll feel this, too.
In 2014, I was all like, hey, I have a Long Island hip-hop website, and hey look, here's a Bumpy Knuckles album Premo produced in 2012 hey, you know what I should do, I should post this Premo-produced Bumpy Knuckles album to my Long Island hip-hop website. I fucked up, like a sucker, like a sucker who's also a butt licker to hear Freddie Foxxx tell it. That's because Kolexxxionwas but one of two projects Bumpy and Premo did in 2012. They also did an EP called StOoDiOtYmE with six songs, none of which appear on their full-length album from that year. But I didn't know that. I certainly didn't know the last of those songs, "Inspired By Fire," was for the children. Now I do.
Folk & Stress are two brothers from Long Island who were set to release a box-packaged album called The Box on Think Differently in 2010 in conjunction with NYC clothing store Alife. There was a single with GZA and a tracklist with additional features from Aesop Rock, Vast Aire, Blue, and Bronze Nazareth. The album never dropped. All this was very strange to me as I'd rapped with Stress at a random block party in Wantagh years earlier. Folk wasn't there. As it happens, years later, Folk would resurface as one half of the Fool's Gold electro-pop duo Party Supplies and produce Action Bronson's Blue Chips albums. Anyway, as of 2021, vinyls and CDs are out via Black Stone of Mecca.
What happens to collaborations deferred? Do ideas have ghosts and if so, can one summon them or do they simply occur? What if the idea's a ghost story to begin? If haunts are homes away from home, whose haunt/house is a haunted house? Do recurring nightmares recapture magic? See jas0n, like Friday the 13th on USA. Remember, the person who said, "Bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds," was a figment of someone's imagination. Regret and resolve both speak in a still small voice.
What of science-fiction when both science and fiction fall victim to tyrannical repression? Some may see in fascism's rise a boon for dystopian writings. For that, a friendly reminder and fair warning: tech bros who once read seminal cyberpunk as prescriptive look at Afrofuturism with the same lens and see in it horror stories. So, Bend and Blur Your Optics. The Lenzmen are an Atoms Family adjacent rap group borne from the same radio station that gave the world Public Enemy. The individual and collective output of their members Dynamics Plus, Dokta Strange, Centri, and Earthadox is a universe that exists both unto itself and intertwined with the last 30-odd years of underground rap and digital comics.
On the occasion of this ground zero album work's 2010 reissue, Dynamics Plus wrote, "There’s a constant switch between cringing and being awed to the point of feeling intimidated." Of their individual lenses he recalled, "The sights came from my tendency to always dream about the future (foresight), Doc Strange was concerned with today and right now (insight) and Earthadox was always saying remember when (hindsight). Centri was always coming with some off-the-wall observation so we called him Outer-Sight and it stuck."
More missives to follow as time's destruction permits.
I still listen to the radio. One thing that's always troubled me, yet seemed appropriate given my overall impression of eastern Long Island, is that the farther you go, the less rap music you hear over the airwaves. (Peace to WUSB; this one isn't for you.) Head east enough and the closest you get to regular rap rotation is 106.1 WBLI. For those who've never been, that's a pop music radio station through and through. And by "pop music," I mean the most viral video-ready, Ariana Grande adjacent glossy bubblegum teen club bangers you've ever heard in your life. PR0JECT NEK0 is to WBLI as all the music on this website is to Hot 97, WBLS, and the rest. That's no shade.
OK, it's some shade, but it's also saying it's only a matter of time before Fony Wallace is one of those millionaire producer bros accepting delivery of Diamond plaques at Miami mansions, anime inspo flashing neon daydreams in the background. The perfect soundtrack for dumpster diving outlet stores:
Raymond Davis, better known as Web D, X-Ray, or King Cesar, passed away earlier this month. No details about his death have been made public as far as I can tell. To say the least, his absence is a major loss not only for Long Island rap, but the greater global hip-hop community.
The fact that Davis was known by three monikers, each with its own discography, only hints at the breadth of his impact. To many, he's best known for his connections with MF DOOM through Operation: Doomsday and the Monsta Island Czars. Lesser known is the fact that DOOM's first single was "recorded & mixed at Web's crib" (as per the center label), or that he served as a mentor to both DOOM and Subroc.
Even lesser known is the fact that Web D had groups called the East Side 5 and the Players Club running around Long Beach and WBAU in the early 1980s, or that he went to high school with Rick Rubin and sold him a mixer at one point. Think about this. When Rick Rubin was in high school, he was a punk rocker. Conceivably, Web D was one of the first people making rap music in Rick Rubin's vicinity. The same Rick Rubin went on to co-found Def Jam, produce some of Run DMC and LL Cool J's biggest hits, and thereby help bring rap music to the masses. Apocrypha or not, let that marinate.
I never met Ray in person, but he'd reached out to me online to premiere two KingCesar videos in 2016, and the "Bloody Knuckles" post remains one of the 10 most viewed in this site's history. Tragically, three of the four artists involved in that song are now gone. I was able to get back in contact with Ray through Dope Folks Records in 2020. He and Kevroc were kind enough to get on the phone with me for 52 minutes during the early days of lockdown. It's one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. Trust that if I'd known at the time about the Players Club or the Rick Rubin connections, I would've stretched the call well past an hour.
Ray Davis was a true original. It’s hard to define his sound because as a producer, he was able to flip so many different styles, and his influence, even if unrecognized, filtered down to so many other artists. Raw, massive, funky, cinematic, his beats were like themes for drive-in movie concession stands operating out of time, selling exotic hybrids not yet crossed.
He was one-half of Darc Mind, the best rapper-producer duo your friends, who listen to hip-hop but don't obsess over it the way you do, have never heard of. Fix that. Don’t let his music die with him.
When a need for mind-numbing television and love of rap collide, Rhythm & Flow offers a new appreciation for memorable punchlines, especially those that arrive early. Blaq Kush answers the call with "The smoke in the room got it looking like the first level on Silent Hill." And levels there are. To begin, Silent Hill puts the gamer in the role of a father searching for his vanished daughter. The end is what you make it. With There's Always Hope volumes, we track the cover girl's expressions from shock through derangement to trauma and then watch (blankly?) as each vanishes, leaving her face as featureless as the projects themselves. You'll wish you hadn't learned where she's from. I never beat Silent Hill. Instead, I unlocked a glitch that made any kind of resolution, however disappointing, impossible. I'm writing this off the first 14 seconds of Vol.5's first song. It's also a weed rap.
2. "Vulgar like a Russian soldier but much colder."
3. "I'm a wolf. I'm aloof. I'm not cool despite what you might've assumed."
4. "These whores made voodoo dolls out the hairs of my pubis fallen from my two balls."
5. "How you get to look devilish but angelic / With my ancestors in heaven when I made man in my image / But all n*ggas ain't handsome just to be fair to the women / Up here where the air is thinner ain't no weird n*ggas or square bitches here to irritate my spirit / I'm busy creating pyramids."
