Back again with another Complex Top 25, this time for the Boot Camp catalog. I was a little hesitant to take this assignment because, unlike with the VH1 Southern Producers lists, my knowledge of the BCC catalog leans superficial. Which is to say I owned Enta Da Stage, Dah Shinin in high school and know a handful of the bigger singles from the same era, but not much beyond that. But one of the nice things about my job is that I sometimes still get paid to learn and learn I did. It turns out that BCC didn’t really fall off after 1997, they just turned inconsistent.

But in retrospect I’m not entirely sure if their catalog necessarily demands the 2500 words of intellectualizing/contextualizing that I gave it over there. There wasn’t a grand narrative to Boot Camp Clik, with few exceptions (”Therapy”) they didn’t/don’t make idea driven or conceptual music, Da Beatminerz perfected their sound early on and didn’t do much to expand or evolve it. They lack the built in folklore of Wu-Tang or the eccentricity of the Native Tongues. Their records aren’t unfairly slept on, their members haven’t suffered from dramatic personal crisis or made miraculous comebacks. In putting this list together there points where I felt like the entire song could be concisely summed up by just two words: MADD BLUNTED. Or maybe three: MADD BLUNTED, SON. Their music did exactly what it was supposed to and nothing more. This isn’t a knock at all, quite the opposite. These are classic and very important underground hip hop records and maybe they aren’t as frequently brought into the discussion precisely because they didn’t come with those conversation points attached. Which is shame. But you don’t need to read or write or argue about them. You just roll up a blunt, nod your head and stfu.

After the jump are a few more Boot Camp youtubes, just random joints that were either cut from the list for space or that I just stumbled upon in the process of compiling it: (more…)

Rammellzee & K-Rob – “Beat Bop“

from Beat Bop 12″ (Tartown, 1983)

For those who have yet to hear, avant rap and graffiti legend Rammellzee passed away on Tuesday. Details still are hazy at best but it appears to be a sad truth. Ramell always maintained that the word was a form of mathematics and there’s no series of equations that could properly do his life justice. I tried at the Village Voice but don’t think I came close to doing him justice. He was a legend in two games and probably the single most unique human I’ve ever been blessed to have an awkward phone conversation with. As such I’m bumping the said conversation below.

To me the most fascinating part of this interview was not the mythological Rammellisms – the tale of crumbling up Basquiat’s lyrics, the live-performance-as-bank-heist theory, the dentistry aspirations – but rather when he began to crack jokes about his wife getting on his case. It was like he briefly became Al Bundy, a victim of domesticity. That’s was what seemed incredible about interacting with Ramm – for someone who was always wearing masks and worshipping mechanics there was also a vast amount of humanity right there on the surface. Or maybe he was just a robot trying his best to seem human. One other funny interaction that didn’t make the final edit but I think was sort of indicative of where Ramm’s head was at: halfway through the conversation he told me he only agreed to do the interview because he thought it was going to be with Nas, the rapper. This is odd because I set it up via email, so the pronunciation similarities should have been overshadowed by the spelling difference. I suspect this was another instance of his deep deadpan humor but I can’t be entirely sure.

Hit the jump to read the Q&A, which first ran here on 4/24/08 and then check the Tumblr where a full scale Rammellzee tribute has been going down. (more…)

One of my main complaints about Wayne’s No Ceilings was the beat selection. It was strictly Wayne raps to the hits, like he watched MTV Jams for an hour and just wrote to each of those songs. A great mixtape isn’t just karaoke. DJs like Drama and Green Lantern have earned names for themselves because of their ability to find unexpected beats that fit the artists they are working with. I’m still digesting Jeezy’s Trap Or Die 2 but one of the early standouts is “Ill’in” which revisits this somewhat obscure Pharoahe Monch cut from the Soundbombing 2 comp. The sound is just so incredibly and naturally Jeezy. (It’s appropriate that the The Clipse show up too, themselves long standing masters of finding the right beat to jack.) Here Don Cannon doesn’t just throw on the instrumental, it sounds like he rebuilt the track by hand, even slipping in the opening piano from the original Lamont Dozier sample. Oh yes, down south digging is the theme for today. (You might also recognize the Lamont cut as the same source of Ghostface’s “Saturday Night” and G-Side’s “We Own Da Building.”)

Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal is currently in a coma after suffering a cardiac arrest. He is scheduled to undergo surgery tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.

(And please check your “Primo made the group” internet revisionist idiocy at the door. Keith is one of the greats.)

Update: Guru’s surgery was a success.

Even if we don’t always see eye to eye as far as taste goes there is probably no blogger that I trust more than Robbie at Unkut. Dude is easily one of the last real bloggers alive. Today marks sixth anniversary of his site and they’re celebrating with this well constructed mix of new school but classically angry broken 40 bottle New York rap. I’m about to break out my Carhartt and Timbs over here. Tracklisting after the jump. (more…)