Since we last spoke, shit has been hectic out here. Following the Rakim show on Wednesday night, I paid a visit to the legendary 45 King (the genius behind everyone from Chill Rob G to Queen Latifah) out in East Orange. His house featured a variety of unique features including a diner-style booth, cinema seats, a phone box and a subway turnstyle leading to the bathroom. His two Grammy awards grace the walls (for Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life and Eminem’s Stan), as well as gold and platinum record plaques and a selection of classic LP covers. We broke bread over some hood Chinese and Newports, and the King gave me thorough instructions to act like a local on my way to the train station.
The day was still young, so I gave former Marley Marl student J Force a call and jumped on the ferry to Staten Island to grab a beer, where he showed me the original Wu-Tang barbershop and played some speakersmashing SP-1200 beats in the fresh new Caddy.
Friday saw the skies open up on some moonsoon bullshit, as it rained nonstop for 24 hours straight. Not to be discouraged, I threw on a fresh suit and headed to the Complex HQ to school them on how the Conservative Rap Coalition style guide works, before I headed out to Brooklyn for happy hour with my old pal from Hip Hop Connection magazine. Later that evening I almost broke my neck crossing the road to grab a slice as the weather took a vicious turn for the worse and made mincemeat of my $7 umbrella.
Slightly worse for wear the following day, Rich Direction and I hit the city to visit the new incarnation of the legendary Chung King studios, home of such rap essentials as Biggie’s Ready To Die, Nas’ Illmatic and Slick Rick’s debut, where DJ Phantom was recording the final mixes for Killa Sha’s long-awaited posthumous album, The Shepard. Safe to say that the results were exactly what all Queensbridge rap fiends have been waiting for. Next stop was the Vice party for some new iced tea fuckery in hipster central, which meant doublefisting free vodka in some kind of trap rave scenario which was full of turnt up pretty young thangs and thirsty dudes. We broke out just before the wheels fell off.
The rain returned Monday, but neither hell nor high water was going to stand in the way of a chance to mingle with Queensbridge rap royalty at the album release party for Prodigy and Alchemist’s ‘Albert Einstein’ project. With my newly acquired Struggle Cam camcorder in hand, I attempted to document some of the action in between meeting Alan The Chemist and Prodigy. The latter I was introduced to by Dallas Penn, who described me as “a guy who spends his life killing crocodiles and studying Queens rap.” Most importantly, I had the chance to talk boat shoes with DJ Stretch Armstrong, who was sporting a nifty blue canvas pair, in between slamming down free gin and tonics. Stay tuned for more of the raw next week…
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