Tricky Tee - Leave It To The Drums 1986

Oran ‘Juice’ Jones - Pipe Dreams 1989

Downtown Science - This Is A Visit 1991

Sam Sever and the Raiders of the Lost Art - Words Of Wisdom (They Don’t Know) 1995

With information once again being relatively sparse, we best point you to this highly recommended interview at Baghat Vinyl. There you will learn how Sam Sever came to programm the drums of Run-DMC’s “Is It Live” from “Raising Hell,” an album this blogger holds in the utmost highest regard. We also assume that you already know Sam’s most crucial work with 3rd Bass, so we’ll try and maneouvre a bit around “The Cactus Album” and “Derelicts Of Dialect.”

So let’s start with Sam Citrin’s first official production gig, as found on the Tricky Tee 12″ “Leave It To The Drums” b/w “I’ve Got It Good” from 1986. Tricky Tee was no MC Tee and Sam was no Kurtis Mantronik (for reference, check Tricky Tee’s Mantronik-produced “Johnny The Fox” from ‘85), but “Leave It To The Drums” is certainly a song title fit for a hip-hop blog like ours and musically it should give you a clear idea of the era this aspiring producer came up in, editing by Chep Nunez and all.

Sever soon hooked up with Def Jam, where he was not only involved in 3rd Bass, but also got to produce Oran ‘Juice’ Jones’ “Pipe Dreams,” the ultimate statement on crack addiction from the soul side. The early ’90s marked Sam Sever’s ascent to artist status as he formed the duo Downtown Science with rapper Bosco Money. Their self-titled album rests on the obscure side of the Def Jam discography but has my complete approval both in the musical and the lyrical department. The “Wall”-sampling “This Is A Visit” hints at what these guys were on, but is just as likely to mislead you.

After both 3rd Bass and Downtown Science disbanded, Sever continued to work for Def Jam coming up with for instance the excellent “The Rapsody (In J Minor)” by Pete Nice & Daddy Rich and Nikki D’s “Lettin’ Off Steam.” In 1993 he released a couple of party breaks on Big Beat (some of which you can hear on his MySpace page) and closed the final LONS album with the monstruous “Spontaneous (13 MC’s Deep!)” Then came his MoWax phase, with according to this interview 12 songs being submitted to James Lavelle, but only a couple of them seeing a release, among them the b-side to his “What’s That Sound (Fucked Up Sound)” single, “Words of Wisdom (They Don’t Know),” words by the way courtesy of one of the Last Poets and apparently applicable to hip-hop to no small degree: “Record company is the pimp, artist is the ho, the stage is the corner, and the audience is the trick.” [Note: Blame the blogger for the skip, it occurred while ripping from vinyl.]

The previously mentioned extensive interview confirms what the name-drop in KRS-One’s “Out For Fame” lead me to believe - that Sam Sever also did a little bit of graf. For now please enjoy Sever’s musical subway art.

www.samsever.com

Lone Catalysts - Lone Catalysts 1998
Lone Catalysts - Politix 2000
J. Rawls f/ J-Live - The Great Live Caper (Part 1) 2001

We used to play this game while standing in line at shows called six degrees of rap. Easy premise: name two artists and connect them using collabs. (It also got some burn on RMHH). The game always broke down to trying to link artists from entirely different scenes and eras. Fun shit like “PRINCE WHIPPER WHIP TO CAP-ONE” or “MC EIHT TO ALL NATURAL! WHAT!” And J. Rawls was this secret weapon because dude did a bunch of work for Dose One, as well as all his tracks with assorted east coast underground heroes.

Anyways, I always liked Lone Catalysts, not just because they were Pittsburgh homeys like myself, but because J. Rawls was so much better than so many producers churning out loops and beats. And what did it was his ability to flip jazz loops (or jazzy sounding loops) in some kind of interesting way long after the art was dead. By the time Rawls hit his stride, underground rap beats tended to either be straight-ahead Primo bites or “my crates are deeper than yours” super-rare shit. The former beats were just boring, the latter beats expanded the sonic pallete quite a bit, for better or worse. Where many producers moved on to psych guitars and classical string stabs, Rawls kept it simple with piano soundscapes, sax hits and faint swishy ride cymbals.

Mountain Brothers - Ain’t Nuthin’ 98 1998

Snoop Dogg f. Pharrell - Drop It Like It’s Hot (Chops Remix) 2005

Online promotion of hip-hop may have been virtually non-existent during the first half of the 1990s, but that didn’t prevent a few pioneering heads from politicking across America and the Atlantic, exchanging opinions and music. The same usenet newsgroups that spawned this here weblog, alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop (now archived by Google Groups, but best read with a newsreader), were meeting points for hip-hop’s early online community. One act that could be found promoting its sonic experiments were D.O.A., short for Da Other Asiatics. They were a trio hailing from Philadelphia, of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, who had formed at Penn State. But it was under their new moniker Mountain Brothers that Styles, Peril-L and Chops began to make noise in the music industry. In 1996, they won Sprite’s nationwide Rhymes From the Mind contest, resulting in a nationally aired radio commercial. One year later, they were the first Asian-American hip-hop act to sign with a major, but they split from Ruffhouse/Columbia after the promo single “Paperchase.”

Determined to make it happen, they released their debut “Self: Volume 1″ in 1998. It took them 5 years to follow up with “Triple Crown” in 2003, which also saw the release of producer Chops’ instrumental album “Food For Naught.” Last year, Chops, who also raps, put out “Virtuosity,” enlisting the help of acclaimed MC’s like Ras Kass and Raekwon. With the Mountain Brothers project apparently gone back into hibernation, it looks like Chops (born Scott Jung) is making his career as a producer a priority. Suddenly, he’s promoting his own mixtapes hosted by Paul Wall and Bun B, puts out break records on Brick Records, drops unsolicited remixes and is sure to let you know that it’s a “Chops remix, motherfuckers,” when before he did the occasional beat for the likes of Bahamadia, Mystic and Grand Agent. There was even an announcement that Chops, who has already worked on Nike commercials in the past, secured a deal with Reebok. Quote: To tap into the growing Asian hip-hop market in the US, as well as the rest of the globe, Reebok’s urban division RBK is currently designing the S. Jung sneaker.

Whether we’ll ever see that happen or not, the man is making moves. Personally I wasn’t too impressed with the three tracks he had on ODB’s “Osirus Mixtape,” but the “Drop It Like It’s Hot” remix he did for the “Gunner Palace” mix-CD was almost as daring as the original. Known for steering clear of samples since the Mountain Brothers days (check his verse on “Ain’t Nuthin’”), the new and improved Magnificent Butcher may be on the verge of producer stardom, and with this we hopefully secure the rights to a big fat “Told you so!”

Artist website
Interview at www.HipHopGame.com