Let's talk about this 12" dropped by the Queens, NY-based rapper KAPONE on Project Sound. The record came out in 1994 and contains 3 tracks : "Who's Blowing Up Far Rockaway, Queens" (Queens Vocal & Queens Instrumental) which is the lead single, "Never Slumber" (Vocal & Instrumental) and "In The Mix" (Vocal) featuring Fangs and Frisk on the cuts. All the productions were handled by Koors.
You could say there's always a story behind every record. About this one, you won't find it on the internet because this artist has remained a complete mystery until today. It's time for me to give you some info to understand why you never heard of Kapone after this 12"...
Frisk a.k.a DJ GMF (which stands for Grand Master Frisk) is the owner and manager of Project Sound Records (Project Sounds now). He is also known for being a Mixtape pioneer. He is from Far Rockaway Queens and is from as the same neighborhood as Kapone... Edgemere Projects.
Everything began in the early 90s when Frisk was Kapone's DJ and his manager. Frisk started to put Kapone out there in a lot of shows... like shows with Keith Murray or with Da Bush Babies... and got him on Hot97 when Fatman Scoop had a talent thing out there in Manhattan... Frisk met Fatman Scoop at school, so he was doing what he had to do. To create a bigger buzz they recorded those three songs and they pressed up some records. Around 5,000 copies of that wax were pressed at that time.
After the buzz was going, they hired another manager to help out. Frisk had two other partners with him to run the record label, but he brought another guy in to help him with management. Kapone's album was recorded but when Frisk put him with the other management, the manager started taking him to California and went out there with his connections, bringing him to shows, doing tracks for other producers... but he sold the dream off... They kind of fell back and they didn't hear no more from Kapone. But his album stayed with Project Sound Records and it never came out. All the productions were handled by Koors. He produced the whole album, engineered it, and Frisk did all the cuts.
About Koors and Frisk, they used to DJ in the hood. Frisk bought a bunch of studio equipment and they used to play around making beats and stuff but Koors was quite good at it, so he used to produce beats and then go to work. By his side, Frisk used to mix all the tracks and used to bring the artists in to record Demos and put them on his mixtapes which he was selling all over New York City. Create a buzz for the Independent Artists on his mixtapes that was the thing he was doing.
About Fangs, the other rapper who features on the track "In The Mix", he was another artist that they signed. He used to come to Frisk's crib and cut demos over the Beats. Frisk & Koors thought he was dope so they assigned him to the label too. He was supposed to be the next artist to come out, they figured to add him on Kapone's single so they could cross promote.
That's all I know about this record and about the people involved in it ! I hope that the unreleased album will see the light of day... fingers crossed !
Mad Props to Frisk a.k.a DJ GMF of Project Sounds. Thanks for your time.
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