KMD n Mr Hood

 

From HHC - October 1991 - Scans courtesy of Repo136

Record Report : The Source, February 1991

From The Source - February 1991 - Scans courtesy of Fred Thecle 

 

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Scans courtesy of Frederic Thecle 

Life After Death - KMD in The Source, June 1994

 

From The Source, June 1994 - Scans courtesy of Cr@zy Wizdumb Master$

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MF DOOM clears the smoke on his solo career

 

R.I.P MF DOOM (1971-2020)

From Elemental Magazine - Issue #26 - Scans courtesy of Tim Burton 

Record Report - The Source July 1991

From The Source - July 1991 - Scans courtesy of HeRBaN_LyRiX

Summer Jeep Slammers

 From The Source - August 1991 - Scans courtesy of Frederic Thecle

VA - The Daisy Age 2xLP - 2019

2xLP - 2019 - ACE Records 

"It wasn’t really a movement, barely even a moment, but the Daisy Age was an ethos that briefly permeated pop, R&B and hip hop. The name was coined by Long Island trio De La Soul; they claimed D.A.I.S.Y. stood for “da inner sound, y’all”, but then De La Soul said a lot of things. Playfulness and good humour were central to their 1989 debut album, which cast a long, multi-coloured shadow. The 90s, it promised, would be a lot easier going than the 80s.

In Britain, the timing for De La Soul’s “3 Feet High And Rising” couldn’t have been better. The acid house explosion of 1988 would lead to a radical breaking down of musical barriers in 1989. Just 18 months earlier, snobbery had been so rife that Bomb The Bass’ ‘Beat Dis’ was faked as a US import (pressed in the States, then imported back) to get club play; by the summer of ’89, however, something as previously unhip as Chris Rea’s ‘Josephine’ could become a dancefloor hit and indie veterans Primal Scream would be reborn as space-seeking Sun Ra initiates and still taken seriously. Ecstasy was largely responsible, of course, and its associated look – loose clothing, dayglo colours, smiley faces – chimed with the positivity of rising New York rap acts the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, both at the heart of a growing collective called Native Tongues.

What was so new about De La Soul’s sound? Previously, sample material for hip hop had been almost exclusively taken from 60s and 70s soul and funk, especially from James Brown and his extended family – Bobby Byrd, Maceo Parker, Lyn Collins, the stuff of purists. The freewheeling collage of “3 Feet High And Rising” gleefully raided the non-U catalogues of Billy Joel and Hall & Oates; soul heroes Wilson Pickett and the Mad Lads were now abutting such unlikely material as the Turtles’ ‘You Showed Me’ and French Linguaphone lessons. The Invitations’ sweet, Drifters-like ‘Written On The Wall’ provided the hook for De La Soul’s first single ‘Plug Tunin’’ which, along with follow-up ‘Potholes In My Lawn’, referenced “the daisy age”. With the album including a cover of Bob Dorough’s ‘Three Is The Magic Number’ from Schoolhouse Rock – a song every American kid knew from Sunday morning TV – the essence of Sesame Street was everywhere.

By 1989 hip hop had made major inroads in Britain with rock fans (via Run DMC) and pubescent teens (the Beastie Boys), while NME writers had voted Public Enemy’s “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back” the best album of 1988. Still, it had an air of exclusivity, with Tim Westwood its mirthless UK gatekeeper. De La Soul were also fans of Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys and Run DMC; they were fans in general, and threw their love of music into the blender, giving more time to melodies and mind-expanding samples while most contemporary rap records still revolved around the biggest sounding beats.

Above all, De La Soul were welcoming. They had grown up with their parents’ eclectic musical taste, a TV culture grab bag, and black radio stations that played Hall & Oates and Steely Dan alongside the Spinners and Brass Construction. They had also attended the same high school as producer and Stetsasonic member Prince Paul who, intimidatingly, was two years above them. He knew their faces but it wasn’t until he heard a demo of ‘Plug Tunin’’ that he realised they were all on the same wavelength; working with their rough sketch, Paul added a sample from Billy Joel’s ‘Stiletto’ into the mix.

In 1990, the third Native Tongues act to release an album was A Tribe Called Quest, and “People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm” was heavily indebted to “3 Feet High”’s airy nature. The Native Tongues’ charismatic aura spread west to the Bay Area’s similarly minded Hieroglyphics crew (Del Tha Funkeé Homosapien, Souls Of Mischief); Canada’s Dream Warriors used the “3 Feet High” colour palette and, borrowing Count Basie and Quincy Jones riffs, scored a brace of major UK hits; Naughty By Nature were mentored by Native Tongues heroine Queen Latifah, while Londoner Monie Love was also adopted by the collective, resulting in her Grammy-nominated ‘It’s A Shame (My Sister)’.

A Tribe Called Quest’s second album, “The Low End Theory”, would pick up the baton, giving a platform for and inspiration to Leaders Of The New School (who included future superstar Busta Rhymes) and the abstract technique of Brand Nubian. Meanwhile, the Jungle Brothers’ second album, “Done By The Forces Of Nature”, was in essence a concept album about Africa, fusing hip hop with jazz, doo wop, soul, Harlem – a new direction for the Native Tongues, away from ‘Multiplication Rock’, bubble writing and the gently psychedelic.

As hip hop rapidly became a bigger commercial concern, rights owners smelt money and – for the rest of the 90s – made sample clearance unfeasibly expensive. Robbed of their pick-and-mix approach, some Daisy Age-era acts moved towards consciousness and a jazz-leaning live feel, which down the line would lead to the rise of Arrested Development, and beyond them the Fugees and the Roots; meanwhile, on the West Coast, the gut-churning violence and misogyny of Dr Dre’s “The Chronic” took rap to a whole new commercial level. Neither direction, sadly, would involve much use of Sesame Street, Turtles samples, or magic numbers." - BOB STANLEY

 Vinyl (Gatefold) & CD format are available for Pre-order.

Release Date : End of August 

Interview : MF DOOM in Pound Magazine + The House List

From Pound Magazine #19 - October 2003 - Scans courtesy of Tim Burton 

"We've made it to 100 episodes! Thank you everyone. I wanted to do something extra special for the heads on this one - so who better than DOOM. Culled from a handful of conversations recorded onto cassette, MF DOOM and I discuss the then unreleased and to me, unheard, 'MM FOOD' album. This was originally recorded in May 2003 for an expansive cover-story I wrote on DOOM for Elemental Magazine. But ... just let the convo really do the talking here.

The written-piece was a broad take on his life and work, where I interviewed many of his then collaborators. Like most of my work, I carefully archived the tapes with the hopes to one day revisit. Well, 16 years later I did just that. Digitizing the tapes at DiJiFi in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Josh Berg who engineered/mixed our Alias tribute show was brought in to lend his talents to bringing these tapes to life.

After listening to these again, there is no doubt in my mind how talented, intuitive and inventive DOOM is. It of course goes without saying, but I do feel like these chats I had with him shed much more light on how he willed some of the best hip-hop music of the last 20 years out of sheer desire to create, if even sometimes under a state of duress. A master collage-artist, poet, author, satirist, DJ, producer, performer. I truly hope this episode (like them all) will serve as a living document to his great accomplishments in music and art. I am appreciative of the time we had recording these and the few musical collaborations we did some 20 years ago now. Hey, what can I say, it's out 100TH EPISODE! Thank you to all the listeners as this is fully listener supported." - Peter Agoston

MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday - The 7 Inch Collection Boxset

"As the 1990s came to a close, a man who would come to rule the underground hip-hop universe for the next two decades appeared from depths that were darker than most of his fans would ever know: MF DOOM. The artist formerly known as Zev Love X of major-label-but-underground heroes KMD had disappeared from most fans’ view in around 1994 – after his brother and artistic co-producer Subroc was killed, and the group’s Black Bastards album was shelved by Elektra. By 1999 the album Operation: Doomsday appeared seemingly out of nowhere via Fondle Em Records, and fans who actively ran from the glitzier side of rap music ate it up like they had been on a hunger strike. Musically raw and at-times off-kilter, former singles were joined by a whole slew of new tunes. In addition to the dusty, wobbling music, the former Zev Love X completely changed up his vocal style on the tracks that would land on Doomsday, chopping his flow up and bringing a whole new approach to his formerly liquid, and often humorous lyricism.

This new 7-Inch Collection edition includes seven 7-Inches that run in order of the songs from the original issue (including interludes). The records are housed in a custom black leatherette outer-box that is laced with silver-foil renderings of DOOM’s legendary mask and bubble graffiti logo on the outside, and a never-seen-before DOOM drawing by the legendary Lord Scotch, the original artist behind the Operation: Doomsday art, on the inside.  In addition to holding the 7-inch vinyl, the box also contains two metallic-silver colored 45 adapters, each a 3D rendering of DOOM’s gladiator mask. Picture sleeves for each of the seven pieces of wax all feature brand new work by Lord Scotch (Blake Lethem aka KEO aka Scotch79th) as well: new hand-lettered track listings on one side, and incredible new color illustrations on the flip that, when laid side-by-side, fit together like puzzle pieces, to form one large image.

Each seven-inch comes in a unique vinyl color:  Purple Transparent, Red Transparent, Lime Green Opaque, Orange Opaque, Yellow Transparent, Turquoise Opaque, and Classic Black. The set also includes a booklet, and is wrapped in a Japanese-style OBI strip that features the OG album cover in all of its glory. This absolutely unique package is limited to 1500 copies on colored vinyl, and they will go fast. If you are a hip-hop fan with any cred, you likely already own Operation: Doomsday. But this amazing new edition breathes new life into a true underground classic and makes it a necessary addition to anyone’s record shelf or mantle." 

GasDrawls.com 

Order your Boxset on Get On Down or GasDrawls 

Album Review : KMD - Mr Hood - 1991

LP - 1991 - Elektra

From The Source - July 1991

International God of Mystery : An M.F.‘n Look Back With M.F. Doom

From Ego Trip Magazine - Scan by Babylon Falling