NYRU - 95 Live / Gotstaripit / Bootleggers - 1995

12" - 1995 - Dapper Entertainment 

579 $ .... it was the last bid on ebay for this rare wax released on Dapper Entertainment in 1995 by NYRU, a Rap duo comprised of Jett and Six from Washington DC, North East DC to be precise. 

Jett :  "I was a solo artist named Jett, I met my partner Six at the studio where I worked called D2E, stands for Down To Earth. We just click, became cool and formed the group Notorious Youngins Ruling the Underground a.k.a NYRU."

The 12" is composed of 3 songs produced by Jett and Six , '95 Live', 'Gotstaripit' and the famous 'Bootleggers' featuring S.U.K's a.k.a Stick Up Kids, a group produced by NYRU and composed of Black Raven, Day Jahvu and Lord Black Coon from Silver Spring and Gaithersburg MD.

I had a little chat with Terry "Squirl" Lewis, who was the studio engineer at the time and worked on this record. He remembers that period. 

Terry Lewis :"A lot of the samples came from current music back then, like drums from Mobb Deep, PE, break beats and the Ol Faithful keyboard the EPS 16plus. We use to record off the classic radio stations a lot to get those nice melodic and smooth laid back samples. Then muffled the sample like Pete Rock did. Watching those guys put a song together was magical, the way they went back and forward in the same verse and finish each others lines was absolutely phenomenal to watch. They're definitely under rated and part of the forgotten 'Ground Under' culture. 

We recorded at D2E (Down 2 Earth Productions) originally based in Washington D.C. on Georgia Ave NW. This is where we all meet. It was an amazing multicultural and multi ethnic studio full of creatives. D2E was ran by very business minded Puerto Rican named Pinto. He managed another group that was there, comprised of 3 very different types of dialect. Spanish, American and African i think. They also has a white engineer and keyboardist their named Billy, he got me into engineering and music. I meet Jett through these guys. Six came through later."

Different samples were used for the production of the songs. "95 Live" contains samples of "Black is the Color" performed by Joe Sample and "Let's Get It On" performed by Marvin Gaye. "Gotstaripit" contains a sample of "You Showed Me" performed by The Turtles and released in 1968. 

Jett :"For the song 'Bootleggers' that was jus a weird sound I played into a Melody and a horn echo."

This record is the first and only one released by the group. No doubt the duo had a great potential but it stopped due to problems with Dapper their label manager... 

Jett : "We were in the process of making an album but it stopped when he gave a contract which said that he wanted 90% of everything... we had to do our own thing but it never did."

Mad Props to Jett Davett & Terry Lewis