IN THE STORE:
Straight to Tape: 1990-1992
Not so sure about anything with these songs except for the fact that I made them while living with my mom in the early 90’s and almost all were recorded with the rappers rapping through headphones plugged straight into the DJ mixer. My original idea with this comp was to put stuff I did throughout the 90’s in honor of the 999 shows I’m doing, but I just discovered SO MANY songs from this 3-year period that I made that the focus. I didn’t use compression on anyone’s voice nor did I know what that was back then. That’s why the vocals are all over the place. Most songs didn’t have effects on the voices either. A lot of adding loops on top of other loops live, which made it sloppy.
At this point in my “rap music career”, my goal was to make a “Marley Mahl In Control Of Things” type comp with all the rappers in San Jose I was meeting at the time. My situation was a lot different than Marley’s though, mainly because he established a crew of rappers that all worked together (before Wutang) and most of the rappers I worked with never even met each other.
The fact that I put out a record with Lyrical Prophecy (Quiz One and Deshee) in 1989, made it easy for me to find MCs to record in San Jose. I was known as the “kid with the record out”, even though it didn’t really sell. I was also the only kid with a sampler besides King Shameek, but Shameek moved to New York. None of these “songs” were really finished and definitely none were polished. They were all rough draft versions with the intention of going into a proper studio to re-record. The only rappers I really finished songs with and took to the studio back then were Quiz One and Charizma, but none of those songs are on here.
I think at that time, if I made a beat that a rapper liked and he had lyrics, I’d record him over it to hear what it sounded like. Some of the beats were chosen by more than one group or artist, and I’d try different guys over the same track. My idea to do this comp back in 1990 quickly got scrapped as I found myself working with Charizma more than anyone else and decided that he was the one I worked best with. We both had that slightly warped sense of humor. Plus, we both liked the Whirlwind pinball machine, so that sealed the deal.
