Track of the Week: The Beverly Hills Contingent Joins Soul Assassins

There’s some cool history and trivia behind this lost track, but let’s not overcomplicate it, all I really want to sell you is this feeling:

The Whooliganz, who sound like they’re about 10 here, were Scott Caan, son of famous actor James Caan, and Alan Maman, who later becomes the production legend known as The Alchemist.

These two guys met on the mean streets of Beverly Hills and got around enough to eventually get the attention of B-Real of Cypress Hill, who added them to the Soul Assassins crew, which also included House of Pain and Funkdoobiest.

B-Real shows up on the last verse here to give the track, and these two youngsters, the official Soul Assassins seal of approval. It’s a short appearance, but I still love the snap and construction of the line, “Oh, what a natural feeling/’Cause I’m the one with gun doin’ all the cap peeling.”

I think it was 1994 when the whole Soul Assassins caravan came to the Boulder Field House. I went with my roommate, Pogo. 

I couldn’t roll joints, so I had one of those wooden dugouts on me with the ceramic one-hitter that looked like a filtered cigarette and popped up via a spring when you slid the top back.

While waiting in line I got super paranoid about the pat-down at the door. Fortunately, I was wearing sneakers that were so busted, the stitching had completely given on the entire left heel. I jammed it under my foot and limped through the entrance without incident.

We puffed the one-hitter and drank beer and got to see The Whooliganz, Funkboobiest, House of Pain and Cypress Hill in their glory.

There were tons of skinny skater-type kids there. B-Real’s crowd engagement trick for the night was challenging everybody to get two mosh pits going. The second pit was interesting. There was a big dude standing at the edge of it, built like a redshirt linebacker for the Buffs. 

His version of moshing was waiting until one of the stoner kids came within reach, then grabbing them by the shoulders and hurling them. He was like a golden retriever in front of an automatic stick-throwing machine, bouncing back and forth on his feet, eyes sparkling, while he scanned for the next kid.

For the encore, all four acts came on stage. They did House of Pain’s “Back from the Dead,” Everlast rapping with the diminutive Son Doobie on his shoulders, all of them riding together that first big swell of label success in the purple-white stage lights.

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Track of the Week Extended Remix: Tim’s Whole List of Hip Hop Suggestions

In Episode 112 I talked with my UK pal Tim Sismey about a track he recommended, which I loved: “Cordless Mics at 20 Paces” by DJ Skitz feat. Phi-Life Cypher.

This was occasion for him to spend time digging through a pile of things he hadn’t thought about or played for a long time.

Here’s Tim chatting about the UK scene and his adolescent path to hip hop addiction:

How Tim Got Converted to Hip Hop

In the course of digging through tracks, he came up with a whole raft of gems that we couldn’t squeeze into the Track of the Week segment.

They fit here. Mucho gusto.

Collapsed Lung ‎– Down With The Plaid Fad (XXLarge)

Blackalicious - Rhymes for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind

Killah Priest - Moanin' (Ft. Killa Sin)

Youngblood Brass Band - Avalanche

Company Flow - The Fire In Which You Burn

Grand Agent - Every Five Minutes

Vast Aire feat. Diverse - Big Game

C-Rayz Walz - Buck 80

Prefuse 73 feat. MF DOOM & Aesop Rock - Black List

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Three Boom-Bap Big-Crew Bangers You Might Not Have Heard Yet

One of the ways I defend myself from automated spectacles and simulation is digging back to artifacts I know I can trust. 

One blessing about being a Gen Xer? I got to live half my life in the pre-internet era. I’ve got the frame of reference that helps me find and remember real-deal media, confident that the vibration I’m getting, even via YouTube ,came from human vocal chords and real people in a real neighborhood that jangled and whomped in a real place in time.

Nothing whomped better than that big-crew phase of boom bap that hit its peak around 1993-94. Think Leaders of the New School. Onyx. Fu-Schickens. Think massive snare hits yoked to a jazz bass sample and a chaser of echoing horns. 

I thought I’d mapped all the major and minor points of the this microera when I picked my way past the most obvious plays and started adding tracks by outfits like Rumpletilskinz and Yaggfu Front.

I was just scratching the surface. Here for a jolt of authentic energy is a crew called Now Born Click, whose cassette EP goes for a lot of money on Discogs; I don’t think they hung around long enough to make an album.

Lace your Timbs up for this one:

Here’s another stomper for you: “Trouble Wreck” by the Troubleneck Brothers, all seven of them.

They got this one on rotation on Rap City, where you can see they’re running every part of the template, both in track production and video style, because it looks like they got half the city out for the take where they’re quasi-moshing for the shouted chorus. I still prefer the audio:

So you know Ice T, right? His production and rhyming posse was Rhyme Syndicate.

Somehow, there was a dude from the UK who was loosely affiliated with them named Red Venom.

Anyway, here’s a crew called Freakin Inglish from Salford & Manchester getting in on the act. I think they understood the assignment:

It takes a human guide to get to the best, I think still. Because while imaginationless AI hyperscalers ruin the future, they’re making unwelcome raids on memory, too.

Now I have to be careful when hunting down an old audiobook because they’re scraping my favorite novels and reading those with robots and doing cultural retrospectives whose scripts stink of LLM phraseology.

You’re better off trusting people for the good stuff.

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Check out 50 Golden Era Hip Hop Deep Cuts You Must Experience