Dirty Jersey Week, Day 6: The Lost YZ/ Shaq Collaberation

Here's an interesting limited vinyl (and CD) release I almost passed over: the unreleased EP by The Rat Pack called Porno Stars From Mars.  Okay, but who the heck is The Rat Pack, you ask.  It's a crew YZ put together in the late 90s.  It's four up and coming (well, at the time) MCs, specifically Delowe Marshalis, Sean Pender, The Third aka Boo the Product and Canon, with YZ producing them.  Can YZ even produce?  Has he done it before?  Well, he's had co-production credit on a lot of his earlier work, so maybe?  Surely we'd rather he rapped, but well, let's find out.

Porno Stars From Mars is an EP worth of material: six songs and a skit from 1998.  And actually the production's pretty solid.  The opening track in particular sounds hot, with a great chopped piano loop over some crispy drums, and the smooth vibed "Supa Shine."  With four MCs you've never heard before, I can't say any of them really distinguish themselves; only the guests do.  And this EP has some noteworthy guests: Taji from Souls of Mischief, Keith Murray who sounds really good on here and, yes, Shaquille O'Neal.  He sounds like his usual clumsy self, "The conceitedness of Brick City's Wells Fargo.  Get it, motherfucker?  'Cause I got a lot of dough.  And all y'all hatin' ass niggas, y'all be makin' me sick.  But since y'all pussies, squeeze your balls and cut off your dick."  Um, okay.

Overall, it's a pretty solid EP.  The production's better than I was expecting, and you definitely won't be able to listen to some of these tracks without nodding to them.  But I really wish YZ was rapping on here.  These guys are on a cool, hardcore tip, but sometimes their content's a little too basic.  The EP's limited to 500 copies, the first 100 of which come in full color picture covers pressed on translucent red wax.  Both the vinyl and CD also come with a photo postcard of the group (the one pictured above), and you can also buy a bundle which includes a T-shirt as well.  This is all on the Nustalgic record label, with all the B-Fyne material I covered on Day 1, which brings me to some other CDs they have on there I want to touch on briefly.

There's another group on there, who you've probably never heard of anymore than The Rat Pack, called Good Biz.  Well, Good Biz is actually a project B-Fyne was doing around 2010, basically a pair up of him and a guy named KP.  There's also sometimes a third member who sings some of the hooks; I think she's part of the group like Miss Jonez was part of The Get Fresh Crew.  But she did make it onto two of the covers.  Anyway yeah, they have a bunch of material: two EPs (Principles & Interest and Checks & Balances), a CD single ("Mr. Original"), and a full-length album (Sound Investment), plus another digital-only remix EP (Soul Proprietor) and KP solo album (Slaps).

I've been going through their stuff, and it's good but not great.  B-Fyne is a better MC than KP, and a lot of their production sounds kind of cheap.  But some tracks stand out with richer production, and there's some very interesting guests interspersed, including YZ (on a couple songs), Crusaders For Real Hip-Hop's Rahzii Hipowa, UGK's Bun B, Cool Nutz (remember, B-Fyne has a Texas connection) and Brother J.  Some of the more noteworthy songs are "Mr. Original" with YZ about sneakers and B-Fyne doing a little Special Ed homage, and of course the song with Brother J.  A lot of the production is by The Are, who they say is "of The Track Masterz," but I'm pretty sure The Track Masterz consists solely of Poke, Tone and sometimes Frank Nitty.  I think this might actually be the guy from K-Otix.  Some of these tracks also have some nice, subtle scratching on them, which is a plus.

Anyway, it's good to hear more material from B-Fyne and YZ.  It shows they've still got it.  But I also actually kinda hate some of the music here, like "Y'all Can't Ball" and "One For the Money."  They've got the kind of roster I love to cover on this site, but musically, I'd say it's better to pick through this material than go nuts and buy everything.  Most of the digital versions of the Good Biz projects are free, so you can download all that, and see if any of it inspires you to throw a CD in your cart while you're picking up some of the bigger ticket items, like the Blaque Spurm and Rat Pack.