Graveyard Terror

 

(This Halloween, we examine the last outlier from The Fear soundtrack, Terror. Who was he? Let's journey into the graveyard and find out. Youtube version is here.)

Monumental Wreckage

Oh yes, it's another gem from Vendetta Vinyl.  This is the latest release by Drasar Monumental entitled Lifetime Of Wreckage.  Each song is layered with samples that feel like they were always made to be layered together.  Busy but never over-crowded.  There's a lot of change-ups, too, which can make it a little confusing on the first couple of spins to determine which song you're on.  But you'll catch on quick enough.  The back cover credits spell out concisely, it's a one man show, "beats, rhymes and scratches: Drasar Monumental."  And it opens with Drasar catching wreck over an equally murderous track.  Hard battle raps with a creative dramatic flourish, and even a tinge of righteous fury:

"Rhymes give you more than a slight chill; my mic's type ill, you're just another sucker that I might kill.  You know the drill, my skill gives 'em nightmares, equivalent to getting thrown down a flight of stairs!  Wake 'em up, tapin' 'em up, my box cutter will taper you up.  I don't give a fuck, rhymes spray in all directions.  I slay competitors.  Hated and vile enforcer, ultra-violent sorcerer, bringin' ya horror straight from Sodom and Gomorrah.  USA, home of the Satanic; I set you on fire at your pagan gatherin', and leave 'em staggerin', babblin' and mumblin', my only mission is to murder 'em."

After that, the subject matter starts to get more complicated.  "Scavengers" smooths the mood out slightly, but still remaining pretty hard, like that feeling you'd get when Big Daddy Kane got on a posse cut.  Drasar sets it off on the kind of people he doesn't like, "waitin' on a hand out.  Runnin' ya mouth but your plans never pan out."  But the more serious matters are still to come.

"Fratricide 1993" goes in on how, when faced with political oppression, we're more likely to kill each other than unite against the greater corruptive forces, "grew up Baptist, now you're a savage.  I can tell from your ways and actions.  Grew up from a B-boy, skating rink to Cuban Link.  Never thought I'd see you in the Clink.  Must've been a plan: the way we crumble, cops cuff you.  Caught up in the struggle, we scramble and shuffle.  But it's all meaningless.  Penny pinchin', but end up dying penniless."  It features an MC named Hogon Plus, who worked with Drasar previously on Box Cutter IV.  He has a similar voice and flow to Drasar, to the point where, when I was first listening to this I was wondering when he was going to appear... until he name-checked himself and I realized he was already on the mic.  That's not a criticism, though, because Drasar sounds pretty great here, and Hogon mixes in his own style of tongue twisting wordplay without sacrificing the gravity of the topic.

The last track is "Black Calculus Part 3" (Part 2 was on The Box Cutter Brothers' III CD), the catchiest, most head nodding of the beats.  But the racial injustice laid bare in the lyrics is still as raw and pertinent as ever, "uneven playing field, inequality.  Fighting over turf but we don't own the property.  They make a mockery of our misery, rewrite history; it's all lies and trickery, fuckery and deception.  In 2020, your mind is your strongest weapon.  Born leaders never meant to be followers, we're descendants of gods and goddesses."  This material is gripping and compelling to the point that I don't think we can keep Drasar in the box of a producer who can also rap competently, a la Diamond D, Large Professor, and so on, but a lyricist who needs to be heard in his own right.  His production just happens to be brilliant, too.

This is a perfectly tight EP with just four songs and the instrumentals on the flip, so there's absolutely no fat.  Every passing second is a killer.  And as you can see above, this is a proper 12" record in a cool picture cover, though I believe there is also a CD option if you find that more convenient.  But I think this is one you're going to wish you had on wax years from now; this feels like a project that's going to stand the test of time.

The Many Returns Of the Liquor Store Laureate

(Wow. It was only like a year ago when I made a video about the insane amount of projects Luke Sick had released.  Multiple albums collaborating with multiple producers... Well, here he goes again!  Youtube version is here.  Also, apologizes for repeatedly calling Wolfagram "Wolf Pack.")

The Outsidaz' Family Vacation

As any of you who've been with me for a while surely knows, I'm on a perpetual Outsidaz watch.  So just because it's been almost exactly twelve years to the day since I've written about it, it should be obvious that I haven't put down the torch for Yah Yah's lost "Collaboration" album from 2005.  Well, except I sort of am, just now, because I'm pretty sure I just got my grubby little hands on it.  In case you've forgotten, Yah is Young Zee's younger brother who had some killer moments on the Outsidaz' albums before moving from NJ to Florida where he had a brief excursion with a little known label called 5th Lmnt.  Back in 2008, I posted a quote from their now long departed website that talked about it.  "Through a series of events, THE 5TH met up with Yahyah, formerly of the Outsidaz and recorded two albums... Sage [one of their in-house producers] and Yah got together on a collaboration effort and after crankin out some of the hottest tracks you'll ever hear, started bumping heads in the production process. This creative control issue is what eventually lead to Yah's departure."  I was excited at the time because I uncovered a CD single from an album that I was beginning to wonder if it had ever truly existed.  I've found another official little 5th Lmnt write-up online that adds a little bit more: "For all you hardcore Yahyah Fans you can get your copy Here of the 10 track Album Featuring Yahyah and Sage Lee."  No, you don't seem to be able to get your copy there anymore, but it does give us a couple clues about this album... which again, may be in my grubby little hands right now.

I won't try to draw out any undue suspense, since you can see it in the photo at the top of this post anyway.  I've scored an 11-track Yah Yah CD from 2005 called Appetizers, which I'm at least 90% certain is the album I've been referring to as The Collaboration.  Worst case scenario, I'm wrong, and I've just uncovered an entirely separate, third Yah Yah full-length CD from the same label and time period, which would be just as rewarding, so I'm happy no matter what.

So, that quote refers to two Yah Yah albums from his time with 5th Lmnt, the label he hooked up with when he moved to Florida.  We already know the first one is Lord Of the Underground.  It's only natural that this is the second of the two, supported by the fact that it tells us it's entirely produced by Sage Lee, the named collaborator, except for one song, which he still gets name checked on.  Further more, they specify that it's a ten track album, and Appetizers is eleven tracks, one being just a twenty-some second intro.  Plus it's dated 2005, and the MasterLab manufacturing credit matches the other 5th Lmnt CDs.  All the pieces fit; a perfectly solved puzzle!  Except a few details do make me 10% unsure.

The Lion Clan Music Works is Yah's own little label that he used for some later mixtapes.  So this being some kind of joint release with 5th Lmnt doesn't throw me, especially since 5th L is name-checked on the album.  But the "E.P. Give Away" bit does.  And the intro tells us specifically, "we the good people here at Lion Clan Music Works, we just want to get y'all ready for the plates. So y'all, don't worry, don't worry, you ain't gonna be charged for this.  This is gonna go along with your order. We like to call this the hors d'oeuvres, The Appetizers."  That naturally had me thinking this was a different, distinct promo disc.

But thinking about it, it doesn't seem like there's likely to be two complete Sage Lee collaborative albums that would both been ten songs long in 2005, especially when both songs from the CD single are featured on this but no songs from Lord Of the Underground are.  Also, that quote makes it sound like Yah recorded two 5th Lmnt albums before he did the one with Sage Lee, which actually suggests a whole third or fourth album is floating out there and makes me question the veracity of all their details.  At the end of the day, I can't be sure, and I'm still keeping an eye out for more, but I think this is the whole rest of the story.

And how is it?  Pretty great!  Just about everything I wrote about the CD single can be extrapolated to the whole LP.  Sage Lee has a very studio-bound, sample-light sound that I ordinarily wouldn't gravitate towards, and doesn't sync at all with the kind of music The Outsidaz made otherwise (except maybe for some of Rah Digga's worst singles), but somehow the extreme contrast between Yah's gritty style and the Southern pop beats really clicks.  Also, that guy who sung the hooks on those two songs?  He's all over this album; singing on more than half the tracks.  Again, not the sort of thing I'd want to hear Yah have on his album on paper, but the guy's good and it all strangely gels.  And listening to the album, I now know his name is Mister C (albeit guessing on the spelling).

Not that all of the songs here are just like the two on the single.  Clearly one thing they're aiming for is variety.  Some songs are clearly made for Yah to just flex his skills, while others slow things down to get more serious.  But most of it works.  It really is a weird hybrid of a NJ and FL album.  Guests aren't credited, but "Das How You Like It" is a bit of a posse cut with Jus One and Critical Madness, and "Without Struggle" is a sociopolitical duet with an MC I can't place[I almost want to guess Ill Bill, but nah... right?!]; and yes, both of those also feature hooks by Mister C.  Oh, and speaking of Mister C, he even gets his chance to rap with Yah on "We Ride," which is probably the worst song on here, trying to push Yah into a more west coast: the only experiment that doesn't really work.  But it's not C's fault.

The only song not produced by Sage is that "Without Struggle" track, which is produced by someone named 1 Spade for Beatwave.  This song and "What's It All About" slather on the R&B elements, but because they can do it so well, and Yah and still make it entirely his own, they wind up being some of the best tracks on here.  Yah shifts his subject matter up just as much as the instrumentals, gliding smoothly between punchline-laden battle raps, surprisingly earnest messages, and the Outz' unique take on street life, "niggas think they tough 'cause they got out of jail; take some shells, let's see if you can get out of Hell."  Yeah, this is that real Outsidaz shit we love!

I'm also happy to report that the glitch from the CD single is gone, so the end of "All I Need Is Some Love" (here simply titled "Some Love") doesn't futz out at the end of the song.  So complete, undamaged versions of this song do exist.  But I really wish more people had ordered directly from 5th Lmnt back in the day when we had the chance, so we'd actually know how much music there even is out there... and maybe even enough fan interest to get those guys to put it back out on the market.