You know you’re in the zone making rap records when a tune like this is track no. 19 on your CD. Def. my favorite on Doggystyle, guess I just like the straight-ahead aggression and the simplicity. For, I dunno, 15 years or so, I thought the second rapper here was a woman and always made a note to see who it was and whether she’d made her own records. This could have been b/c I heard this song most often in the context of listening to Mixmaster Mike’s Neckthrust One mixtape, where the song was pitched up about 10%. But the rapper is in fact Lil Malik, who was Snoop’s cousin and was 15 or 16 when this was recorded. He was in a short-lived and mostly forgotten group called ILLegal, who sort of positioned themselves as the evil Kriss-Kross. “Head or Gut”, aimed directly at K-K, is a jam. But for my money Malik steals this one from Snoop, not an easy thing to do in 1993.
Mark Richardson
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Round about 1997 I bought a cassette called Neckthrust One by Mixmaster Mike, who was a member of the SF DJ crew Invisibl Skratch Pikliz. During this time, I was very into the scratch DJ scene in the Bay Area. Hand to god, in 1997 I thought to myself, “The Beastie Boys should hook up with these guys,” and then, in 1998, it happened and Mixmaster Mike has been the Beastie Boys’ DJ ever since. You won’t believe I really thought that. And since you don’t know me, you shouldn’t. But I did. I know the truth and that’s all that matters. The fact that the Beastie Boys have never been any good since then is immaterial.
Anyway. Mixmaster Mike. Neckthrust One. I listened to it often. I had a cassette deck and a walkman and, a couple of years later, a car with a tape deck. And this was in all three, often. Mike did most of it live to tape with two turntables and a mixer.
This passage has an instrumental bit—>Lord Finesse’s “You Know What I’m About” —> Snoop Dogg’s “Pump Pump”. I didn’t know what the Lord Finesse song was for years. This was before Google. There was not a search engine for me to find it. Later I learned that LF had many brilliant tracks to his name. I also learned that his voice was pitched way up here, as was Snoop’s, I’m guessing +5 or so on Mike’s decks. And I much later learned the the Lord Finesse track sampled the theme from “Scooby Doo”. And there’s an organ bit in the Snoop song that connects it. This cassette rip could be better, but maybe you’ll enjoy it.
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