Hey Everybody! Come See Me DJ Next Weekend! Cassidy vs. The Faint

OK, this is where I use this blog to mercilessly promote my other shit.

As many of you already know, I'm going to be DJing at the Tiger Bar on July 19. To give people a little taste of what I'm going to be bringing to the table, I thought a battle between two of my staples might be cool.

Be warned, these two acts have very little in common with one another other than they both tend to work their way into my set.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with one manslaughter conviction and one near-death experience with a box van, CASSIDY!

Some rappers have real names that are so awesome, they have to work them into their stage name. Marshall Mathers III took his intials and became Eminem. Talib Kweli Greene just pulled a Madonna and dropped his surname. Obie Trice's name was so awesome he skipped picking a rap name altogether.

Cassidy, on the other hand, was born Barry Adrian Reese, which may be the weakest name ever. Barry Reese is not the name of a street-hardened soldier. It's the name of a mid-level insurance salesman. The most Barry Reese can hope for is to be a big wheel down at the cracker factory.

On the other hand, Cassidy makes me think of a washed-up '70s pop star, so it's not that much of an improvement.

Cassidy starting rapping at age 13. He first got noticed as a battle rapper, winning contests on local radio and eventually beating Roc-A-Fella artist and fellow Philadelphian Freeway in a head-to-head battle.

In 2003 he released his first full-length album Split Personality. The idea was to showcase the "two sides" of Cassidy. Half the songs showed off his battle rapping skills, while the other half were poppier and more accessible to 14-year-old girls. The album was a commercial success but put a major dent in Cassidy's street cred. The mega-hit "Hotel," with a hook featuring R. Kelly, was the perfect summer pop song, but so soft it totally prevented people from taking Cassidy's battle styles seriously.

In '05 he released I'm a Hustla. The album featured minimal pop shit and had a title track/first single that came very close to being part of the burgeoning "crack rap" subgenre. Sadly, the album was a commercial flop thanks to Cassidy being "unavailable" to help promote it.

On June 8, 2005, three weeks before the release of I'm a Hustla, Philadelphia police put out an arrest warrant for Cassidy in connection with a murder in April of that year. He spent the rest of 2005 in jail awaiting trial. As a result, touring and promotional appearances were off the menu for Cassidy, causing the label to leave I'm a Hustla to rot. (Cassidy was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and released after serving eight months of an 11 month sentence.)

Cassidy's third album, BARS: The Barry Adrian Reese Story, came out in October 2007 and produced the slightly annoying club hit "My Drank and My 2 Step."

This is the video for "I'm a Hustla." Although the album fell flat, the single was the first song to go platinum as a cell phone ringtone, so that has to count for something. Also, if you look carefully you can see those fucking goons from Growing Up Gotti pretending to be hard in a couple frames.

This is a song that I usually play fairly early in my set, when I'm trying to weed out the weak by playing offensive shit that I happen to like.

It is Both Sad and Entertaining When Friends Fight: Princess Superstar vs. Kool Keith

This post is brought to you by Big Love, the TTC strike and the Toronto Raptors, who broke my heart.

The title of this post may be a little inaccurate. I don't know if Kool Keith and Princess Superstar are actually friends. I don't know if Keith has ever helped Princess move, or if Princess has ever tried to set Keith up with a lady. I have no idea if they read each others blogs.

What I do know is that they're about as similar as a small white girl from suburban Philly and a tall black guy from the South Bronx can be. They're both degenerate sex perverts, they both have a tendency to jam either too many or too few words in a verse, the both like to use weird non-sequiturs, and they both don't get along well with major labels. Most importantly, when Princess and Keith do a track together, they kick wicked ass.

The question is, who would win if they went head to head?

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the woman who said "I won't beat around the bush, so you can eat around mine," PRINCE-ess SUUU-PERRR-STARR.

Princess Superstar was born to a Russian-Jewish father and a Sicilian mother, who named her Concetta Kirshner to honour both halves of her heritage. I firmly believe that this may be the best real name of any rapper in history, with the possible exception of Obie Trice, who realized his name was so awesome that taking a stage name would be pointless. Both Concetta's parent's were psychologists, which might explain why she's so filthy.

Concetta started rapping and playing guitar as Princess Superstar in the early-'90s while attending NYU. In 1994, she put out a cassette EP called Mitch Better Get My Bunny. She sent copies of Mitch to the Beastie Boys and the folks at College Music Journal. In 1995 she released her first full-length album, Strictly Platinum. Strictly Platinum also produced Princess Superstar's first college radio hit, "I'm White."

After releasing almost an album throughout the back half of the '90s, Princess' production has trailed off considerably in recent years. Her last studio album, My Machine, came out in 2005, and the last one before that, Is, came out in 2001. That's not to say she's been slacking. She still performs live and has been doing a lot of work as a DJ, making mixed albums, playing gigs, and working as part of a duo called DJs Are Not Rockstars.

This is the video for "Bad Babysitter" off of Is. I like it for a number of reasons. One, I dig young girls, or 30-year-old women pretending to be young girls. Two, I like Mr. Eon, who guests on the song. He has the worst case of white rapper disease (great lyrics, no flow) ever, but he makes me laugh. Three, the whole thing feels like a weird In Living Colour sketch.


The Opposition

In the red corner, from The Bronx, New York, the man with more than two dozen alter-egos, KOOOOL KEITH!

Kool Keith first started rapping in the mid-'80s as a member of the Ultramagnetic MCs. As a group, Ultramagnetic was known for weird lyrical imagery and polysyllabic rhymes, but Keith took that to a whole new level with his boasts of having spent time in New York's Bellevue mental hospital. He allegedly was the first MC to come up with multiple aliases, although that sort of thing is hard to prove. He also provided the key sample for The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up." When Ultramagnetic broke up in 1994, Kool Keith headed out to California and signed a deal with Capitol records. Sadly, Keith never released anything on Capitol. In 1996, he re-appeared with a new alter-ego, Dr. Octagon, and released what may be his best-known album, Dr. Octagonacologyst.

If any of you are curious as to how many alter-egos Kool Keith has, here's a complete list, along with the origins of each name, from KoolKeith.co.uk.

KEITH THORNTON – His real name.
KOOL KEITH – His rapper name.
KEITH TURBO – He used this alias for the "Keith Turbo" track from the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
KEITH TELEVASQUEZ – He used this alias on Clifton with Motion Man on the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
KEITH KORG – His Analog Brothers alias.
MATTHEW – Keith’s middle name and alias for a full LP.
DR. SPERM – Known to be his first alias as a rapper.
DR. OCTAGON – C’mon, you know this one.
DR. ULTRA – He was Dr. Ultra in the “Five Deadly Venoms” Sprite commercials.
DR. DOOOM – He created this character with sick rhymes and a goal of killing Dr. Octagon.
BLACK ELVIS – Dr. Dooom’s twin. Created for the Columbia Records album.
POPPA LARGE – He’s Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
MR. GREEN – He used this alias on the back cover of Ultra’s Big Time LP.
MR. GERBIK – The dangerous 208 year old uncle of Dr. Octagon. Half Shark Alligator Half Man.
MR. ORANGE – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
MC BALDYLOCKS – Unknown right now.
THE FOURTH HORSEMAN – He considered himself The Fourth Horseman on the Ultramagnetic MC’s Four Horsemen LP.
BLONDE MAN – He referred to himself as Blonde Man in the liner notes of the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
CLEAN MAN – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
SHARK MAN – Another name for Mr. Gerbik.
ELEPHANT MAN – From 1996 to 1998 he always said he planned on releasing an album under the alias Elephant Man.
ALIEN MAN – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
JIMMY STEELE – He referred to himself as Jimmy Steele in the liner notes of the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
WILLIE BIGGS – He used this alias in the track "Still The Best" from the Sex Style LP. He also used it on the back cover of Ultra’s Big Time LP.
BIG WILLIE SMITH – He released a limited EP with the Beat Terrorists under this alias.
WILLIE NATURAL – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
REVEREND TOM – He first used this alias on the track "Fat Lady" from Ultra’s Big Time LP and later used it on Thee Undatakerz LP.
MIKE STANLEY – He uses this alias in DJ Sooky's Riddim Warfare LP.
LARRY LOPEZ – He used this name with Heather Hunter for “Toot Toot Hey Beep Beep”.
THE X – He used this name on the inside cover of the Ultramagnetic MC’s Four Horsemen LP.
RHYTHM X – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP.
X-CALIBER – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP.
X-74 – He used this alias in the song "Kick a Dope Verse" by the Cenobites.
FLY RICKY THE WINE TASTER – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
RICO FROM PUERTO RICO – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
FUNK IGNITER PLUS – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP, and he still uses this alias.
ROBBIE ANALOG – He used this alias to make fun of the RZA on the inside cover of Dr. Dooom’s LP.
SINISTER 6000 – He used this alias on Automator’s A Better Tomorrow.
CRAZY LOU – He Used this name as the guns and ammo salesman in "Weapon World" from Prince Paul’s A Prince Among Thieves.
LONNIE HENDREX – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
LIGHT BLUE COP – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
THE KID IN THE COMMERCIAL – This was one of his characters in the Livin’ Astro video.
JOE KINGPIN – He used this alias in the track "Still The Best" from the Sex Style LP.
BLACK LINEN – He used this alias in the track "Silk Suit, Black Linen" from the Masters of Illusion LP. Motion Man was Silk Suit.
ELVIN PRESLEY – He gave away cards at concerts. The cards had a picture of him with the name Elvin Presley.
DELI BOY – He was called Deli Boy in the comedy/porn “Sex For Life Too”.
SK8 JOHNSON – He used this alias in the Bootleg Skater videos.
PLATNINUM RICH – One the Diesel Truckers, along with The Funky Redneck.
EXOTRON GEIGER COUNTER ONE PLUS MEGOTRON – He used this alias on Marley Marl In Control in 1989. He also used a longer version. He also used this alias in Ultramagnetic MC’s track "Traveling At The Speed Of Thought."
ACTIVITY – This was his name when he was with the NYC Breakers
EXXON – He gave away cards at concerts. The cards had a picture of him with the name Exxon.
CAPTAIN KOOL – This was an alias he was supposed to use according to Liveonerecords.com.
CAPTAIN BLACK – This was an alias he was supposed to use according to Liveonerecords.com.
EXOTRON GEIGER COUNTER ONE GAMA PLUS SEQUENCER – He used this alias on Marley Marl In Control in 1989. He also used a shorter version.
ROBERT PERRY – He used this alias for the track Robert Perry from his Lost Masters LP.
JOHN CLAYBORNE COUSIN OF JIMMY HICKS – He used this alias on the Clayborne Family LP with Marc Live and Jacky Jasper.
MR. NOGATCO – Released an album under this name with Izreal.
TASHAN DORRSETT – Supposed to release an album under this name with DJ Junkaz Lou.
NAQUAN aka UNDERWEAR PISSY - Alias on the NEW Ultramagnetic MC's album, The Best Kept Secret.

In fact, he has so many alter egos, he's actually had rapper beef with himself. Dr. Dooom killed off Dr. Octagon at the start of First Come, First Served. Black Elvis then called out Dr. Dooom when his album was released.

If you haven't noticed by now, this is a blog that appreciates prolificness in an artist. I realize I should care more about quality than quantity, but sometimes I don't. I respect people who know how to produce, and nobody produces more than Kool Keith. In addition to releasing 17 albums and mixtapes between 1996 and now, he's also collaborated on projects like The Diesel Tuckers and The Analog Brothers, working as part of 12 different collaborative projects since 1993. He also keeps popping up as a guest on other people's songs.

This is the video for "Livin' Astro" off the Black Elvis album. Black Elvis was my least favourite Kool Keith album for a long time, but it's managed to grow on me. This video kicks fairly major ass, and more to the point, it sort of embodies everything Kool Keith is about.



Comment to vote, you know the deal.

Battle of the (Sort of) Reformed Pop Tarts: Robyn vs. Rachel Stevens

Sixteen year-olds aren’t known for their judgement.

I’m not saying this to harsh on the young’uns, I’m just pointing out the obvious. I was 16 some time ago, and I did some dumb shit. So did most of my friends. Sixteen year-olds do things like dress up like goths, experiment with bisexuality and heroin, convert to Islam and go through weird flirtations with Neo-Nazism.

The nice thing about being 16 is you can do all this dumb shit, then basically write it off to youthful indiscretion. Nobody will hold your old Skrewdriver records or kufi against you in the long term. You were 16. You were “finding yourself.” It’s all good.

Imagine what the world would be like if you were branded by your adolescent idiocy for the rest of your life? That’s kind of what life’s like for pop stars. They make one stupid decision when they’re kids, cut one dumb, treacly single, and are branded as a cheesy teen-pop star for life. That’s why so many of them live out the rest of their lives in miserable obscurity. It’s better to walk around as a nobody than live out the rest of your life as Tevin Campbell or one of the guys from Another Bad Creation.

That’s why I’m always amazed when teen popsters manage to salvage any sort of grown up career, let alone a respectable one that’s based on nostalgia.

But wouldn’t it be interesting if we were to take two recovered '90s teenyboppers put them head-to-head to find out who’s done the best job of distancing themselves from their shameful past.

Yeah, let’s do that.

The Main Event

In the red corner, with a shame factor of “Show Me Love,” from Stockholm, Sweden, ROBYN!

Here’s the backgrounder on Robyn.

She was raised by weird experimental actors in Sweden, “discovered” at age 13 and spirited away to work with weird Swedish Sven Gali Max Martin, the man who would later be responsible for most of Britney Spears’ early output.

At 18, after experiencing some commercial success in Sweden, Robyn was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Her single “Show Me Love” was an über-hit pretty much everywhere on the planet in the summer of 1997. I worked at a movie theatre in the summer of 1997 where I was forced to hear “Show Me Love” about a dozen times a shift. The song is still intrinsically linked in my brain with the smell of stale popcorn and harsh grease-cutting chemicals.

Later the same year, Robyn was booked as an opening act for the Backstreet Boys, but had to pull out due to “exhaustion.”

Unfortunately, it’s hard to take the child of two members of an experimental theatre troupe and force her to be the new Tiffany. Robyn eventually rebelled against her masters, first by writing ballads about abortion (hers), then by covering obscure ‘60s soul records, then eventually by making weird electro stuff where she sounds like a cross between a hyper-sexual Björk and Missy Elliot re-imagined as a tiny Nordic girl.

In 2005, the idiots at Jive Records eventually said “fuck this” and cut her loose. Since then, she’s been releasing shit on her own Konichiwa Records label. She only just got North American distribution, but she’s been doing a pretty good job of getting noticed in Europe, so we could see a full-fledged comeback before long.

I’m not going to front. I think post-2005 Robyn is the fucking balls. I don’t want to bias the electorate, but I like this girl a lot. So much so that I really had to debate which video I wanted to put up as an example of her more recent work. Eventually I chose “Konichiwa Bitches”, just because I think this song/video let’s your really know where this girl’s head’s at.



OK, now for the competition.

In the blue corner, with a shame factor of S Club Seven, from London, England, Raaaay-CHEL Steee-VENS.

OK, before we even get started on this one, let’s just go ahead and admit that Rachel Stevens is more poppy, more tarty and considerably less overall reformed than Robyn. She didn’t go from Swedish proto-Britney to some sort of weird acid casualty. Instead, she went from being one-seventh of the worst musical act in human history to maker of aggressively sexed-up dance tunes and future gay-scene icon.

For those of you in need of a history lesson, Rachel Stevens was a remember of S Club Seven, the worst musical group in human history. They were sort of a mixed-gender 1990s version of The Monkees. Except, where The Monkees made music that actually wasn’t that bad, S Club Seven made music that was so bad it has no Earthly purpose other than to torture terror suspects. . You can’t like it ironically, you can’t like it in spite of yourself, You can’t even put it on at a party and have girls giggle and dance with youthful nostalgia. You can only use it to hurt people.

Here’s a refresher.



After the cancellation of Viva S Club, the final S Club series, all of them dropped off the face of the Earth for a few years. In 2004, Rachel Stevens re-emerged as with “Some Girls,” a song so intense that the song alone, never mind the video, gave me a fairly serious erection. Rachel is hot. She’s kind of like Kylie Minogue multiplied by the power of Teagan Presley. She’s not doing anything deep and profound, but she makes ladies dance seductively whenever her shit is played. I appreciate that.

This is the video for "So Good" off the album Come and Get It, her second post-S Club outing. You know how all the Britney/Hillary/Lindsay types are going for this new "more grown-up" electro sound. This is what their shooting for. Now you can see how much they fail.


OK fools. All that's left is the voting process. You shouldn't need a Google account to post now, but if you do email me at cpdart@gmail.com and I'll try and figure it out.

UPDATE: It goes without saying that the deadline for voting is Friday at Midnight.

The First Post - Talented but Underproductive Rappers: Del the Funky Homosapien vs. N.O.R.E.

Those of you who've known me for sometime will know I'm a) full of shit and b) have wicked ADD. As a result, there's a good chance that this bad boy will get abandoned along with various other blogs, podcasts, bands and publications I've been involved with before getting bored and moving on to some next shit. That said, this idea is pretty simple. Simple enough even I can stick with it. It's sort of like the Tank Abbot-era UFC for music videos. Two videos enter, one video leaves. Sadly, we don't have a cage, or Bruce Buffer. I'm working on it.



In lieu of weight classes, there will be categories randomly created by me. If this thing gathers steam, maybe they can be suggested by you.

(Yes, I know early UFC didn't have weight classes either, hence allowing us to see 600 pound sumo wrestlers get kicked in the grill by 175 pound savateurs. Fuck off.)

Our first battle will be in the Talented but Underproductive Rappers weight class.

In the blue corner, weighing in at 160 pounds soaking wet, from Oakland, California, with five solo albums released over the course of 17 years, DEL tha Funkyyyyyyy HO-MO-SAPIEN.

Now, to be strictly accurate, Del has been a little more productive than one album every three and a half years would indicate. He produced the Deltron 3030 album alongside Dan the Automator in late 2000, he's contributed to three, soon to be four, Hieroglyphics Crew albums along with fellow Hieros Casual, Pep Love and Souls of Mischief. He did some guest vocals on the Gorillaz first album and on both Handsome Boy Modelling School records. Apparently he was in an episode of MTV's Made, which I think is fucking hilarious.

All that said, with seven and a half years between his last album, Both Sides of the Brain, and the freshly hatched 11th Hour, I don't really give a shit how many guest joints he does. That shit's just lazy.

Anyway, here's "Workin' It." It's on the new album.



In the red corner, weighing in at well over 230 pounds, from Puerto Rico by way of Queens, New York, with four and a half solo albums in ten years NORRR-EEEEE!

For the record, I have an problem with N.O.R.E. I keep insisting on calling him Noreaga. Much like my dad keeps calling Kareem Abdul Jabbar Lew Alcindor. For one thing, Capone-N-N.O.R.E. sounds stupid. For another thing, the actual Noreaga, who spelled it Noriega, looked like a pineapple.



With an average output of a solo album every two and a half years, Noreaga's production doesn't seem that slack, but those numbers are a little inflated. First of all, it includes 1999's Melvyn Flynt - Da Hustler, which sucked and nobody bought. Second of all, it doesn't show that he did exactly nothing between 2002 and 2006, and 2006 only brought us his weird reggaeton album N.O.R.E. y la Familia ... Ya Tú Sabe, which only counts as half an album because a) it's reggaeton and b) has an almost mind blowing 27 guest artists, making it more of a mixtape than anything. On the upside, it did have "Mas Maiz," which is a fucking sick song.

Here's "Cocaine Cowboys" off last year's Noreality. This video was banned by MTV, natch, and then apparently by MySpace, which is sort of insane, considering MySpace has some pretty borderline shit. I can understand why, though. The video alone is enough to make you want to grind your teeth and have really self-centred conversations.



OK, so that's it. All that's left is the democratic process. Voting closes at midnight on Friday.

EDIT: Just so we're all clear, comment to vote.