“Let me tell you… how it will be. That’s 1 for you… and 19 for me.” “And this is what you rap to her…” I can still feel the sweat on the pads of my Sony headphones, riding uptown on a train car with faulty A/C. What this tape contains has survived no small amount of challenges: It didn’t get dubbed over, at a time when nobody thought any of this would matter; it was transported cross-country, twice, in a shoebox; it lived, without a case, in the door pocket of my car for a year or so; and finally, it got lost in my apartment under a huge pile of unlabeled or incorrectly labeled cassettes from the era. This thing has God on its side.

What you are about to hear is a live “breaks” mix, circa fall of 1995, from WNYU radio. I have no idea who the DJ is, but if anyone that was around back then has an idea, I’d love to know. Whoever it was… this was the pre-serato, CDJ, mp3 era… they had the joints. That wasn’t a small thing.

Now I know everyone and their mother has since caught these records, sourced the artists, found a box, sold them on ebay, bought them back for cheaper, gripped it and flipped it and… well suffice to say if you call yourself into beats and grooves and breaks, and can’t name every record on this mix, in 2010, well… you are not at all thorough. But that’s not the point. No, it’s not. These are not exactly top tier secret squirrel records NOW, but back then, you had to have some game to have the kind of collection that powered this mix. And the skill with which it’s executed – again, all live, all vinyl – I know this mystery dude has to be someone of a certain stature.

Another challenge this tape survived: I played it every day, multiple times, in a walkman that didn’t even make it to the following year. And every time I listen to this mix now, I’m transported back to that era. I’m right there, on the train uptown, looking out the window at the apartments and projects, the huge throwies and fill-ins and rollers that replaced the classic pieces which occasionally could still peak through and give us a glimpse into another past, yet further off. The rush of finding joints on here, for the first time: for me, this tape was a genesis. Sure, I was already digging for records, DJing, sampling, and I was listening to all kinds of music from jazz to salsa and rock to funk and so on. But, to use a vague, loaded term that I still think any record guy can understand, I didn’t get it. I got turned on by this mix, it all started to click.

Hopefully, if you were into hip-hop and breakbeats in the mid 90s, this will take you back to those days. If that era precedes you, maybe you’ll find this entertaining and authentic. And if you’re not into that scene at all, maybe you’ll still learn a cool record or two that might seem like old hat to an old head. Whichever way is up for you, please enjoy with my compliments.

- Jonny

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Long-time Good Records NYC customer and homie Brian H. from California (and Philadelphia, briefly) has an awesome music & design blog that you should really check out called Dreams In Audio (www.dreamsinaudio.com) where his recent obsession with African music is getting represented lovely.

Brian has laced us with the following mix that is packing, well, a hell of a lot of that fire.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Track list below the fold.

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About a week ago Phill Most The Soulman, the man behind World Of Beats and ThatRealSchitt, upped a new mix of breaks, psych, funk, and all sorts of other madness (head to the jump to download the mix itself). To a lot of us, it was a welcome return by one of the originators of the “break tape”, one of the first guys to write about digging culture online, one of the inspirations for us to do what we do.

Rather than simply linking to Phill’s site and offering a few choice compliments of the (deep, mindblowing) mix, I thought I’d hit the man up for a quick interview to chop it up on the history of the WOB column and website, his thoughts on the game, past present and future, and the life of a man many consider a legend. Thankfully, he was all too willing to oblige.

Jonny Paycheck: So basically, I want to throw it back to the World Of Beats, which this mix really brought me back to, even though it’s on, kind of, another level than what cats were checking for back then. So WOB stretched from I guess around 93-94 when you had the magazine column to 2001 or so on the WOB site. Is that about right? Can you describe the course of the column/site/blog briefly, and why you decided to end it?

Soulman: Actually the original World Of Beats column that was in Rap Sheet ran from 1994 to 1995, a little more than a year. And the internet version of the WOB started in 1999 and I kept that going for almost three years. The whole idea behind the column was just to show a side of the Hip Hop world that rarely got any coverage in the magazines or tv shows that specialized in Hip Hop, and it’s a very important part of the artform that deserved some attention. I don’t think the editors at Rap Sheet really understood what it was all about or the significance, but to their credit they let me go ahead with it anyway. Actually I first introduced the idea for an article I did on Pete Rock; after that they asked me to do a monthly column on crate digging. It quickly became the most popular regular column in the magazine; I know I got a lot of letters sent directly to my address and from what I understand Rap Sheet got a lot sent to their offices, too. One of the things I wanted to do was to interview not just famous Hip Hop producers, but also deejays, record dealers and also collectors who may not have been household names but knew their stuff when it comes to beats and old records. A lot of times the producers don’t really know as much about records as you might think they do…

Hit the jump to read the rest of the interview

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It seems odd to make an appreciation post so late in the game – I mean, it’s nowhere but up for this cat. But he’s been around the block a few times, you know?

Anyway, here’s a photo of Jacob (and the boy Zvi lurking on the bench!) from back when my shop barely had furniture. So you know we all go back like that.

And here’s the debut video from White Van Music, “The Truth” featuring Freeway (one of my favorite rappers in the game), and Brother Ali – a cat who I’ve known about but can’t say I ever really messed with. I guess I’m one of those guys that rarely gives a mention but zooms in and respects him as a legend, eh?

Funny thing, the first time I ever heard of Jake was back when I was I was working at SandboxAutomatic. We got a run of the Conmen “Smooth Criminals” mixtape, and I took one to “review”. I let the tape rock ’til the tape popped – from the hooptie to the rooftop boombox, that schitt was on smash.

History: as a young dude I was finding out about records from trial and error, hearsay, and a few friends who were nice enough to pass something on as they were digging. I found out about Phill The Soulman’s column around that time, and the homies Cosmo Baker and Ben Velez had their thing in On The Go too. But these kids out of Seattle were on That Next Shit! It was like all the records that were just rumored to exist at NYC record shops, The Roosevelt Show, the houses of Biz Markie and John Carrara and… anyway, it was like they were all out there on the west coast for the taking at thrift shops and dollar bins everywhere.

As fate would have it, Zvi is my family from days of old, and he and Jake hooked up, and Jake started coming down to my fledgling record shop. Since then we’ve hung out a buch and become friends. And I take great pride in my mention (Ralph!) on the liners to his new record.

Of course, the album itself features a who’s who of rappers who might’ve never been on the same record were it not thought up in some rap nerd’s daydream … M.O.P., Posdnous, Keak The Sneak, Slum Village, Ish (of Digable Planets and Cherrywine fame), Young Buck, Casual, D. Black … and they all represent lovely over The best beats the game has heard in a long minute. No exaduration. If I’m lying I’m dying.

So, in addition to the things that are freely available on the internets to JakeOne stans everywhere, I thought I’d also upload something you DON’T have. Jake wrote in the liners that he gave Keak a whole CD of tracks and that Keak recorded over all of them. Now, I don’t have all of them! But I did get a couple tracks from a while back, one of which makes the album in the form of “Soil Raps”. The other, however … never seen before, heard before, the uncut raw! Now I must warn you this is on some Town Shit. If the rumors of a JakeOne-helmed Mob Music album are true, maybe this is a precursor? I, for one, am geeked.

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