So you go to the Soul Train Awards. You end up in the House Of Blues. Meanwhile you are high as a kite on shrooms. In the club you see Puffy with 6 bodyguards. Which sobers you up to the reality that there seems to be an East Coast – West Coast beef. You speak to Puffy a bit, and get paranoid as fuck afterwards because somebody might have seen you talk to him and you are on the West Coast. Plus, did that actually happen? Normally Puffy is never that nice. So you just sit back in the back while the shrooms are peaking. All of a sudden out of nowhere you hear: METH! METH! It is the one and only Queen Latifah asking what the fuck you are doing in the corner like that and pulling you over. Sometimes, you just need a friend like that with that energy.
That could be the end of a story. But what if at the end of the night you walk into Tupac and Suge. And ‘Pac is all politicking about how the RZA incident1 would have never happened if he was there. On top of that he shares that everything is cool between Death Row and Wu. Meaning that it was not a East versus West beef, but just Death Row and Bad Boy. What do you do? You zone out on the Tupacs Death Row piece. That is what you do when you are Tical.
This story of course caught my ear, as did several other anecdotes by Meth. Like the story about the Got My Mind Made Up2, his appearance on Oz3 and his acting career. If you want to hear all about that, go listen. I just wanted to follow up what Meth was sharing about the UK, because he gave some big ups there.
So first off, there is Ocean Wisdom. This is a British rapper is apparently famous for rapping faster than Eminem on Rap God. I actually know him from his feature with Meth called Ting Dun. Which caught my ear immediately due to the sample. It uses a vocal sample by The RZA from his Airwaves track off RZA as bobby digital In Stereo. Which was also used in The Anthem by Sway & King Tech, featuring Pharoahe Monch, Eminem, Xzibit and KRS One. That track is a fucking classic. And on that foundation we have Ting Dun.
Meth also mentioned Blue Meth and the song Winnebago. To be honest, I was not blown away listening to this. Nor have I heard before of Blue Meth. But here it is.
For this one I had to look a bit harder. Meth only mentioned P Kay. Quite a generic name. But at some point, gonig by the lyrics Meth was spitting, I found the track. By the sounds of it you’d think this was a fresh battle rapper. But you might be a little surprised when you see the video because P Kay is bit older. But you’d never guess that from the verse Method Man was spitting. Well if this was entertaining I’d suggest going down the rabbit hole that is Pete & Bas, and maybe even Northern Boys. They have been doing grime for a bit now and are pretty entertaining.
Talking about grime, it is nice to see Little Simz be named and recognized. One of the biggest artists to come out of the UK in a while, with multiple awards to her name. Meth mentioned the recent track Gorilla from her NO THANK YOU album. But I’d like to highlight another track of hers called Venom. A must hear that really demonstrates that Little Simz is on a whole ‘nother level as an MC, and Meth knows. If you do want to listen to more of Little Simz, I can recommend the Sometimes I Might be Introvert album.
Speaking of Little Simz, and MC’s needing to step their game up to compete with her. You can also find her in the Top Boy series. In which she acts alongside the great Kano, a true grime legend. His last two albums, T-Shirt weather in the Manor and Hoodies all summer are classics to me. And just for the hell of it I am posting his Class Of Deja underneath.
Top Boy series also featured Dave. Dave his first album is Psychodrama. When I first heard this album, I was caught off guard by how fucking insanely great it is. It is one of those records that captures depression and guilt in a way that one can feel the pain while listening. The Lesley track is an true culmination of all that pain into a 11 minute track that passes before you know it because it captivates you into the story. First time I heard it, I kept rewinding it, not knowing that I kept rewinding 6 minutes or more. The people in the shop must have thought I was crazy. With that being said, I can also recommend the Dissect series on Psychodrama. It will give you a lot more context on Dave and the album.
If you have not yet, give the Drink Champs episode a listen. It is a bit long, as most of the time. But Method Man shares some great stories, and the episodes does not divulge into a drunk shouting match.
- The RZA incident refers to an incident in the 662 club in Las Vegas. Somebody from Wu got into a fight with people from Death Row, allegedly Danny Boy was included. In the fight, RZA got his chain snatched. Tupac made sure that RZA got his chain back, and explained to Meth how this would have never happened if he was there. There are interviews with Tupac & U-god in which this is mentioned. ↩︎
- The 2Pac track Mind Made Up from the All Eyez On Me album was originally a Dogg Pound track meant for Dogg Food with Lady Of Rage, The Dogg Pound, Method Man, Redman and Inspectah Deck on there. It did not end up on there because they lost the A-DATs with the track on there. Fast forward to 2Pac coming out of jail, and on to Death Row. While they are working on the album Daz is going through his A-DATS, and finds the record. At this point Lady Of Rage had already used her verse on her own album, so Daz decided to take that off and give it to Pac. He loved it and immediately recorded his verse.
Now here there are multiple stories. Some say 2Pac though the track was too long, so he could off Deck. Some say the 3rd A-DAT was not there with Decks verse. And there is the story that ‘Pac cut Decks verse because there was no more beat.
Besides that it also seemed that Dre took credit at first. When 2Pac found out that Daz actually did the beat, they started to drift a part.
The original version with Deck his verse can be found here. ↩︎ - The character of Method Man actually got killed off after a few episodes due to his tardiness. ↩︎