This week’s Throwback Thursday is coming straight outta Brownsville, Brooklyn. Yep, I’m talkin’ about M.O.P. short for Mash Out Posse and features members Billy Danze and Lil’ Fame. For the youngin’s out there M.O.P. has been in the game for a minute now with their first album, To The Death, debuting in 1994. I, personally, first heard of them back in 95/96 and it was through everyone’s hip-hop bible at the time, The Source. I was really getting my feet wet again with NYC hip-hop as Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers and Biggie’s Ready To Die really had me wanting more from the East Coast. So I took a chance and imported two albums to Canada, that was like $40 each CD at the time, those two albums were: Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt (which no one had heard of at the time) and M.O.P.’s Firing Squad. It was love the first time I heard both albums, but the M.O.P. album it was the gritty rhymes and the scratchy hard vocals that had me intrigued.With joints like “Stick To Ya Gunz”, “New Jack City” and”World Famous” to name a few. The complete album was a smash and featured production work from DJ Premier on quite a few of the tracks.

So for this Throwback Thursday we dedicate this to M.O.P.’s second album Firing Squad.

World Famous

Stick To Ya Gunz

Firing Squad

New Jack City

Downtown Swinga ‘96

Exactly a year ago we reported that Vodka brand Smirnoff was teaming up with Hip-Hop cats and remixing classic joints, essentially pairing up the songs original MC and teaming them up with some of this generations dopest producers. The first one that dropped was the KRS-One  & DJ Premier track “Criminal Minded ‘08″, that was followed up with Common & Just Blaze “The Light ‘08″ and the third and final installment of the series for 2008 was the  Q-Tip & Cool & Dre joint “Midnight ‘08″.

Well the series is BACK for the ‘09, except this years version is different than the last. Instead teaming up MC with producer, they’ve teamed them up with another vocalist. The first track has Nas doing “If I Ruled The World ‘09″ except this version features Marsha Ambrosius. The follow up to this will be Buckshot and Canada’s own Kardinal Offishall redoing “I Got Cha Opin ‘09″ and the third in the series will be Nice & Smooth with Pac Div doing “Funky For You ‘09″. Should be an interesting set of remixes this time around. For more information hit up http://smirnoffsignaturemixseries.com

To download right-click and save as. For Mac users hit “Control+click”.

Nas with Marsha Ambrosius “If I Ruled The World ‘09″

Here’s a new collaboration between two Vancouver ventures, Finale Design and The Urban Renewal Project. Together they’ve put together a t-shirt and mixtape package for all you hip-hop heads out there as it shows love to the culture. As mentioned the package also includes a mixtape which is mixted by DJ Sage of the Urban Renewal Project. The front of the shirt (pictured above) features some of the dopest DJs in the history and if you didn’t know who the four DJs are, they are DJ Premier, Eric B, Pete Rock and DJ Jazzy Jeff. The back of the shirt (pictured below) features the MCs that worked in tandem with these DJs and they include Guru, Rakim, C.L. Smooth and Will Smith. Pretty fresh design. To cop the shirt hit up www.urbanrenewalproject.net.

Download the mixtape here.

Rewind your clocks back to 1996, as I re-present to you one of the dopest albums of that year, well for me it was anyways. The group, Blahzay Blahzay, the album, Blah Blah Blah. The group only ever dropped one full-length studio album, but that one album was influential during the rest of the ’90s in Hip Hop for New York. Group members DJ PF Cuttin and MC Out Loud had worked in the game producing tracks for about 10 years for artists such as Masta Ace and Craig G. Their first single, “Danger”, featured a sample from Jeru the Damaja’s song “Come Clean”. Some of my other favorite songs on the album were “Pain I Feel”, “Good Cop/Bad Cop” and “Blah, Blah, Blah”.

The year was 1994, the artist, a fairly unknown Nas. In celebration of him releasing his 9th studio album and our collective love for him on Killahbeez.com, we decided to dedicate this Throwback Thursday to the album that kicked it all of. The album, Illmatic, is one of the most classic Hip Hop albums to have ever been released, it received 5 mics from The Source, which back in those days actually meant something.The album featured production from Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, L.E.S and Dj Premier. The album saw three singles officially released including the one above, “The World Is Yours”. If for whatever reason you don’t have this album, do yourself a favor and cop it today and hear why everybody talks about this album as THE album. Oh and if you ain’t copped Untitled, do so now.

One.

Here’s the official first video in the Smirnoff Signature Mix series. This one features KRS-One and Dj Premier for the song “Criminal Minded ‘08″.

To check out our past posts on this series click here.

Smirnoff has teamed up with three iconic MCs with three of hip-hop’s best producers to create three new interpretations of legendary hits. All this to promote three different Smirnoff Signature mix drink recipes. KRS-One will be teaming up with DJ Premier to remix “Criminal Minded ‘08″, which can be heard below and download the mp3. Common will work with Just Blaze for “The Light ‘08″ and Q-Tip will team up with production duo Cool and Dre for “Midnight ‘08″. Songs will be available for download as well as being accompanied by a video. Anybody remember those St. Ides commercials? I sure do, I remember collecting mixtapes that had these commericals. The freestyles were ill. So far I’m feeling this new “Criminal Minded ‘08″ joint. Have a listen and download if you like. After the jump, those old ass St. Ides commercials I was talkin’ about. G-yeah!

KRS-One & DJ Premier “Criminal Minded ‘08″

Download the track here