Back in May the Bloated Penguin wrote a bit about the cast announcements for The A-Team, the movie, that post can be seen here. Well the official cast has been tapped since then, Liam Neeson as Hannibal, Bradley Cooper as Face, previously it was believed that Common would play B.A. Baracus, but that role has official been assigned to UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and now Sharlto Copely (Wikus from District 9) as Murdock. The filming has apparently started filming in Vancouver which got me to thinking of the TV series.

This show was easily one of my favorites as a kid. Also this was one of the very things that my dad and I did together was watch The A-Team, the old man worked a lot, not that he didn’t love me or some shit. I digress. We would both always be fascinated in how they concocted a plan and then executed to near perfection. My dads favorite character was Murdock, cus he was a goof ball and my dad just likes people that can make him laugh. My personal favorite was Mr. T, who can hate on those chains and mohawk.

If you’ve never seen The A-Team here’s the premise, a group of ex-United States Army Special Force soldiers become soldiers of fortune while running from the military for a “…Crime they didn’t commit”. Even though they were soldiers of fortune, they always sided with the good, essentially there was always a happy ending at the end of every episode. Sadly the show only ran for 5 seasons before NBC canceled it due to poor ratings. The original cast consisted of George Peppard as Hannibal, Dwight Schultz as Murdock, Mr. T as B.A. Baracus and Dirk Benedict as Face.

Over the weekend, my cousin brought up some older movies he was getting into lately.  One such movie happened to be the original live action adaptation to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Considering, we’ve gotten so many comments on the elusive Bioworld Merchandise fitteds.  And with a previous post involving fan made Ninja Munnys, we should’ve paid homage to creation of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird a bit sooner.

I don’t think I have to delve too much into background of the 4 mutant reptilian ninja brothers.  But upon digging up the above pic, I recently discovered in the original comic, Splinter was actually just a rat that could mimic his master, Hamoto Yoshi’s moves and mentored the Turtles.  In the 80’s cartoon series, Splinter was a mutated Hamoto Yoshi.  Thanks to the quick wikipedia’ing I did, I now have the urge to rent the latest Wii adaptation of TMNT.  Happy Thursday all.

In the past, we’ve done Throwback Thursdays that shared where samples originated.  From there we’ve switched up to music of the 80s and 90s that deserve a bit of polishing and replay.  These days, I’m going through the catalog of mp3s I collect and often times wonder where I got them from.  One such song would be “I’m Only Shooting Love” by the Dutch synth pop band, Time Bandits. Although America only recognized, “Live It Up” as a crowd-pleaser, the band had a fair share of top ten hits worldwide.  Enjoy the above music video to “I’m Only Shooting Love“.

I was perusing through my all my old hiphop cds that I’ve now archived on my iTunes. One thing I noticed was that I don’t really have a whole lot of hiphop on my list anymore and in terms of albums I barely have any, like under 5. But one of those is a favorite of mine that I haven’t stop listening to even 14 years after it originally was released. Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version is one of those few albums I still listen to from beginning to end. Now I know a lot of folks felt this album was over rated and such, but this has always been a personal favorite of mine. Ol’ Dirty Bastard, aka ODB aka Big Baby Jesus aka Dirt McGirt aka Osirus aka Russell Jones (Government name) aka Dirt Dog aka…fuck it you get the idea, the man had a billion aliases but he’ll always be remembered as one of the original members of the Wu-Tang Clan, who’s style and flow was none like any others.

During his solo career he released two albums while he was alive, the aforementioned Return to the 36 Chambers and Ni**a Please, after that was a bunch of stuff that were in the vault so to speak, as Dame Dash signed ODB to Roc-a-fella records once he was released from prison and he was recording some material.

On November 13th ODB collapsed at Wu-Tang’s recording studio and was pronounced dead within the hour. There has always been speculation as to what happened, but none of that really matters. What does matter is that we lost another talented MC.

Here are some of my favorite jams.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Brooklyn Zoo”

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Hippa to da Hoppa”

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Raw Hide”

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Got Your Money”

Chances are if you listened to East Coast ’90s hiphop, you probably listened to Native Tongues. Groups affiliated with the Native Tongues were The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and of course this week’s Throwback Thursday, Black Sheep. I give credit to my cousin for introducing me to the whole Native Tongues crew, as he was based out on the east. Black Sheep comprised of two members, Dres and Mista Lawnge, and the group had some ridiculous jams back in the day. Their first album, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, sold over 500,000 copies and had hits like “Flavor of the Month”, “Butt…In the Meantime”, “The Choice is Yours”, “Have U.N.E. Pull”, “Yes”, “Strobelite Honey”, damn it, the whole album was pretty much crack. I remember “The Choice is Yours” was a big favorite between my cousin and I as we would pull lines from it and shit. “Flavor of the Month” was another favorite, but it wouldn’t be yeaaaaaaaars til I actually knew what the context of the song actually was.

Black Sheep released two more albums, Non-Fiction and 8WM/Novakane, but neither release ever saw the same success as the first LP. The two split up shortly after the last album, no real reason were ever given and since then they’ve gone on to pursue solo albums. But we’ll have these classic joints with us, check them out below.

Black Sheep “The Choice is Yours”

Black Sheep “Flavor of the Month”

Black Sheep “Strobelite Honey”

This week’s Throwback Thursday is dedicated to Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith collectively known as EPMD (Erick and Parrish Making Dollars). Their first album, Strictly Business, was released in 1988 and had heaters after heaters. “You Gots to Chill”, “It’s My Thing” and “Strictly Business” to name a few. The first time I heard “You Gots to Chill” I went nuts, that beat was sooooo nasty. It wouldn’t be long til we heard from the duo again as they dropped Unfinished Business the very next year with bangers like “Get the Bozack” and my personal favorite “So Wat Cha Sayin”, this rhyme right here had me hitting rewind over and over:

“Yo, I’m the hip-hopper, plus the show shocker
Down with MD, yes the microphone doctor
One wrecks, the other destroys
And if you think that you’re ready to mess (kill the noise)”

There would be more hits along the way with jams like “Gold Digger”, “Rampage” which had LL Cool J on the track, “Give The People” and “Crossover”, but after that 1992 album, Business Never Personal, the two had a falling out and split apart with Parrish basically pointing the finger at Erick being responsible for his home being robbed. The two went their separate ways and did solo careers and founded some dope emcees along the way, such as Redman, Das EFX, K-Solo and Keith Murray to name a few heads. Eventually though the two reconciled their differences and teamed up once again, their album would be one of the most anticipated hip-hop albums ever, Back In Business, personally not my favorite, but it was dope to see the group re-united again. They would release two more albums with the last one coming out just this past December ‘08 called We Mean Business, which I personally haven’t heard yet.

EPMD “You Gots to Chill”

EPMD “Strictly Business”

EPMD “So Wat Cha Sayin’”

EPMD “Crossover”

EPMD “Goldigger”

This past weekend brought us the sad news that Baatin of Slum Village had passed away. So what better way to remember then to do a Throwback Thursday session. The group’s original members consisted of J Dilla, T3 and Baatin. When Dilla left to focus more on his solo work that’s when T3 brought in Elzhi to the group, that was after the second album, Fantastic Vol. 2. The first time I had personally heard Slum Village was the Fantastic Vol. 2 album, I remember my homeboy had this CD as we cruised in his ride. The song that I remember vividly was “Get Dis Money”, production-wise, flawless, rhymes, flawless, the shit was so smoothed out. The other track that stood out was “Raise It Up”, shit was nasty, made you put on that nasty grimey scrunched up face while grabbin’ your nuts.  This album, was the one that would receive critical acclaim, but it wouldn’t be until the third album, Trinity (Past, Present, Future), that the group would receive commercial success.

The latest album, Villa Manifesto, is due to come out in September. This particular project saw Baatin re-join the group again and also T3 had brought in Illa J, J Dilla’s brother. The intention was to not replace Dilla with his brother, but to have an essence of Dilla on the project. But until that drops let’s sit back for a minute a listen to some of the oldies but goodies. What were your favorite tracks? R.I.P. Baatin.

Slum Village “Get Dis Money”

Slum Village “I Don’t Know”

Slum Village “Climax”

Slum Village “Raise It Up”

Slum Village “Tainted”

Slum Village “Selfish”

Let me first start off by saying, I honestly had no clue what I was gonna write for this Throwback Thursday, mostly because I didn’t realize it was actually Thursday til my cousin reminded me by sending this old school Italo Disco track my way. I’ve actually never heard of this song until my cousin sent it through, claiming that he’s “been gay for it” over the past little while. The song is sung by a girl named “Rose” and the title, “Magic Carillon”, it originally came out in 1984 and was written and produced by Robyx also known as Roberto Zanetti. The record is a rare one as well, as I checked around online and while sure you can cop the reprint versions for mad cheap, the original vinyl commands about $250 USD, keep in mind this isn’t a full LP, just a 12″. Anyways sit back and enjoy this oldie but goodie, and in my case a classic new gem that I hadn’t heard til last night.

Checking back on past Throwback Thursdays, I realized that I hadn’t done one on Cypress Hill. Ya, my thoughts exactly. The first time I actually heard Cypress Hill was on one of my favorite movies of all time to this day, Juice. Hearing the song on that soundtrack piqued my interest enough to investigate further on these West Coast cats. I remember I was 11 years old and was starting to really get into hip-hop at this point and here’s this sick production work with a dude that rhymed in a very peculiar voice, but that’s what stuck out, his voice and delivery. The group consisted of B-Real, Sen Dog, DJ Muggs and Eric Bobo, but honestly I don’t really remember Bobo. The first two albums I straight had on repeat for a good year, well actually, my copy of Black Sunday ended up gettin’ all fucked up as the tape deck ate that shit up for breakfast. Below are some personal favorites.

Cypress Hill “How I Could Just Kill a Man”

Cypress Hill “Hand on the Pump”

Cypress Hill “Insane in the Brain”

Cypress Hill Ft. Fugees “Boom Biddy Bye Bye” Remix

Not gonna say too much about this man, but we all know he’s a legend. I still got my Michael Jackson albums all on vinyl from when I was a kid. Below are two Michael Jackson sample maps to show how the man has affected music.

Click on maps below for larger versions.

sample map source: ethanhein.com

Man, I need to go to the supermarket more often, I heard another old school banger on the in-store stereo, Johnny Kemp “Just Got Paid”. This jam is…well, the fuckin’ bees knees. This jam dropped in 1988 and came off of Kemps’ second album, Secrets of Flying.  It’s been a minute since I’ve heard this so it kinda flooded some memories when it came on. For you young bucks, that haven’t heard this jam or for those that haven’t heard it in a minute like myself, check the stream below.

Johnny Kemp”Just Got Paid”

The other day I was grocery shopping in this bougie grocery market, when to my surprise I heard The S.O.S. Band’s “Just Be Good To Me”. It’s been a minute since I’ve heard this jam, but I caught myself singing along while picking out fruits and veggies. The S.O.S. Band had a string of hits all throughout the ’80s, this particular song appeared on their fourth album, On The Rise. Here’s a video of the band performing the song live on Soul Train.

The other night I had the opportunity to catch The Juan MacLean live, and actually I took the opportunity to interview John MacLean of The Juan MacLean, which we’ll have on the site for y’all to read soon. Anyways in listening to The Juan MacLean album to prepare for the interview and doing some research, I thought that in a lot of their songs they had a lot of the call and response type lyrics that The Human League had back in the day. More research lead to me finding out that The Human League was actually an inspiration for this album, one of many actually, but one of the main ones.

Growing up I definitely was exposed to a lot of new wave, disco, synth-pop type music and even though I was just a kid, alot of these tunes are still in me. One of the albums that I remember as a kid that my moms played quite a bit driving to school every morning was The Human League Dare. Dare was the third album released by this Brit synthpop group waaaaaay back in 1981. On this album is probably one of the most memorable synthpop songs of this era, “Don’t You Want Me”. Song still to this day gets some play.

Anyways bringing this shit full circle, the first time I heard “One Day” by The Juan MacLean, it actually brought back similarities to this song and then I actually read their bio and found out that this indeed was an inspiration. And that folks is this weeks’ Throwback Thursday.

I’m kinda amazed we haven’t done a Throwback Thursday on the Fugees, considering their popularity. The hiphop trio from New Jeruz aka New Jersey dropped their first album back in 1994, 15…count it, 15 years ago. That album, Blunted on Reality, was a decent album that had some classic jams on there, “Vocab” and “Nappy Heads”, but it just didn’t do very well. That is until their second album The Score dropped, which shot them up in commercial popularity and their first album was re-released and sold over 4 million copies. If you were a fan of the group chances are you caught them on their second album which sold a ridiculous amount of copies, over 18 million copies. Yes that’s not a typo.

The album had hits such as “Fu-gee-la”, “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, “Ready or Not” and “No Woman, No Cry”, but honestly the whole album was solid. Straight classic status. After this album, they went on to pursue solo careers. Lauryn Hill dropping The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean has released 6 studio albums, while Pras was the one hit wonder of the bunch with the song “Ghetto Superstar” which featured Mya and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. In any case The Score would be the last album we would ever hear from the group. There were talks of a reunion, but that clearly hasn’t and more than likely is not going to  happen.

Now. Take a moment and to hear some classic cuts.

Fugees “Vocab”

Fugees “Nappy Heads”

Fugees “Fu-gee-la”

Fugees “Killing Me Softly With His Song”

Fugees “Read or Not”

With Mother’s Day happening this Sunday (yeah that’s right this Sunday, so make your last minute plans and buy your last minute gifts) we thought it’d be appropriate to dedicate this to all the lovely moms out there that show their kids an infinite amount of love and support, especially my own. Though we sometimes butt heads, deep down inside we always know our mothers have our backs no matter what. So to all those moms, Happy Mother’s Day.

Background on this song:

• Found on 2pac’s third album, Me Against The World released in 1995
• This was the first official single off of that album
• Dedicated to his own mother, Afeni Shakur.
• The “Dear Mama” music video was directed by Calvin Caday while 2Pac was incarcerated, a look-alike had to stand in for parts of the video.
• Tons of his colleagues have held this song in the highest regard, as it is simply one of the most heart felt songs in hip-hop.

This weeks’ Throwback Thursday, Sisters With Voices better known as SWV. Earlier this week I heard a song and it immediately threw me back to my youth. Ahhhh memories of trying to mack on the ladies by playing the album It’s About Time all while getting my fingers caught up in the bra. Yeah memories son. If you’re not familiar the RnB group consisted of three ladies ( Coko, Taj and Lelee) and they would sing these dope ass ballads and uptempo jams. The album It’s About Time was a huge success and produced a ton of hits such as “Weak”, “I’m So Into You”, “Right Here/Human Nature” and “Anything”. The song “Anything” actually had a hip-hop remixed that featured the Wu-Tang Clan.

A fact that I actually didn’t realize is that Pharrell is credited with backing vocals and The Neptunes also did some production work as well. A sign of things to come with all their success.

The group would never see the same amount of success as that debut album and subsequently fade out after the next two releases.

SWV “Weak”

SWV “I’m So Into You”

SWV “Right Here/Human Nature”

SWV “Anything”

SWV ft. Wu-Tang Clan “Anything” Remix

This weeks Throwback Thursday is a throwback to my young teenage years. I recently read that Rancid is working on a new album that’s scheduled to be released sometime this summer. I really didn’t catch on til later, like third album late (…And Out Come The Wolves). It would be the song “Time Bomb” that would initially catch my ear and lead me to hear out the whole album and then further back tracking to the previous albums.

If you don’t know who Rancid is. They’re a punk rock / ska band that came out in ‘93 with the self-titled debut album Rancid. They were fairly unknown until they’re second album, Let’s Go, came out the very next year, from there they’ve built more and more of a fan base with every album drop. The album that’s scheduled to be released this year will make it their seventh studio release. The original band members, Tim Armstrong, Lars Frederiksen, Matt Freeman are all still together with the exception of the drummer, Brett Reed. On a side note, lead frontman Tim Armstrong started a side band back in the day that I was really into as well called the Transplants, which also had Travis Barker from Blink 182 on the drums.

Check out some of the old jams below and get reacquainted.

Rancid “Time Bomb”

Rancid “Roots Radicals”

Transplants “D.J. D.J.”

Transplants “Diamonds and Guns”

Transplants “Gangsters and Thugs”

This week I struggled to think of a topic for Throwback Thursday, when I heard a Red Hot Chili Peppers song in the background and thought, “YES! That’s it!”. How could I forget, the group that essentially brought my hears into the Rock / Funk Rock genre. Admittedly I didnt’ catch on to the Peppers til their 4th album, Mother’s Milk, I remember I was 9 at the time and what really drew me into buying the album was the cover art (seen below). But honestly what really grabbed me was the music, in particular their cover version of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”, I was, and still am, a huge Stevie fan, and when I first heard this I was blown away with how dope their twist on the song was. Of course then there was “Knock Me Down” and “Taste the Pain”.

A few years later saw the release of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which was entirely produced by Rick Rubin. This was the album I thought that really blew them up, as everybody I know has the Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. This album was definitely different than any of the bands previous release as it was more uptempo with the exception of a few songs. The first single and video was for “Give It Away” and really sets the tone for the album, the video was epic, the lyrics were next level and had me trying to figure out what they were saying and wondering how in the hell was he rhyming so fast.  Other songs I loved were “Suck My Kiss”, “Breaking The Girl” and of course the song “Under The Bridge”, which quite honestly brought tears when I first heard this.

All these years later, the band is still together and has dropped another 4 more albums, bringing their album count to 9 studio albums. Their music influenced a generation and continues to do so to this day. Peep a few of the videos and songs below.

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Higher Ground”

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Knock Me Down”

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give It Away”

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Breaking The Girl”

Red Hot Chili Peppers “Under The Bridge”

This weeks’ Throwback Thursday was accidentally inspired when Mona Alice and I went for lunch and as we left the theme song for Threes Company was playing, she actually didn’t realize it was from said show til I mentioned it. Then she went on to get the song stuck in BOTH of our heads and we were humming it as we walked along the streets. That theme song was sung by Ray Charles, no not the one you’re thinking of, and Julia Rinker and I have no idea why it was playing at the pub as we were walking out.

Anyways I remember this show mostly because my dad watched it all the time. He loved the show and laughed hysterically at the tv, even though I don’t think he understood it all that well, but it was John Ritter’s slapstick type of comedy that probably entertained the man.

The sitcom ran between 1977 to 1984 and of course re-runs would run would for a good ass while after that. The original cast consisted of John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt, Suzanne Somers as the main stars, though Somers was later replaced with Priscilla Barnes who played Terri, an intelligent nurse, which pretty much was the opposite of what Somers character was, they stereotypical dumb blonde. Of course who can forget all the other characters that made the show what it was, Mr. & Mrs. Roper, Mr. Furely and Jacks’ best friend Larry.

Oh my favorite part was that Jack was a student studying to be a chef, pretty ballsy back then as cooking was typically considered “women’s work”, pffft. Maybe it was another reason my dad related as he too is the head cook.

Below is the veeeery first episode of this great show. Peep it and take a trip down memory lane.

“In west Philadelphia born and raised, On the playground was where I spent most of my days, Chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool, And all shootin some b-ball outside of the school”, don’t even front like you don’t know the lyrics. This series ran from September of 1990 to May of 1996 and was a mainstay for my teen years, damn I loved this show, if fact growing up people even said my humor was like Will Smiths’ character.

Anyways the show was a trip always teaching us lessons, as did most shows back then, but with a humorous twist. Will always getting in trouble and passing the blame onto his cousin Carlton (Alfonso Ribeiro), but always looking out for his youngest cousin Ashley (Tatyana Ali), whom I had a huge crush on (for the record we’re the same age). What also was a trip was that how one season Aunt Vivian just straight up changed, but I think they actually made a joke about it by having Will Smith’s character making a comment on how different she looked after the summer or to that effect.

At the end of the day every time I hear the theme song, it takes me in a time warp back to the ’90s and my high school years. Below is the extended version of the song and intro, also below is a clip from the final episode of the series *tear.