To all my vets in the game, I got love, stay on your toesĬause back in the days I used to use yo 45 instrumentals to do my showsĪnd look, I was 17 when I signed my first contractĪnd about 18 1/2 when I signed my worst contract It was like a time they looked over Tennessee and didn’t know hip-hop was in it Who can make it in this rap, I thought that they ain’t gon’ see me in Memphis Strictly stickin’ to my dreams, but feelin’ like I’d be the last dude I can remember in the past closin’ down at fast foods We even put it down on some of our homeboys’ jail release dates In the process of doin’ talent shows, parties, and mixtapes With a remark like, ‘Hey, play that instrumental Not knowin’, but havin’ faith on just how long that it would beīefore somebody picked up my tape and played it It was obvious, I had to give up the streets for the beats Two years later, on the superb “Paid Dues”, his partner painted a similar, yet more detailed picture: Shit sick enough to bring vomit from your stomach” No electronics to make the shit that I wrote the chronic In the crib gettin’ funky off the next nigga beat No gun, just a pen and open paper by the sheets “Remember back when we used to do this shit for fun?īein’ the dopest on my block made me rank number one
In 1997, they contributed “Reason for Rhyme” to the “Rhyme & Reason” soundtrack. Like any rapper who has come a long way, they tend to ponder the past. Apart from this hard evidence, we also have Eightball and MJG relating their history first hand. The CD gathered songs they recorded while they were still aspiring rap artists in the Orange Mound section of Memphis. In 1997, by the time Eightball & MJG were known nationwide, their former label On The Strength (OTS Records) repackaged the duo’s earliest efforts under the title “Lyrics of a Pimp”. Although, I’m afraid the only leads I have are the aforementioned tape and the compilation that I’m making, for lack of a better candidate, the object of this review. This is about what they did before they were “Comin’ Out Hard” in 1993. The tale of how Eightball & MJG left Memphis for Houston to sign with Tony Draper and make hip-hop history has been told many times. That’s right, it’s none other than Eightball & MJG getting their b-boy stance on somewhere in Memphis way back in 1991. The cover photo shows a slender guy doing business on a public phone, one hand resting on the groin area of his stone-washed pair of jeans which he combines with a pink tee, with another, portly fella standing next to him, his hands buried in the pockets of a black hoodie, his locks tucked beneath a baseball cap worn backwards, facing the camera with a defiant look on the face. The spine says Eight Ball and MJG and lists three songs, “Listen to the Lyrics”, “Pimp in the House” and “Got to Be Real”. The front says 8 Ball and Organized Rhyme and bears the title “Listen to the Lyrics”. It’s not clear what it’s called and who’s it by. The label is On The Strength Records out of Memphis, Tenn. Let’s take this inconspicuous specimen I’m holding in my hands right now.
You couldn’t go national with just a tape release, but in regional and local markets the tape was often the only format an album was released in. So in a time before discmans and CD changers, before MiniDiscs and MP3’s, tapes definitely played a key role in hip-hop. A listening preference that ultimately influenced much of Western and Southern rap, but that’s another story. While your typical East Coast head may have held on to tapes because that was what bootleggers sold and that was how you made your music portable, in other regions tapes were popular for a very specific reason. If you got any records from these places released between the mid-’80s and -’90s, chances are a solid percentage of them are tapes. There existed markets where tapes were the dominant format for rap music, sometimes well into the nineties. And I’m not so much talking about the homemade and handed down mixtapes and show tapings that helped spread hip-hop to all four corners of the world, but about legit tape releases. Little did I realize back then that another medium was just as crucial to hip-hop as old fashioned vinyl and handy CD’s. I personally switched to compact discs when I realized not every album I wanted would see a vinyl release. If you cared about covers, about A and B sides, about direct access to any part of the record, if you knew what the DJ historically meant to hip-hop, if you believed digital was inferior to analog, if you appreciated the art of scratching, then you bought wax. For years the vinyl record has been hailed as hip-hop’s most precious raw material.
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