Blues & Soul (March 1988) / Big Daddy Kane 'Raw'

Sunday just gone was the first in a while with a decent weather forecast so the decision to hit the bootsales hard was made on Saturday night. Up at 5.15am and off on a sixty mile round trip taking in four large bootys on the way. To cut to the chase it was a pretty sh*t day vinyl wise with the only decent score being the promo version 12" of Channel Live's "Mad Izm" with the dope Buckwild Remixes for a pound. Other than that I took gambles on a few interesting looking bits that turned out to be crap. I did pick up 30 issues of 'Blues & Soul' magazine covering January 1987 through to March 1988 which I was very pleased with though.

Most of the Soul, Funk and Jazz artists covered in these later issues were well past their prime at the time and to be honest the articles on them hold no interest to me at all. What is cool though, is the inclusion of adverts for Hip-Hop records as well as the one page Rap feature called 'Wotupski'. 1987 pre-dates any specialist Rap mags so it's really nice seeing some of these old adverts in print. The 'Wotupski' article isn't too exciting - it's written by Paul Oakenfold and rarely covers anything unusual, mainly concentrating on the records that received U.K. releases but does include a weekly chart which is good archive material.

I flicked through the magazines and earmarked pages with the best adverts to scan and upload here. My favourite is this Cold Chillin ad for Big Daddy Kane's 'Raw' 12" along with Biz Markie's 'Goin' Off' LP and new releases from Cool G Rap and MC Shan (click to enlarge). As well as spelling Kool G Rap wrong it also states the 12" is a four tracker which unfortunately is also incorrect. Would have been nice to have an extra cut on the U.K. release, but no, it's exactly the same as the Prism and Cold Chillin U.S. pressings. Anyway, enough knitpicking - the advert is still dope. To accompany it I've uploaded four different versions of 'Raw'. I'm pretty sure this is all of them - the original 1987 version from the U.S. Prism 12", the 'Remix' from 'Long Live The Kane' album, 'Raw 91' and the demo version featuring Kool G Rap from the B.B.E. album 'Droppin Science - The Best Of Cold Chillin' (as far as I'm aware this is the only place to find this track on vinyl).

All versions feature variations in both music and lyrics and in my opinion every one of them is straight classic. If I had to pick a favourite though it would definitely be the demo version with Kool Genius and Kane killing it at their pinnacle over heavy Marley Marl production. Doesn't get much better...





Big Daddy Kane 'Raw (Original 12" Version)'






Big Daddy Kane 'Raw (Remix)'






Big Daddy Kane 'Raw 91'





Big Daddy Kane 'Raw (featuring Kool G Rap)'



I keep promising regular posts but I'm working like mad at the moment so please bare with me - whenever I get the time to write something up I will. I got lots to talk about.