People who weren’t in Brooklyn missed a lot of freestyles or songs that Biggie had done with lesser-named artists and they all appeared on this tape - the freestyles from the Budweiser Superfest in ’94 that he did with 2Pac at Madison Square Garden, the freestyle he did over “Ellie’s Theme” from Shaft, etc. The full Biggie picture of that time.
Revolutionary at that time. People had had big name artists drop freestyles at the beginnings of their tapes before. But this was a whole bunch of them, like 20 minutes of freestyles by big name artists. It was one of those things that you could listen to from beginning to end and was just phenomenal.
When Kid Capri stopped making tapes, Ron G took the crown. He was the first person to blend hip hop beats to R&B which, of course, is what R&B is today. And he still gets no credit for that. He would even blend “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay” with “I Know You Got Soul” - a bugged combination.
The intro to this tape was massive: Stephanie Mills’ “Something In The Way You Make Me Feel” with The Honey Drippers’ “Impeach The President” underneath. If you walked down 125th Street at that time, all along the street people were outdoors selling tapes and that intro is all you would hear. People would just rewind it.
A tape of all breakbeats that is still relevant today. Pure Hip-Hop.
Took the Doo Wop ’95 Live concept, but instead of 20 minutes he made it 90 minutes. Pioneering.
S&S had Uptown locked at that time. He got his name by dropping exclusives and here you’ve got Naughty By Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray” months before it came out.
Prior to ’95 Live, Doo Wop had his own squad, the Bounce Squad, which was Snagglepuss, U-Neek, Lord Tariq, Chris G and Rampage (not The Last Boy Scout). Hearing these guys freestyle in the first 10 minutes was the highlight of Doo Wop’s tapes because at that time there was nobody getting really hardcore like them in New York. And on this one particular tape, Chris G and Rampage were making death threats against Kid Capri.
Whatever their beef was, it was obviously ridiculous and stupid and it’s finished now.
Five key DJs handpicked by Tony Touch on one tape: himself, Premier, Mister Cee, P.F. Cuttin’ and Evil Dee.
For a big label like Bad Boy to put out a mix tape was a surprise. But they proved over the course of four volumes of tapes (later with Stretch Armstrong, S&S and Doo Wop) that it was a worthwhile experiment. There were so many exclusives, especially Bad Boy exclusives, that people would run to the stores. It got Bad Boy a street audience.
