“Style 2 Sell”, My 1997 Hip Hop Hit.
January 15, 2010 – 3:29 pmToday I went to the thrift shop to find a tape deck so I could start digitizing my shoe box full of demo tapes. I lucked out and found a pristine Technics deck and it sounds great. I have roughly 30-40 tapes with various musical pieces. Well they were attempts at music. At any rate, they all need to be digitized, remastered and archived. I plan on releasing the best (or worst) of it here as I go through the pile.
The first song was a no brainer. In 1997, I was spending a lot of time slacking around with my buddy Josh, making music with whatever device we could get our hands on. I had bought a Roland MC-303 and we decided to try our hand at making a hip hop song. We didn’t have proper recording equipment, so we patched the mono output of the MC-303 into the left mic input on a tape deck I had and a mic in to the right input. This totally separated the vocals from the music. When it played back it was like listening to one of the first stereo albums with wacky extreme stereo effects, before they calmed down and put the vocals in the middle. It was fun but always kind of disappointing. The other problem was that we used a shitty mic without a pop filter so the vocals were really muddy. Most of the words were unintelligible.
Now, 13 years later, I’ve digitized the two tracks, cleaned them up (the best I could), mixed it to center and equalized it. It’s no Phil Specter Wall-of-Sound classic, but it sounds a lot better than it did and I’m happy to release it. Since I have the music and vocals separated, I think there might be a 2010 remix in the future.
Please understand that we’re not rappers. This was just for fun. Two dumb slackers playing around. I produced the beat and melody, Josh wrote and rapped the first half, I wrote and rapped the second half.
7 Responses to ““Style 2 Sell”, My 1997 Hip Hop Hit.”
I should have just had you say it was all you. We sound enough alike that people would have bought it. Then I could have pawned the “girl to bone” line off on you. :)
By Josh S. on Jan 15, 2010
Oh you’re not getting off that easy! LOL, we both go down with this ship!
By Ben on Jan 15, 2010
LYRICS (Part 1)
BEN’s Intro
Yeeeeah…wassup, the Silverlake Crew
is back in the house,
With a track for all the playas,
Now gettin’ played.
JOSH
Waitin’ for the bus I ain’t got a ride,
Down to my last dollar-forty-five,
Dirty-ass dude asks me for the time,
Got a bitch on his arm, wanna make ‘er mine.
Bus picks me up, driver looks like Mel from Alice,
In the back a homeless dude is picking on his callous,
Gettin’ ’round L.A. this way is strictly for the crazy,
Didn’t get my car because my ass was too damn lazy,
So I’m stuck on the bus for the rest of my days,
Someone draw me a map ‘cuz I’m sick of this maze,
Lonely, yes I’m lonely, yes I’m lonely, I’m alone,
Thinking back on the days when I had a girl to bone.
Now I guess ‘cuz I’m rhymin’ now I gotta choose a side,
The safest coast of all is the one where no one died,
East side, west side, such a fuckin’ bore,
North side, south side, “YA MEAN THE CIVIL WAR?”
I guess I’m down with the West, ‘cuz that’s where I was born,
The only good thing about the East is tons of porn.
I’m a Silverlake geek from the right side of the tracks,
But my homey Ben and me are future legends on the wax.
Wave your hands to the left, wave your hands to the right,
Our beats’ll keep ya movin’ like your underwear’s too tight.
I’m about through, no more story to tell,
Here’s my boy Ben he’s got style to sell…
TO BE CONTINUED
By Josh S. on Jan 15, 2010
Clearly I had no knowledge of the porn industry in 1997.
By Josh S. on Jan 15, 2010
Listening to this reminds me of the time I sat on Abraham Lincoln’s hat.
Fun track!
By RCoA on Jan 15, 2010
@RCoA Pics or it didn’t happen.
By Josh S. on Jan 15, 2010
I’m pretty sure you did the intro. But I can’t prove it.
By Ben on Jan 15, 2010