Foundation Magazine Mixtape Review

Here is a review of Dirty Harry's classic Make My Day mixtape that I wrote for the current issue of Foundation Magzine. Click the image to enlarge.

5 Essential Tim Dog Quotes

Tim Dog is a larger than life rap personality. Every time he opens his mouth, pure gold comes out. Over the years I’ve always been a fan of his insane ego as well as his reputation for saying whatever he wants to say. For those unfamiliar with The Dog, and those of you who know just what I’m talking about, I’ve handpicked five priceless verbal bombshells from over the years for your viewing pleasure.

1. “My moms used to tell me, “The cream always rises to the top.” I’m cream, motherfucker.”- ego trip Vol.2 No.5

2. “I can’t believe how dope I am. I’m the motherfuckin’ man!”- “Dog’s Gonna Getcha”

3. “I'm energetical, theoretical, copastetical, alphabetical, hypothetical
Yeah that is cool, no I'm not a fool
Takin' you to school, don't be late for school, fool
I'm fuckin' your girl while your ass in school
Fool, why bother drool, cause I'm too cool”- “I Get Wrecked”- Tim Dog and KRS-One

4. “To all the wack commercial rappers: wake up and smell the peanuts.”- Penicillin on Wax Liner Notes

5. “Give praise to god and respect your mom.”- Penicillin on Wax Liner Notes


Fuck Compton Video


Step to Me Video

Can You Dig It? Vol. 2: Cosmo Baker

Photo Credit- Ian Meyer

Name: Cosmo Baker

Claim to Fame: I'm a pretty well known DJ from Philly. A lot of people know me from my Love Break mix CD series.





I'm also one-third of a Brooklyn based DJ crew called The Rub. We do our thing and have put out a lot of remixes.



Representing: Brooklyn, NY and also Philadelphia 'til the day I die!

Years in the Game: I started DJing and collecting records seriously about 18 years ago, but I've been buying music since I was a kid. My very first record was a 45 of Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets." A few years later I went and bought Newcleus' "Jam on It" and I never looked back. I've come to the resignation that it will never really stop. I use Serato to DJ now, but even so I still buy wax pretty much constantly.



Best Digging City or Town: Philly used to be so good back in the early 90’s and you can still catch some spots on the low with heat. Detroit has been really good to me recently. I've definitely come up in places like Ocean City, NJ and other random, unexpected places where people were listening to crazy ill shit. Provincetown, MA used to have the crazy ill disco 12"s, I guess because that town is a really popular resort for the gay community. Pittsburgh, PA and Baltimore, MD have been good to me as well. There's a place in Calgary up in Canada that's ill called "Record World" or something like that. It's so big that whenever I go there I have to limit myself to searching for only one particular genre. One trip I'll do only folk music, another time only 80s 12"s and shit.



I've always had luck in towns that are around army bases. It seems like soldiers will have a really good collection when they're stationed somewhere, but when they ship out to wherever they have to go, they dump all their shit at the local thrift store. I've definitely come up in those small towns. But fuck it; you can always get hot shit no matter where you're looking. I don't believe that any one particular city is entirely picked over, because people are always getting rid of their vinyl.

Most Prized Piece of Wax: Probably my original copy of East of Underground, and not just because it's a super rarity or that it's the first record I spent over a grand on. It's just such a great record, and their version of "I Love You" was what my wife and I had our first dance to at our wedding. And it was her choice! Other than that my feeling is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There's such a sentimental value to the 45s that I raided from my mom's basement, and the rap 12" that I first bought when I started DJing that laid the foundation for my collection. Honestly, at the end of the day it's just a material possession, but it's what the music does for me that really matters.



Total Records Owned: Over the years I've tried to skim my collection of all the fat and just keep the really good pieces and serious heat, but all in all that's not easy when you buy and listen to everything. Right now I would say that my collection is about 15,000 12"s and LPs and a couple thousand 45s, split between my apartment in Brooklyn and my mom's basement in Philly.



Best Digging Story: There are so many, and the long road of digging has been the best story in itself. One story that first comes to mind is about this old pet food store that I used to pass by while walking from my house into town. I used to pass this spot all the time and I never even thought twice about it. One day I was walking by and they had a few milk crates outside. I stopped and flipped through them and pulled some HEAT. Immediately I had to go inside and see what the real score was. I’m inside this place and it's a mess. It’s stinking of cat piss, shit, and all sorts of terrible animal odors. I swear it was one of the worst smells ever. So I go in the back and there are cardboard crates of vinyl hidden in this back room and I'm sorting through the entire thing with my shirt over my nose.

The way that the crates were, you had to get down on your knees to sort through them. Within a few minutes I'm covered with cat hair and kitty litter that's scattered all over. But then I started pulling out some bangers. I first pulled Harlem River Drive.



And then right after I pulled out an entire collection of Strata East records.



Most of the records were in pretty good condition, but some of them I had to salvage because they had kitty litter literally caked onto the sleeves. Some of the shit I pulled couldn't be saved but you know I had to grab them anyway. I pulled the records that I wanted and brought them up to the dude and he was like, "$1 a record." I said, "Okay, sure." It's a dirty job sometimes but you got to do it. And that's what diggers are like…they don't give a fuck about any of that shit and will do anything to score some heat.


Around the same time in the early 90’s I was working with my friends who had a magazine and video called On the Go.



I used to write a column for the magazine called "Digging in the Crates" where I would review old records.



My man Ray who did the video for the magazine thought it would be fresh to have a "digging" segment on one of the videos. We went down to my dude Bob Dickey's old spot in the Italian Market, 9th Street Records, and asked him if we could film the piece. He was with it so I brought a few records from my collection to mix with his stacks. We were going to front like I found them and have me pull them from the stacks and show them to the camera. We filmed the piece and I pulled my joints, which were some heaters. Then they had me go up to Bob to pay for them and he "charged" me $2. It was all a front for the video, but after that there were all these people that started asking me, "Yo man, where is that record store?!? You came up for only $2!!" I would always tell them where it was, but I always fronted that they were on the spot scores. People still ask me about that shit, even though the place has now closed down. That was a really good time!

One more thing…shout out to my baby brother Walker. He got into collecting records when he was real young, kind of on some trying to emulate his big brother shit. One day I'm at the house and he came home from school and said, "Hey Cos, I bought this record today at a yard sale. Isn't it cool?" I looked at the record that he bought and it was Eugene McDaniel’s Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse. Then I looked at the price tag and it said 50 cents. My brother came the fuck up!



To visit Cosmo's website, please click here. To visit his MySpace page, click here. To visit The Rub website, click here.

Life Changes: New Wu Song Dedicated to ODB

This just in...Apparently Wu decided to leak this dedication song today. Download it by clicking the song title below.
Life Changes- Wu-Tang Clan

Rest In Peace ODB

ODB Storms the 1998 Grammy's

ODB- Brooklyn Zoo

ODB- Shimmy Shimmy Ya

Busta Rhymes feat ODB- Woo Ha Remix

Tha Alkaholiks feat ODB- Hip Hop Drunkies

Mariah Carey feat ODB- Fantasy Remix
When ODB passed away three years ago, I bumped his music all night and took tequila shots. It was what he would have wanted. Dude was without question one of the wildest personalities in the history of rap music. What other rapper could make hardcore hip hop heads chant stuff like “Shimmy shimmy ya”? From storming the stage at the 1998 Grammy’s to being all types of fucked up on an early episode of Yo!, Dirt Dog was always an entertainer. In order to pay my respects to the one and only Big Baby Jesus, I’ve compiled some videos in honor of the anniversary of his death. Notice how he isn’t actually in the “Hip Hop Drunkies” video. I’m sure there is a great story explaining why he didn’t make the shoot.

RIP ODB!!!

Wu-Tang Forver

Call Me D Nice

Random classic old school flavor of the day. What ever happened to this guy?

Can You Dig It? Vol. 1: Sloppy White

Can You Dig It? is a new interview series I’m experimenting with. The series will feature interviews with DJ’s, producers, and other folks about weird and memorable experiences they’ve had while digging (record hunting). If you are a DJ, producer, or record collector with a great story that you’d like to share, please drop me a line at gsorcinelli@gmail.com.

For my first entry in the series, I am proud to present Sloppy White.



Name: Sloppy White

Claim to Fame: A series of critically acclaimed rare rap mix tapes.


Fat Tape


"The Way It Was"


Get Some

Representing: Chicago

Years in the Game: I’ve been DJing since around ’92, but I’ve been collecting records since college, around the late 80’s. That’s not counting the shit I had growing up as a kid. I’d visit record stores and go pick up the popular hip hop records of the day when I was younger. I didn’t think about collecting or have a need to go out every weekend to dig until later.

Best Digging City or Town: The spots are kind of few and far between right now. It seems like a lot of places have dried up. When I moved up to Chicago from Alabama in the mid 90’s there were mom and pop places all around the city that you could go to and find tons of good shit. There were old warehouses that would get a weird variety of things ranging from punk rock to hip hop to jazz and soul. It was fun digging, and you would come across lots of gems. There were a lot of good scores for one or two bucks. Sometimes they would actually put sealed records together and you could buy them in bulk for five bucks or a two for one kind of a deal.

Those places have pretty much gone out of business with the music revolution that started here and when eBay first popped up. Now people want to see what kind of profit they can make on their own instead of dumping their records off in some warehouse or at Goodwill. The majority of my digging days are kind of behind me. I’ll still go out occasionally and visit some record spots here in Chicago. There are a couple of places that are decent, but they’re not nearly as great as they used to be. If there’s something that I’m really looking for I hit up eBay or GEMM and throw down the money if I want it badly enough.

Most Prized Piece of Wax: When I first started getting into digging culture I was really into Gil Scott-Heron. I always tried to track down his stuff. I went to college at Auburn University, which is outside a small town in Montgomery, Alabama. The biggest metropolitan area close to that was Atlanta, which had some decent record stores. I got the numbers of all the record stores over there and I would call them every two weeks to see what Gil Scott-Heron records they would have in. Sometimes they wouldn’t have any in and sometimes it would just be the Bluebird Revolution Will Not Be Televised reissue. I kept calling throughout they year, and I slowly started to get all of his records together. Even though they aren’t the rarest by any means, having all of his records is a special thing for me.



In terms of hip hop, I would probably say my Ruthless Rod and M.C. Dollar Bill E.P. is my prize record. They’re an old school group out of Chicago. I used two cuts off of the E.P. on my second mix CD, “The Way It Was”.




Total Records Owned: Hmm, I don’t know. The size of a record collection isn’t as important as the quality. I’m sure you’ve heard other people say that too. Records can overcome your life if you’re not careful. I’d say I have four or five big tall record shelves, but I really haven’t gone through and counted.

Best Digging Story: I used to work at a record store in Chicago called Reckless Records. There are a lot of music celebrities that come through the city, and some of them would come in and buy records. One day Fred Schneider from the B-52’s came in. I think he was in town recording a record with Steven Albini. This was sometime in the mid to late 90’s. He had spent an hour or so in the store looking through all the soul and funk records. Apparently he collects that stuff. The week before our manager had gotten on us for letting people use our bathroom in the store. I think someone had made a huge mess, so we were supposed to keep it closed off to customers. Fred Schneider, who had just spent over an hour in the store, asked if he could use the bathroom to take a leak. I told him that he couldn’t use the restroom, but that there was one across the street at KFC. I wasn’t even thinking that I should make an exception for him because of who he was. At the time I was working with Steve Albini’s girlfriend, and Fred was staying with them, and here I was giving him the cold shoulder. Not really intentionally, I was just following my bosses orders. In the end he had to go across to the KFC and buy a fucking biscuit just to use their restroom.


Fred Schneider standing in front of his record collection.

My second story took place about seven years ago. I was digging in a warehouse on the south-west side of Chicago. As I was looking through some records I came across a copy of a Barry White’s I’ve Got So Much to Give. The cover is a picture of him holding a bunch of chicks in his hand. I didn’t have the album yet, and I knew the guy I was getting the records from would cut me a deal if I bought bulk. If I bought in bulk from him it would usually equal out to fifty cents per record, so I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll pick this up.”


I started to pull out the record to see what the condition was, and as I pulled it out two things popped out. One was a little piece of paper that had a phone number on it. The other thing was an old, unused condom. It looked like it was from the seventies because of the weird artwork on the wrapper of two people holding hands. I picked it up, and it was kind of crunchy, so I didn’t try to use it that night or anything. It’s funny because that’s what people often think of when they think of Barry White. The Barry White record must not have worked. Maybe some dude was gonna take it over to his lady’s place and never made it over there. I don’t know. I just busted out laughing when it happened.

To purchase some of Sloppy's mix tapes and learn more about him, please visit his website by clicking here.