Tidy bit of conscious West coast biz from the under-rated crew who dropped just the one album on Ruthless. Produced by DJ Yella with Eazy E taking Executive Producer credit (i.e smoking weed in the studio with his Nikes up on the mixing desk), this extended mix was available only on the single (apart from some sketchy looking comp that was released only in Brazil). These fellas had it going on so it’s a minor tragedy that they never got the recognition or green they deserved from a half decent debut album, falling by the wayside whilst plenty with less vocal talent made it through from the Ruthless ranks…
Footnote: a bit of lazy research led me to what Yella is up to nowadays… Check It (NSFW)
My posting up of Blade’s ‘Forward’ the other day got me reminiscing about some of the other tunes I used to bump in my walkman on my paper-round. You know the deal with these; 30 or 45 mins each side, crackly copies of copies, sound levels all over the place with ‘stop’ button clicks all up in the mix and swiped from Woolworths or John Menzies aided by a hoody with baggy sleeves. For a kiddy on a wage of around £8 a week for doing the aforementioned paper-round, tapes were the only source of hip hop until you were lucky enough to get a weekend market job, doubling your income and enabling you to buy a bit of vinyl rather than relying on hand-me-downs from the village elders. For this reason, it was pretty rare for a tape to leave the walkman once it was in and since batteries weren’t cheap, the fast-forward button was rarely used, in an effort to preserve power purely for playback. Therefore, tunes were swiftly digested and lyrics were memorised in no time at all. Nothing more gangsta than a 14 year old Eazy E wannabe bothering your dog with a tabloid….
Real Niggaz has always been my favourite NWA song and whenever I hear it I’m back on Northumberland Avenue, freezing my tits off having a fight with a belligerent letter-box. Ren, Dre and Eazy are bang on it with some intense rhymes and the production by Dre & Yella was streets ahead of the beats on ‘Straight Outta Compton’. I could ramble shit about this tune forever but I’ll call it to a halt here and let the tune speak for itself…
(My only gripe with this version on youtube is that it doesn’t have the intro that the ’100 Miles & Runnin’ version did which I think set the tune up rather nicely, so the album vers will have to suffice for now)
