Grip Grand recieves the Great Artist Award. Not to scale: T-shirt.

Listening to: Eminem–Cleanin’ Out My Closet

I am not really listening to that song. I don’t even own that album. But it seemed like an appropriate intro to this article, which finds me airing out the old rap-vault. If you’re an artist, you probably have one, too…a dusty storehouse for all your almost rans and never weres. Not every song makes it out of the lab, and that’s probably for the best. Nevertheless, here I am, disinterring tunes that might have been better off buried. But who can really say? Only you, dear reader. Only you. So, with that in mind, here’s three loosies. You owe me a dollar fifty. 

(Music after the jump, chump!!)

Tascam Portastudio 414 cassette four-track recorder

For starters, we have Broakland Now. This is probably the first song I wrote after Welcome to Broakland came out in 2002. I recorded a demo over this same four-track cassette beat way back in early 2003, I’d guess. But technical difficulties wrecked the vocals, and I never went back to repair the damage. Years later (last week, to be exact) I did some surgery on the track, cleaned up/redid the vocals, boosted the low end, and voila! This old thing. Anyway, I like this poem, so I set it to music. Deal with it.

Listen:

Right-click to download:

Broakland Now

UCSC Family Student Housing, where these songs were recorded

OK, our second song is, like our first, hardly a song at all. This “beat”  is a drum loop off a shitty bootleg version of Prince’s unreleased Black Album. I got it from a track called Bob George. Not surprisingly, this cast-away Grip byproduct is titled “bob george” on my computer. I guess it never needed (or deserved) a name of its own. I recorded this in Santa Cruz, but I couldn’t tell you the year. Possibly 2003-2004. I remember that I was recording with no headphones, just with the music playing out loud, and Nick (the rapper formerly known as Cumulus) was sitting on the futon couch in my guest-room-slash-studio. When I get to the end of the “verse” and start making shit up, you can hear him laughing in the background. Good times.

Listen:

Right-click to download:

bob george

Ensoniq EPS-16 Sampler/Sequencer

Number three has gotta be from 2003 or so, as it was recorded on my four-track with a handheld mic and the pantyhose popper stopper. Sidebar: If you never recorded holding a mic in one hand and a panty-hosed coat-hanger in the other, you ain’t real to me, son. Also, if you say shit like “sidebar” you probably aren’t real to me, either. Son.

Anyhoo, I made this beat on a heavy-ass EPS-16 that I borrowed from DJ Design. Originally, the one and only Matty Eye had requested a beat, and I played him some shit off my old hand-sampler (the Yamaha SU-10, look it up). An earlier version of this beat grabbed his ear, so I remade it on the EPS-16, but with different drums. I changed it so much that I think he wasn’t feeling it anymore. Lesson learned. But I wound up using it myself down the road when the man, the myth, the legendary Kevvy Kev hollered at me (post WTB) for an exclusive track. This song–Change Forms–is what I came up with. And you know what? I think he may even have played it a time or two.

Listen:

Right-click to download:

Change Forms

Alright, friends. That’s enough spring cleaning for one day. Thanks for taking out my trash. I’m afraid it was starting to stink.

Even my old stuff gets you in the end like it was coal dust,

Grip Grand