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G&B: Apologies to Sting

It's been a blast, folks. The Worlds Most Popular Podcast is signing off. Truth to be told, there's not enough hours in the day for ...

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

the battle: posse cuts pt 1


In this second edition of The Battle we look at classic posse cuts. For those not knowing of what a posse cut is, Here's a quick definition from Wik..

A posse cut is a popular form of song in hip hop music that involves successive verses by four or more rappers.

Posse cuts are arguably the original form of the hip hop track; in hip hop's infancy, tracks would more often than not take the form of a freestyle cypher, where one rapper would deliver a usually mostly improvised verse before passing the microphone to the next, with this repeated until all the rappers present (or, all of "the posse") had a chance to rhyme. Often call-and-response chants would be involved, which originally would be a chance for rappers to interact with a crowd, but which were preserved when the posse cut made the jump to the recorded form. Many classic early hip hop tracks, such as Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force's "Zulu Nation Throwdown", took the form of a posse cut.


Now..


THE COMBATANTS
:


1,2 Pass It - D&D All Stars (Mad Lion, Doug E Fresh, Fat Joe, Smif Wessun, Jeru the Damaja and DJ Premier)




VS



Northern Touch - The Razcalz feat Kardinal Offishall, Choclair, Checkmate and Thrust





Of all posse cuts, these two are up there as my favorite. Northern Touch was a Canadian anthem at the time bringing together the most known northern emcee's. Meanwhile, D&D All Stars consisted of some of the most respected emcees in the game and with maybe the best producer in the game, DJ Premier who headed the project (and would later buy the studio of the same name and re-name it after a friend who passed away in 2003). Of all D&D projects, 1,2 Pass is my favorite. The track features some of the best lines from each emcee including an emcee I never thought was as good as he got praise for - Fat Joe. On the flip side, however, the Canadian classic does feature some lacking appearances from local talent that brought the track down in value. What saves Northern Touch is the fact that even with lagging lines, the others pick it up with some memorable bars and a real hot beat. At first look, this battle could be hard to tell who would come out victorious, however after dissecting them and putting Canadian love aside, I have to say that 1,2 Pass has to come out the victor.



THE WINNER: 1,2 Pass It

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