Month: March 2018

A History of UTFO and the Roxanne Wars

by Dustin

UTFO

The 1980s were an interesting decade for hip-hop as a genre that had just begun to find its footing. The classic artists of this era are often remembered for one of two things: infectiously bouncy party music, or gritty socially rooted rap. Yet, aside from the big names – N.W.A, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Run D.M.C., The Beastie Boys, and a few others – rap from this particular point in history seems have found itself overshadowed by the behemoth that is 90s rap. Yet, if one is up to doing a little digging, there are a ton of very interesting artists to be discovered. One such group was Untouchable Force Organization, or as they were more commonly called, UTFO. An east coast rap group that brought a unique flavor to the sounds of the 80s.

UTFO formed in Brooklyn, New York in 1984 when two of Whodini’s regular break-dancers, Doctor Ice and Kangol Kid, made the decision to pursue a music career of their own. The two enlisted the talents of The Educated Rapper and Mixmaster Ice to round out a quartet. Thanks to the group’s pre-existing connections to the music industry it didn’t take them long to find a label to call home. In this case, it was Fred Munao’s Select Records that decided to take a chance with the group. The slightly more experienced R&B outfit Full Force was brought into the fold to assist the newer UTFO, tasked with overseeing the production of their debut studio album. Full Force took this job to heart, and sought the help of sampling and sound design expert Gary Pozner to assist with the instrumental portion of the record. Armed with some of the best in the industry, UTFO was primed to make a splash in hip-hop with their self-titled debut album. Which, is exactly what they did; in fact, the group probably got a bigger response than they bargained for.

Their freshman release is regarded by many hip-hop enthusiasts as a slept on classic, with its unique beats and flows for the era; however, UTFO as an album is still mainly known for setting off a massive string of diss tracks known as the Roxanne Wars. During the promotional run of the album, a track tilted “Hanging Out” was released and performed relatively terribly in terms of pure numbers. The b-side of the single, however, would go on to receive huge amounts of airplay. This song was titled “Roxanne, Roxanne,” a comical track about a hypothetical girl who had ignored the advances of the various UTFO members. Around this same time, UTFO missed a scheduled performance, much to the dismay of venue promoters Marley Marl and Mr. Magic. A 14-year old Lolita Gooden (known by her stage name Roxanne Shante) heard the men discussing the problem, and offered to write a song to fire back at UTFO. Surprisingly they took her up on this offer, and Marley Marl opted to handle the track’s production.

The fruit of their labor would be released not long afterward. It borrowed the original beat from “Roxanne, Roxanne” and was named “Roxanne’s Revenge.” Local radio stations adored the song, thrusting it into instant hit territory with continuous airplay. UTFO and Full Force saw the humor in the situation, and promptly contacted Elease Jack to perform vocals on their own answer track, “The Real Roxanne.” On this song, Elease claimed to be the actual Roxanne originally dissed by UTFO, and took jabs at all four members. This sparked Roxanne fever in the New York hip-hop scene, and artists entirely unrelated to the original incident began releasing Roxanne songs. Topics ranged from claiming to be Roxanne, claiming to know Roxanne, or in one particularly outlandish case, claiming that Roxanne was a man all along. It was such a craze that close to a hundred Roxanne songs were estimated to have seen release in the span of a few years. Though this seems highly likely to be exaggeration, there is no doubt that UTFO made their biggest splash with “Roxanne, Roxanne” and the time period around their debut album.

Perhaps unexpectedly, this was basically where UTFO’s career peaked. The Educated Rapper wasn’t on the group’s sophomore effort, Skeezer Pleezer. And the album itself didn’t garner much attention, apart from the song “Split Personality.” Their next three albums would also fail to meet expectations even though the group experimented with other sounds such as rock, swingbeat and reggae. Ultimately, the hypersexual Bag It & Bone It released in 1991 served as the endpoint for UTFO. The four men parted ways on good terms, and stayed active within the music industry in more subdue roles. They knew when it was time to call it quits, and that never impacted the lifelong respect they had for each other. A true testament to this was in 2017, when all of UTFO were reportedly by Educated Rapper’s bedside as he lost his battle to cancer.

Though they faded out of rap in an unspectacular manner, UTFO’s legacy should probably be spoken about more than it is. As ridiculous as they may have been, the Roxanne Wars were one of the first instances of beef extending beyond a one off diss and response. Their influence on modern artists was also far greater than one would expect, as evidenced by the outpouring of respect and love over the internet following The Educated Rapper’s death. UTFO helped paved the way for individuals that didn’t fit perfectly with the sound of their time. In most respects they were absolute eccentric oddballs compared to their contemporaries, but the group’s genuity left a lasting impression on the hip-hop scene. In retrospect, the present day alternative artist may not have even existed without the lane UTFO began to carve. While they may appear to have been a one hit wonder on the surface, it goes much deeper than that. Doctor Ice, Kangol Kid, The Educated Rapper, and Mixmaster Ice were four of the most important, but least spoken about individuals in the support structure of hip-hop.

Album Review: CURTA – End of Future Park

by Dustin

endoffuture

8/10

Life as an independent artist is one heavy with fraught uncertainty. Finding footing amongst industry giants and a never-ending feed of new music is challenging enough without frequent shutdowns of the few venues which cater to the scene. Many feel nomadic, resulting in a strong urge to return to a fleeting musical home. It was no different emotionally for two CUTRA and 4Digit, so they took these feelings and concentrated them into a project of musical venting. The result, End of Future Park, ended up equal parts mournful and celebratory. It served as a sort of “homage to [a] place which doesn’t exist anymore; never existed; or will maybe exist at some point in the future.” Quite honestly, it was done extremely tastefully.

As with Click-Bait, 4Digit handled the production in its entirety on this release; however, End of Future Park was gloomier and significantly more experimental in nature. The project had an unsettling dystopian vibe, cultivated within the instrumentation by selective use of glitch and electronic elements. In some ways, the production followed a similar formula to some of clipping.’s earlier material by taking the foundations of hip-hop and twisting them with blowed out noise and synthetic heaviness. That’s not to say that it was derivative though, as the production was still noticeably his own flavor. The final track was also created using a curated mix of his left-over production prior to relocating. It may not have been the headliner on the album, but it was a lovely bonus to the total package.

On the vocal end of things CURTA wasted no time in proving he and 4Digit’s chemistry as a team. His exasperated, hyper-observant style complimented the glitchy and dark production wonderfully. He displayed the ability to inspire a painful hopelessness with his lyrics and delivery, similar to an artist such as Joe Horton of No Bird Sing. He isn’t the flashiest or most technically advanced of emcees, yet he always seemed to bring exactly what a track was calling for. His vocals also had an almost live-show quality to them, which was the perfect organic contrast to the heavily computerized instrumentation.

To keep it short and sweet, End of Future Park sounded like a rap concert happening atop a busted motherboard…that’s being said in the most positive way possible, because it truly was a fun experience.

Featured artists were kept to a minimum on this release. There was however a single guest, and he was a rather interesting one. This was of course Milwaukee-based WC Tank, perhaps most notable for his involvement in the production of music videos for Busdriver. He appeared on the track “I’m So Cool” – one of the weirder cuts on the album – and was a fantastically placed feature. While guest artists can feel pointless sometimes, WC Tank was absolutely not one of those cases. He added a pleasant sense of variation that made the full listen all that much better.

End of Future Park was an album that might not be a perfect fit for everyone’s tastes. It felt more niche than the majority of indie hip-hop releases; however, through that process CURTA put together something fully realized and true to itself. Ultimately the narrowed focus allowed for a concise, very enjoyable project. There were a lot of things here that haven’t been explored sonically by many, if any, artists in the past and that alone was quite admirable. The fact that CURTA and 4Digit managed to adventure into uncharted territory and leave with music that very genuinely sounded great was the cherry on top. For someone actively engaged in the experimental and alternative rap scene, this was certainly an album worth giving some extended attention. For those less familiar, it remained accessible enough to not be an intimidating first step into the world of weird. It also certainly posed the question of where exactly CURTA will take his sound in the future. A question that should be met with excitement and anticipation, taking everything into consideration.

Rajin Rambles: CDs Leaving Shelves

by Rajin

emptycdshelf

Recently, Best Buy announced their plans to cease the sale of CDs in their stores by this summer. While I had a couple of CDs from family before I started collecting, the first time I bought a CD for myself was in 2009, at the Best Buy closest to my house. I would say that the bulk of the CDs that I have bought were bought at that exact Best Buy, actually. I can’t say I like the chain (at all), but I would be lying if I said it didn’t play a substantial role in the painstakingly slow growth of my collection.

I understand that Best Buy needs more room for TVs and phone kiosks, so keeping floor space for CDs when sales are continuing to drop doesn’t make business sense. However, as someone who is passionate about purchasing physical media, I am saddened by this news. While lately I’ve generally shifted away from CDs towards vinyl and cassettes, the easy access to CDs at a store 5 minutes away from home is without a doubt what helped foster my interest in collecting physical media. I can’t help but feel that the removal of CDs from a store like Best Buy will stop that from happening for other people. I’ve read that Target may be planning on only selling CDs by artists and labels with whom they have special deals with, which makes it even more unfortunate.

It’s clear that album sales are no longer going to be what they were. While I absolutely do not care about album sales, I’m very concerned about lesser-known artists and how they will probably get the short end of the stick. It’s been like that since streaming became a widespread thing. However, if CDs really are going to be pulled from stores, and with streams counting for so little as far as sales, either a new algorithm needs to be set up or else artists are just going to be screwed out of money even more severely. Those that were able to manage to even get their CDs in a store in the first place likely benefited quite a bit from doing so. Taking this option to get their music out there away hurts them.

I’m also concerned with what will happen to mainstream albums. The art of making an album subjectively seems as though it’s taken a hit in recent years with the continued growth of streaming. We all remember when Drake pretended a bunch of songs he threw together and sold was a “playlist” and not a bloated and overlong album. It was pretty clear that it was meant to be background noise 22 tracks longs for the extra streaming revenue. This doesn’t seem like it’s only limited to him, either. Jhene Aiko also released a 22 track album last year, Chris Brown released a 40-track monstrosity, and the new Migos album had 24 tracks. To me, all of this points to a trend in mainstream music where acts who know that they’re going to get a lot of streams are just going to milk that out for all it’s worth, and release massive albums that maximize their numbers, and ultimately, their revenue, at the cost of the actual quality of music they’re releasing. The effort and creativity it takes to structure and sequence an album could very well get thrown out, with artists opting to release projects that could end up as a pile of songs with no direction or purpose.

I don’t want to seem like the disappearance of CD is going to spell out doom for the music industry. However, I do think it’s irresponsible to essentially gut one of the easiest and most convenient ways of buying physical music. Of course, Best Buy and whatever other chains decide to follow suit don’t care, and they have no reason to. I do want to say, though, that I’m hoping this inspires people, ranging from avid collectors to those who might just want to pick an album up here or there, to visit their local record stores. While I’ve been picking up music when I can for close to 9 years now, it took until last month for me to step foot in a record store. That isn’t a good thing. Record stores are generally small businesses that survive solely on selling music, unlike chains like Best Buy and Target. I decided, even before this news broke, that I was taking my business away from said chains and putting my money into record stores, sites like UGHH, and other independent sellers.

Which reminds me, actually. When thinking about this, I can’t help but keep in mind that vinyl and cassette purchases have been on the rise over the last few years. Cassettes are still VERY niche, though, so that may not hold as much significance, but the fact that vinyl sales continue to grow does inspire a little confidence in me that physical media is still a factor in the music industry. What’s more is that there are some independent labels and artists who have not only sold vinyl and cassettes, but have used them to thrive; a label like Daupe Media comes to mind. I have no real understanding as to why this might be the case, but perhaps as ways of buying physical media continue to disappear, people become more interested in it as a novelty, and end up becoming collectors themselves. Who knows.

I know with me, my end goal is to essentially create a library of hip hop albums in various forms of physical media, as a way to preserve the music that has helped shape me. I feel like as avenues of purchasing physical albums go away, this sort of thing only becomes more and more important. I think any self-proclaimed lover of music owes it to themselves, and the artists they say they love, to pick up an album and dedicate space to it, to immortalize it. I’ve probably made a big deal out of nothing, because people can always go to Amazon to get the music they want, but I do feel a kind of way about this. Like with everything else (and possibly more so, given the cheaper options), physical media in music seems very much to be an “out of sight, out of mind” kind of product to most people. I believe that the further we go to remove it from stores where you can see and browse through it, the less people will consider buying it to begin with. That’s not something I’m very happy about.