Something 4 The Weekend # 74

Main Source: Breaking Atoms: "Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball" [mp3]

It's a shame about Main Source. They were a highly innovative (moving away from turntables towards samplers) and skilled Hip Hop group based outta NYC in the late '80's and early '90's who could have been huge stars if their luck would have been just a bit better, or perhaps their egos better in check. Instead of eventually taking their rightful place in the East Coast Hip Hop pantheon alongside the likes of Run-DMC, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Erik B & Rakim, Jungle Brothers, Gang Starr, Stetsasonic and EPMD, the three main members of Main Source (Sir Scratch, K-Cut, and Large Professor) squabbled over money and rights, and Large Professor was gone not long after their debut album, Breaking Atoms, hit the shelves.

Large Professor was not only the MC of the group, but the producer of their debut, and when he left, Sir Scratch and K-Cut attempted to soldier on with a second Main Source record featuring a newly recruited MC, Mikey D. Record label woes kept this second Main Source record from ever finding an official release, and eventually all three original group members went on to have fairly illustrious careers as producers behind the scenes of other Hip Hop stars, many of whom became part of that pantheon I mentioned above. Their individual successes (critically and commercially) suggest that if these three guys could have kept their own shit together, we might not have waited until 2008 for Wild Pitch Records to finally re-release Breaking Atoms on CD...I'm certainly glad they did, because my cassette copy of this album got eaten by the tapedeck of my old Chevy Celebrity while on a road trip to Minneapolis circa 1995, and it's been a blast hearing this whole album for the first time since then...

Main Source: Breaking Atoms: "Live At The Barbeque" [mp3]

This particular track, "Live At The Barbeque", is a standout because it features the first recorded appearance of Nas, who was about 16 or 17 years old when this song was recorded...That's him on the first verse rapping about going to hell at age 12 for "snuffin' Jesus" and verbally being "iller than an AIDS patient"...

Anyways, this 4th Of July weekend, what's more appropriate than two tunes that reference baseball and barbeque in their titles, nevermind that the songs themselves aren't really about baseball or BBQ...Ahh, metaphors...

Hotcha! Hank