The problem with hip-hop today is that it doesn’t reference Michael Dukakis enough…

I’m starting to compile my favorite albums of the year and have settled on the fact that Blitzen Trapper‘s Wild Mountain Nation (think Pavement meets the Kinks) will garner my much-coveted top spot.  But when it comes to identifying the new release that I’ve listened to the most in ‘07, it would have to be the gloriously buoyant old school hip-hop comp Top Shelf 8-8-88 that was released this year as a Japanese import. I first heard about it on one of my favorite radio shows, NPR’s “Fair Game,” and got a hold of a copy soon after.  Recently I’ve been revisiting some somewhat silly step-back stuff like Das EFX, Fu-Schnickens and A Tribe Called Quest, and Top Shelf slotted righted into that mix perfectly.  And the best thing about the comp, which claims to feature “lost” recordings from ‘88 by the likes of Black Sheep, Biz Markie, Jungle Brothers, MC Lyte and Big Daddy Kane, is that it’s complete and utter bullshit and I really don’t care:

The rumors swirled all summer: a hip-hop El Dorado, a treasure trove of lost recordings by old-school greats like Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie, had been discovered in an abandoned storage locker in New Jersey.

Then, in August, an album called “Top Shelf 8/8/88” was issued in Japan. Supposedly a collection of never-before-released recordings from 1988, it came with a back story that was even more elaborate than the rumors. And as the music spread on the Internet, skeptics set blogs ablaze: was it a hoax?

The album’s liner notes told this story: An unidentified New York hip-hop aficionado scavenging through a storage locker near Hoboken, N.J., discovered a box of studio reels. The only clue to their contents was a name scribbled on a label: “Fab Five Freddy,” the hip-hop impresario who was host of “Yo! MTV Raps” in the 1980s.

According to the story, the reels turned out to be recordings from hip-hop’s fabled golden era, taped at a studio called Top Shelf in a basement in the East Village of Manhattan. The reels were supposedly lost during the Tompkins Square Park riots of 1988, and the studio later shut down.

Built on loops of classic soul songs and with rap that is at least four times faster than what is usually heard on the radio today, “Top Shelf” is peppered with references to Michael Dukakis, the Pontiac Fiero and the first “Die Hard” film. But why, as fans wrote online, do some of the supposedly teenage rappers sound hoarse and winded? And how come nobody has stepped forward and claimed to be one of the “anonymous Top Shelf producers” credited with the album’s excellent productions?

It’s due for a rumored US release in early ‘08 but if you want to preview it before then, I found this link via Google. You’re welcome.

MORE INFO: Werner von Wallenrod’s Humble, Little Hip-Hop Blog and Soul Sides.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/15/07 at 10:06 AM • Permalink
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