Tuesday, August 5, 2008

RA The Rugged Man - Die, Rugged Man, Die

How in depth should I go here? I remember back to my days when I would DJ house parties on the local college campus during the height of Rawkus' run as the kings of underground hip-hop (Mos Def, BlackStar, Company Flow, et all), and being geeked when I heard the Rugged Man's song "Stanley Kubrick" from Soundbombing II (CLASSIC!). Riggu-Ruh, yo, feel that bassline, cat. Haha.

Dude is an ex-street boxer from somewhere out east (Philly, iirc), who is brutally built like a tank. He was a grimy asshole, who signed to Jive records on the strength of an appearance on a B.I.G. unreleased song, and a shit ton of freestyle sessions on the infamous Stretch and Bobbito show on New York radio, just before Jive forgot about it's hardcore-rap past (see Spice 1, Too Short, E-40 and much of the 90's Bay area acts), instead favoring pop acts like Britney Spears and NSync. Jive continuously put RA's much anticipated album on hold for what seemed like an eternity, before getting dropped from the label due to a sexual harrassment suit brought against RA by a Jive records secretary (he may have pulled his dick out... not sure though).

With that out of the way, this is pretty much all post-Jive vault material, finding RA spitting over grimy east coast underground beats with his snarling vox, talking about basic grimy situations, which include his rise to near-fame, difficulties with Jive, and his consequential burroughing back to the underground to make what was, for all intents and purposes, a successful underground rap record. 

Sounds like a success story Disney would shoot a movie over, right? Haha. Maybe if he wasn't talking about nothing but nasty shit non-stop. 

Download: Mediafire 

1 comment:

Kamaal Fareed said...

Stanley Kubrick was my shit!! Soundbombing II, man, those were the days. Keep doing your thing, man.