And while Kanye has never been one to recognise, say, appropriate attire or how to treat country starlets without appearing to have Aspergers, he has always been able to spot an opportunity to manufacture that all important “buzz” at 300 yards. Hence his recent tweet declaring that he was going to get Raekwon in the studio with him to do a Justin Bieber remix. And, being as 2010 is officially the year where every single thing Bieber does has to be blown up into some Tumblr-friendly meme, blows went ham at this.

There wasn’t much in the way of outrage, though: we’ve basically been conditioned, via years of rappers turning up on mediocre R&B and rock records, to consider verse-whoring to be the fifth element of hip-hop. But what about those occasions when rappers turn up on a pop track, clearly taking the money and running? Here’s 10 fine examples of guest verses on pop tracks by rappers who have absolutely no dignity whatsoever.

LFO ft MOP – Life Is Good

Could anything else really have kicked this countdown off? I’d have been happy for LFO’s sole contribution to rap to be that bit on the third Eminem album where he goes “New Kids On The Block sucked a lot of dick/ You faggots make me sick”, but apparently Steve Rifkind had other ideas, and as such the Dr Doolittle soundtrack was blessed with this. LFO get their Hanson or latter-period Let Loose on for a bit, before Danze and Fame turn up and start dropping Fried Chicken Soup for The Soul gems like “Life is real… live your life” and “Don’t talk down on your man unless you’re helping him up”. Makes you think, huh? Niggaz be thinking LFO stands for “luffo” and shit”.

Stacie Orrico ft Jin – More To Life (Ruff Ryder Remix)

Stacie Orrico was a Christian Contempoary Music artiste who, in 2003, got a brief push towards an outside shot at being a crossover pop star via some old tracks Dallas Austin never got the chance to foist off on Anastacia. She also cashed-in on her Mariah/Chris Houghton-esque unidentifiable ethnicity by recording a totally non-awkward pop video where, when she’s “black”, she’s robbing Mini Marts and being a teenage mother, and when she’s “white” she’s up in the boardroom sealing deals. Jin was a battle rapper who was a major success for a while before dudes like Serius Jones realized you could get the crowd on your side against him merely by going “a ching chong, a ching chong ching. Bwwwwwonnnggggg” for your 60 second verse-time. He was later signed to Ruff Ryders for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding. Put them together and you’ve got enough broken dreams to fill up a history of Arsenal for the past five seasons. Bonus points for the bit where Jin goes “this is not pop music”. I mean, in the sense that it’s not and was never going to be “popular” he’s right, but….

Victoria Beckham ft MOP – It’s That Simple

Billy Danze had a major gambling problem in the early 00s, right? I mean, between this, “Life Is Good”, and that time they advertised toothpaste, I can only assume he was rocking up to Betfred every lunchtime and hitting on 16 for an hour, before taking a short break to shove that month’s rent on the virtual racing. Research time for this article was filled with the hope that Damon Dash’s mercifully brief mentorship of Posh would have thrown up more examples of this kinda stuff, Peedi Crakk and Victoria trading bars on some cokey ish, or Uncle Murda and Dane Bowers in the studio together. Sadly this appears to be all that’s left of her hilariously shit attempt at cracking the US urban pop market. Funny that.

Shaggy ft Grand Puba – Why You Treat Me So Bad

Not gonna front, I miss those days when Shaggy would turn up every couple of years, dominate the charts for a minute, and then fuck off again. Now the only place to catch him is in the interview section of Wetherspoons Magazine, in the months that they’re not speaking to Phil Tufnell, appearing “on behalf of Baccardi”. This is probably the only track on this list that isn’t a goddamn embarrassment to all concerned. Video’s nice as well for the revelation that Puba gets turned on by having his ho’s dress up as 4 Non Blondes.

Eamon ft Milk Dee – Get Off My Dick

Ghostface is on this album as well, but being as he’s previously laced cuts by such irrelevancies as The 411, Another Level, MSTRKRFT and Trife Diesel, it’s pretty much impossible to pinpoint just one cashgrab from him. Milk Dee actually discovered Eamon as a 15-year-old (no Kogan), and presumably rather than putting money into a pension fund, it’s more appealing to rappers to prepare for their retirement by hoping they stumble into a one-hit wonder who can record a radio dominating novelty track for them. Pretty sure if you stripped the vocals off this and claimed it was recorded by a 19-year-old kid from Dudley who calls himself “Proffessa-X” or “Katakoom” you could get this joint to blow up on the dubstep blogs.

Mica Paris ft Rakim – Contribution

I didn’t even know Mica Paris had a music career, I just thought she was the woman they got to host shit TV shows when the fat Brummie from Big Brother 2 is otherwise engaged. Seriously, I’m far too young for this shit…. I think this is what all British music that wasn’t, like, The Wonder Stuff sounded like in 1990? Rakim may as well be Turbo B for all he adds to this track.

Texas ft Method Man and RZA – Say What You Want (Remix)

Apparently the equation works out as Texas + Meth and RZA = Garbage. Insofar in as it sounds like the Scottish alternative rock band of the late 90s, and also that it’s straight-up hot garbage. Bobby Digital must have been fucked stoked to realized he could claim a remix fee for just looping some half-assed faux-John Barry ish over the chorus. Just goes to show you should never mess with Texas.

Mark Morrison ft DMX – An Innocent Man

On one level, it’d be nice to talk about how the release of this song was delayed due to a court injunction from former Nottingham Forest and Everton striker Kevin Campbell. On another, let us just read some legitimate quotes from Mark: “I showed Leicester the love and that city never showed me the love back. That place has shown me nothing but contempt. I’m The Beatles of Leicester. I don’t see a Gary Lineker soccer school in Leicester. I don’t see an Engelbert Humperdinck or a Showaddywaddy singing school in Leicester. I came back.”
Fantastic.

Sugar Ray ft KRS-One – Live and Direct
05 – Live & Direct KRS-One
Of all the things that have been written by handwringing rap scholars about Kris over the years, one thing is proven 100% true by this: he’s no Supercat. Just to give you a clue of what KRS-One brings to the table: last.fm plays for “Fly” by Sugar Ray – 442,126. Last.fm plays for “Live and Direct” by Sugar Ray ft KRS-One – 192. Not really helping, huh? KRS-One actually drags this song down, and being as it sounds kinda like Ocean Colour Scene before he turns up, that’s quite impressive.

All Saints – Black Coffee remix ft Pusha T

All_Saints_-_Black_Coffee__The

From the post-“Audio Exclusive Footage”, pre-“Anyone giving a shit” era of Clipse, this would technically be the first time the Neptunes were on a UK #1 single, even if it was as the eleventh remix behind, sharing CD space with that UK garage act that did the “Sambucca” song. Still, the chance to hear a Pusha T verse with literally no puns based around the words “ki” or “gram” is an opportunity not to be passed up on, and All Saints vocals have a really weird echo-y quality like the first time you ever put a remix together in Audacity, so there’s something for everyone here.

This is the part of the article where, to hide the fact that we’ve clearly missed some really obvious stuff, and also to increase comments and thus page views, we “ask you” to name “your favourite” crap cashgrab verses.

Verbal Milk by Dom P

Sasha says we’re not doing another til we get well over 300 plays so share this in your Facebook, Twitter, Friends Reunited or whatever social networks you fucks with.

Click to enlarge…

“Hi, you’ve reached Hollywood Basic”

01 – Various Artists – You’ve Reached Basic

We dug deep for this one. So back in the early Nineties Disney decided to jump on the Rap bandwagon and a formed an offshoot of Hollywood Records called Hollywood Basic helmed by the A&R genius that was Dave ‘Funken’ Klein. The label has since become famous as the launchpad for the careers of Organized Konfusion, DJ Shadow and err, that’s it. Well isn’t that enough?  Zimbabwe Legit never really took off, nor did Money B’s Raw Fusion and although we can appreciate the sentiment we’re not sure about giving a bunch murderers a record deal (Lifers Group) but Monch and Josh had incredible careers off the back of the gamble Klein took on their talents.  Klein’s career started in New York where he worked for Red Alert and wrote for The Source. For an amazing collection of Funken Klein photo’s and archived ‘Gangsta Limpin’ columns he famously penned visit Bomb Hip-Hop.

So we bring you the Basic Beats Sampler which is an incredible keeper featuring early Organized, rare Rick Rubin remixes, audio snippets from Hank Love’s show and even includes the Hollywood basic answer machine message as well as the famed DJ Shadow Mega-Mix. If you’re lucky enough to own an original of Shadow’s ‘Lesson 4′ then don’t let that get away, only 800 pressed, most were destroyed and it’s a bona fide slab of hip-hop history. You know we gots an original (with sticker) and for a breakdown of the history behind that track and how Shadow got involved with Hollyword Basic we’ve posted a previously unheard interview with him from The All City Show.

DJ Shadow on The All City Show talking about his contribution to Hollywood Basic…

Shadow

The Lesson’s…. (click to enlarge)

Download The Basic Beats Sampler

CLICK HERE

And yes, you can thank us in the comments section….

You might have thought that just because we haven’t droned on about Roxanne records for the last 13 months, we’ve run out of them. BOOOOOYAAAAA! We’re not you, rapper.

Yes, we’ve still been digging, if by digging you mean ‘typing into search fields’. There are more over the coming months, but first let’s deal with this important one. After UTFO’s innocently-intended ‘Roxanne, Roxanne’, the initial reply came on radio, where Roxanne Shante delivered what would become known as ‘Roxanne’s Revenge’, a classic on the Pop Art label. Yet some historians have it that this initial diss was recorded under the name of the East 42nd Street Crew, the name reflecting the location of the radio station where Marley and Mr Magic held court. It would later be made more readily available on vinyl courtesy of Pop Art, with some saying there was an initial pressing of just 100 copies. But if that is the first, rarest, pressing, why does this release – on ‘Rap Records’, single-sided, ‘Roxanne’s Revenge’ by the E. 42nd St. Crew – exist. Is this the first? Is it a bootleg? Regardless, it’s one of the most sought-after of all the Roxanne records – by contrast, most of the ‘Roxanne is a man’ type tunes are 10-a-penny. If you can shed any light, let us know. In the meantime, enjoy…

The E. 42nd St. Crew – Roxanne’s Revenge
The E. 42nd St. Crew – Roxanne’s Revenge

The E. 42nd St. Crew – Roxanne’s Scratch
The E. 42nd St. Crew – Roxanne’s Scratch

Hell yup, house model Sasha is back in effect rocking a promo T shirt from one of our fave hip-hop labels. We never seem to get many comments on Freaky Friday’s so if you want us to publish the rude version of this shot and we mean the REALLY rude version of this we’ll require at least 20 unique comments. Let’s see how many of you are derranged perverts like us or would rather read about the life story of Prophet L-Cee. We suspect the latter, but go ahead, prove us wrong. We go to mad effort to bring you Freaky Friday’s. We have to do stuff like sleep with glamour models on the reg so let’s see once and for all if we should even bother doing it again.

It’s been a couple of years since we last tended to our Crack Rap garden, and in that time it has been overrun by records from before virtually every rapper fessed up to being a dealer of the white. In fact, it’s heartbreaking to hear the angry optimism on these records before crack use settled down to being just a constant background buzz, like the neighbour’s air-con. If we had air-con in England, which we largely don’t.

Audio Source’s ‘Stop Cracking’ is a dated (yet undated on the label) electro influenced tune on the original North Cackalack based Cash Money Records (no chimp-tank). To be frank, it’s the worst release on the label, the best being the dope ‘Sneakers’ by Little 7 and Hass C-B, but while their track is on about Simod and such, Audio Source have their hearts in the right place. The producer, George Kerr, has another few obscurities sat in our racks in the form of Anthony’s ‘Roxanne is a man’, work on a couple of Hassan and 7-11 joints (these dudes are probably also Little 7 and Hass C-B), at which point we disappear up our own cracks.

Audio Source – Stop Cracking
Audio Source – Stop Cracking

Marc Love’s ‘Crack Down (On Cracking It Up)’ is palpably better, if still unsophisticated ‘87/’88 fare. It’s the sole credit for pretty much everyone involved, which points up the sad/inevitable fact that there was a more lucrative career in selling rocks than in making records slagging it off. Of course, by the time we’ve played you all our many, many crack-related records, the only rocks you’ll have to worry about are the ones blocking the view from your moon home.

Marc Love – Crack Down
Marc Love – Crack Down

That’s right, Finesse just copped the brand new ZX81 so has no need for this old school technology. However it looks pretty clean to us. He’s probably bought a bulk load from Emu, signing them and selling them off at a profit. Cop here at eBay, or buy Ableton, it’s much easier to use. But really, why would you sell this unless rent was due.

For purposes of nostalgia:

03 Funky Technician 1

Some records were just made to be pillaged to death, and ‘Synthetic Substitution’ is one of those. It’s the foundation and cornerstone that countless classics were built on. Enjoy the stunning original, enjoy the stunning songs that used it, and pour out a little liquor for Melvin Bliss, who just passed.