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OLD-SCHOOL LESSONS
Brian Coleman: Eating up the leftovers
By Camille Dodero
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"Here’s an oldie but goodie!" That’s how Slick Rick famously introduced his classic comic joint "Treat Her Like a Prostitute" back in 1998. The lead-in might as well be the inscription for Brian Coleman’s Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight from the Original Artists (Wax Facts), a 240-page compilation of "invisible liner notes," as Coleman’s dubbed them, of 21 hip-hop artists like Slick Rick, Chuck D, and Ice-T talking about their seminal rap records from the ’80s. A jazz publicist by vocation and a WZBC DJ by avocation, the Cambridge-based freelance writer has been interviewing his hip-hop heroes for a "Classic Material" column at XXL for years. Nearly every time, he’d come away with more oral history than he could possibly shoehorn into 750 words. "When you’re writing a feature, there are things that you get and you’re like, ‘That’s amazing shit, if I could only use it.’ So then it’s like your little secret with the artist. I didn’t want to have any of those. I wanted to unleash all my old transcriptions and let it all out." Coleman did let it all out, from a 9000-word chapter on the Ultramagnetic MC’s Critical Beatdown to Biz Markie talking about picking boogers. Hence, Rakim Told Me reads more like a head’s library resource than as critical exposition. It’s sort of like Please Kill Me for Yo! MTV Raps fans, a throwback to the good old sample-saturated days when EPMD could nick an Eric Clapton riff without clearing the rights. While Coleman managed to cover the heavyweights, there were still some records he would’ve liked to include in Rakim Told Me, but he couldn’t get their creators on the phone. "It’s what I call the ‘Hollywood angle,’" Coleman explains. "You can go down the list: Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Ice Cube, Will Smith — their ’80s albums I would’ve loved to cover. But you just get blocked. Queen Latifah doesn’t have a music publicist anymore, so you start dealing with the Hollywood publicists. And they’re like, what the hell is XXL?" Nevertheless, there’s still lots to learn in Rakim Told Me. Like that Erick Sermon didn’t produce EPMD’s Strictly Business. Or that 2 Live Crew sampled the dialogue in "Me So Horny" from Full Metal Jacket. Or that "Treat Her Like a Prostitute" wasn’t intended to be misogynistic. As Slick Rick tells Coleman: "I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful to no good women." DJ Brian Coleman will throw down some old-school joints this Wednesday, June 22 and next Wednesday, June 29, when he spins at the Milky Way, 403-405 Centre Street, in Jamaica Plain. Call (617) 524-3740. Order Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight from the Original Artists online at waxfacts.com.
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