Nuclear Beef

Some Hiphop Audio Beef for you. Also Cat Stevens Yusef Islam.

'Young Son' by Brand Nubian from their 2004 album Fire in the Hole on BabyGrande Records

There's a new Brand Nubian album out. It's on BabyGrande Records, as Brand Nubian has been dropped from Elektra Records.

(Note To Elektra Records: You see how this works, guys? You drop legendary acts and you don't get a hyperlink. Welcome to the Internet, assholes guys.)

So this album is still mostly Produced by Lord Jamar, who is one of the three MCs in Brand Nubian. In my opinion, he's the MC in Brand Nubian who needs to put down the mic. He's the (wack) middle verse here, and in the middle in the above picture. Fortunately, he's also a great producer who has done an awful lot of classic Brand Nubian beats.

(In fact, Lord Jamar produced most of the first Dead Prez album. Strange but true. 5% nation + Maoists? Are we playing INWO?)

In any case the hook on this beat is great and Grand Puba and Sadat X both catch wreck. The message is similar to Wear Clean Draws by The Coup which I posted a while back. The guys dish out the advice for the up and coming young bucks, dropping some.. err.. edutainment.

Never take no for an answer /
Unless it be a chick /
Cause you could end up in some shit /
Like some bullshit they hit Kobe with /
You don't want to be a baby daddy, better rubber it

But who is that singing on the chorus? A 10 second search on google and a 20 second search on my hard drive (...) produced the answer. It's our old buddy Cat StevensYusef Islam, last seen battling the Flaming Lips.

'The Hurt' by Cat Stevens from his 1970 album Tea For The Tillerman from his 1973 album Foreigner

Notice how completely different the track is from the tiny snippet used in the Brand Nubian track. Hooray for sampling. The Cat Stevens song is great too, in its inimitable Cat Stevens way.

You say you want to seek the truth, but it's hard to find /
No one to help you, your friends don't have the time /
So you ride around in your car, switch on the radio /
You want to relate to something you once read in a book /
What kind of a way to try to take a look /

UPDATE: LGF has some interesting information on Cat Stevens. Nice voice, anyway..

UPDATE: I mis-identified what album 'The Hurt' was on. As VeronicaGia noted in comments, the Cat Stevens song is actually on his album 'Foreigner' and not 'Tea For The Tillerman.' I was misled by a lyrics site, please forgive me!