things and time will tell.

A second appearance on this blog for the students of Chicago's Carver High School. Sharing their debut 12" featuring the Class of 1983  was half the reason I initially set this thing up, so I highly recommend checking it out if you missed it. By 1985, Carver's music teacher, John Harris, had picked up a Linn drum  and was ready to drop another of Chicago's earliest hip-hop records with a new crew of Carver High MCs... Carver High ‎– Boogie With A Book (Let's Read!) Challenger Records ‎– CH7300 Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, US, 1985 Info I can't tell you much more about Chicago's far South side rap pioneers than what I shared in that previous post. Two and a half years later and we get to see that these high school students (along with their music teacher and his Motherfox bandmates) were tracking some of the changes in hip-hop styles that were bubbling up. Again: this was 1985 . The Midwest wasn't exactly overflowing with homegrown hip-hop records yet... But...

Let’s see how this goes… We’ll kick it off with what must be one of the very first hip-hop tracks ever cut in Chicago. Artist: Carver Area High School Presents the Carver Seniors ‎– Class of ‘83 Get Live Eighty-Three, “83” Get Live (Senior Rap) and The Carver Senior Song Challenger Records ‎– CH-1000 Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, US, 1982 In the early 1980s, Challenger Records issued a small string of records featuring the students of Carver Area High School, now Carver Military Academy , on the far Southside of Chicago. Named for the school’s mascot and Challengers sports teams, the record label seems to have been driven by teacher and musician John Harris. They pressed up a handful of vinyl releases featuring the same logo that still shows up on the school’s jerseys . What’s the best you can really hope for from a senior class commemorative record? Well, when a high school band teacher sneaks a credit for his funk band, Motherfox, onto the back of a public school issued rec...