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...

A Keith LeBlanc and Adrian Sherwood production from 1984, paying tribute to the massive Miners Strike then taking place in the UK. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the greatest pro-union, electro hip-hop single of all time. (I dream of a world where it would have more competition!) The Enemy Within - Support The Miners Rough Trade - RTT 151 Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, UK, 1984 More info on Discogs Tracklist A        Strike B        Strike (General Mix) Keith LeBlanc is an American drummer, probably best known for his 1983  No Sell Out  single, released by a still new Tommy Boy Records. The record was credited to Malcolm X, whose  cut up speeches were set over a LeBlanc produced beat . Although claims that it was the first record to use "sampling" or the first to use a DMX drum machine are laying it on a bit too thick,  No Sell Out  is rightly celebrated as a key moment in hi...