DJ Mike Nice recently uncovered this 1995 demo and brought it to the T.R.O.Y. forum fam.
Even if you have it already, download it again. I slowed it down a bit. For some reason, certain cassettes recorded at a slower rate which made the music sound a little faster than it was intended to sound.
Take a quick listen and start to understand what makes Half A Mil's mid 90's material so coveted-
Half A Mil - In The Projects (1995 demo)
[Download here or at the bottom of the page with everything in one folder.]
I remember having that and a few other Half A Mill demos from college radio, back in the day. I had a few of his legendary freestyles, too, but my WNYU tapes were always full of static because of their weak radio signal. I used to have the ill hook up for taping from 89.1. Hanger attached to the antenna with aluminum foil, and I had to hold the radio and point the antenna a certain way to get halfways decent reception. And still, right when you think you got it perfect, you hear some static start to creep in. And you either hope it doesn't get worse or start moving around just a little, hoping to get some clarity.
Anyway, I've probably listened to this demo over 30 times since Mike uploaded it. Shit is amazing. Lines like these put Half in the upper echolons of underground legends with the likes of the Natural Elements and Godfather Don:
"I'm from the projects, the pyramids
each room is a tomb, crack babies and boom,
we call jakes Legion of Doom, executioners, sorcerors,
modern day extortioners, they job is enforcing us..."
Moving right along, we're going to bring you a folder of freestyles, the Project Prophet mixtape, another unknown track and Half A Mill's self produced independent 12" release.
Half A Mill Productions 12" Vinyl Single
A1 - Any Day Can Be Ya Last (Vocal)
B1 - Any Day Can Be Ya Last (Instrumental)
B2 - Homicide Scene (Instrumental)
The Project Prophet Mixtape
And here's another Half A Mill track that I caught over at HipHopGiant.blogspot.com. It says that it's off of a bootleg EP. It's listed as Executioner's Song and the quality was really bassed out, where you couldn't make out the lyrics too well. I did my best to fix it up and make the lyrics audible. I have no clue when this song is from. A ballpark guess would be that this was recorded sometime between 1995 and 1998.
Half A Mill - Executioner's Song
[Download here or at bottom of page with everything in one folder]
Now, we're going to move right on into the radio freestyles that also helped secure Half A Mill's place in my personal underground legend hall of fame.In all, we have 12 separate freestyles. The first five were uploaded straight from WNYU cassettes by Nes over at DirtyWaters. There are some classic verses on these, don't sleep. There is also a freestyle that was separated from the Roots 30 minute session at WNYU, that was posted here. There's one from a DJ Lazy K mixtape from 1998, called Justo Allstars freestyle. There's also one that's apparently from an old Stretch& Bobbito show and one that I have no idea of it's origins. And another 3 with
with Nature, courtesy of Hustle The Block.
Half A Mill WNYU Freestyle 1996
Personally, I wasn't too pleased with his two albums, but alot of people were. I thought they were really lacking on the beat tip. His label didn't do him justice either, hardly anybody even knew the albums dropped when they did. Check one of them out at Steady Bloggin'.
For the record, if you didn't know, Half A Mill was found shot to death in his apartment in 2003.
RIP
The back up link doesn't have those 3 freestyles with Nature in it.
Thanks to dirtywaters, boogzthedon, itzmurda, Hip Hop Giant, Hustle The Block,
Dj Mike Nice, and K-Funkadelic.
Let's hope DJ Scratch properly releases that Half A Mill demo tape, already.
--Verge
