Project Blowed Spotlight: The Afterlife / Curbserver Camp

Here's a quick primer one of Los Angeles' most ground-breaking yet under-appreciated rap crews.

Curbserver / Afterlife Recordz was an outgrowth of the legendary Project Blowed collective, which I briefly touched on in this post. Although they've always been a little more hardcore / gangsta, the Afterlife MC's are absolute style kings. They switch from hyper-fast rhyming displays to slower, almost free-form jazz-influenced flows with ease and although this is the hardest pill for new listeners to swallow, if you take the time to interpret their labyrinthine lyrical showcases you'll begin realize that the rappers in question aren't being overly technical simply for the sake of it. They're great writers and storytellers too, in the true griot tradition. These dudes (and ladies) pour a lot of truth and soul into their music, concocting didactic Cali narratives that serve as the logical counterpart (at least in my mind) to their more commercial cousins such as NWA, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Cypress Hill.


The origins of the Curbservers can be traced back to the Good Life Cafe and it's inception in 1989. During the early 90's, Good Life regulars such as Freestyle Fellowship, Aceyalone, and Abstract Rude would begin to gel and form the original Project Blowed family. Although many luminaries in the LA underground scene would pass through the 'Life, the Blowdians were there nearly every damn week, freestyling, competing, and observing each other's respective styles. One Blowdian, Ellay Khule (aka Rifleman) began to form his own little family of rappers within the Blowed clique that came to utilize a unique form of rapping called "chopping" almost exclusively. This family would eventually be known as the Afterlife MCs/Curbserver camp of Project Blowed.
The sub-collective's roster has fluctuated throughout the years as MCs have come and gone, but the main gravitational forces are the Hip Hop KClan (Rifleman Ellay Khule & Pterradacto) and the Chillin Villain Empire (NgaFsh, Riddlore?, Wreccless, and bunch of other cats). Satellite members include The Eastside Badstads, Of Mexican Descent, Cypher 7, and Legion. Unfortunately, various factors including lack of monetary funds and jail time over the past 15 years have left their physical output spotty at best. The recordings that do surface (usually homemade, retrospective-style compilations burned onto low-quality cd-rs), however, are mostly excellent slices of low-fi four-track madness. No Pro-Tools allowed, cuddy!

What I've composed here is a 19-track compilation of my favorite Afterlife/Curbserver-related material. This mix is by no means comprehensive; it's merely a collection of the songs I feel the most out of the material I have heard. Some of the tracks have been taken from post-"TROY era" releases, but since a lot of those releases were compilations of previously recorded material, I would estimate the years covered by this material span from roughly 1994 to 2005. If anyone actually takes offense to material post-1997 being represented here, bounce. That's not the point. Anyway, here's the compilation:

Echo Leader's Afterlife/Curbserver Picks

1. NgaFsh, Riddlore?, & Chu - "Crack Kills"
2. Otherwize, Riddlore?, & Chu - "Writin' Unda Pressure"
3. Chu, NgaFsh, & Riddlore? - "Hut 2, 3, 4"
4. Hip Hop KClan - "Show'em How 2 Chop"
5. The Eastside Badstads - "Bluntheadz"
6. (Rifleman) Ellay Khule - "Fuck A Cop'
7. NgaFsh - "Cause & Effect"
8. NgaFsh & Tray Loc - "Party N My Trunk!"
9. (Rifleman) Ellay Khule - "Boogie On"
10. Hip Hop KClan - "Massive Meltdown"
11. NgaFsh, Riddlore?, & D-Mac - "Role Model"
12. Busdriver - "Life Or Death"
13. Otherwize - "A Wize Man's Advice"
14. Hip Hop KClan - "Everyday Things"
15. Tray Loc - "Once Upon A Freak"
16. Pterradacto - "As The World Turns"
17. NgaFsh, Riddlore?, & (Rifleman) Ellay Khule - "Street Lightz"
18. Hip Hop KClan - "Full Speed Ahead"
19. Of Mexican Descent - "Mosh 2 Da Sun"

Mediafire

Enjoy...and leave comments if you like the mix. If response is positive enough, I could be persuaded to do another one of these.


-Echo Leader

Ganjah K - Unreleased Material

Ganjah K's name is one that rarely comes up when discussions are held of the mighty Project Blowed, an unfortunate oversight when K's musical pedigree is more than enough to hold him in the same lofty regard as the rest of the seminal Left Coast collective. Simply put, the man makes damn good rap music. Though legendary in the Los Angeles underground circles, his own legacy is overshadowed by his more prolific contemporaries including Freestyle Fellowship, Abstract Tribe Unique, and the Curbserver/Afterlife camp. This is more than likely due to the fact that K could never seem to get an officially-released full-length record. Let's face it, in an industry where putting out six mixtapes worth of material in as many months is often not enough to get you noticed, a lack of recorded material is a serious hindrance.

At least two Ganjah K albums were produced, despite constant murmurs of their non-existence amongst Blowed heads and tape traders. The first, Danksta Life, seems to be a cassette-only underground release and features Snoop Dogg on one of the choruses ("Ups & Downs")...in-studio, no samples! Consensus on a release date seems to fall between 1992 and 1994, although I would guess closer to late 1992 or early 1993 given the Snoop appearance. K's sophomore album and major label debut, Harvest For The World, was supposed to be released in 1995 on Pallas Records, and was shelved when the label folded. I'm not sure if the album was ever actually completed as only eight songs seem to exist in tangible form.

After Pallas folded, K languished in the underground, dropping guest appearances here and there and even appearing on the soundtrack to the Martin Lawrence flick "A Thin Line Between Love & Hate." After lacing Fat Jack the Elephant with a track for his 1999 double-disc opus Cater To The DJ, Ganjah K seemingly disappeared into a haze of his own chronic smoke. According to this website, he was supposed to drop an album entitled Puff Daddy in the summer of 2002, but nothing ever materialized. Really a shame, as I always felt that K was a superbly talented cat.

Now, on to the music itself.

Ganjah K was never as stylistically monstrous as his Curbserver compatriots, but as he proved on the intermittent "Heavyweights" cuts that he could easily hold his own in a cipher. Song concepts are often limited to the man's namesake; smoking and dealing bud are the prevailing themes, although K never limits himself strictly that. The beats, which I would assume are mostly self-produced, hit you like the breeze coming off of the Pacific Ocean. Boom-bap to the core but no rough-and-rugged Timb boot stomp here; you can feel both the East and West Coast influences equally. Definitely the type of rap you'll want to crack a brew and lounge to. In my mind, there are really no weak tracks on either of these albums so all I can say is give 'em a listen and form your own opinions.

Here are a couple of links to K's two albums. Be forewarned, as the sound quality on Harvest For The World is extremely muddled as a result of multi-generation dubbing. I won't lie, they literally sound like someone ran the DATs through a meat grinder. But if you can get beyond the awful EQ levels, you're in for some dope music. One demo track, "Scene Of The Green," is tacked onto Harvest as well.


Enjoy.

Danksta Life (1992?-1994?, self-released)

1. Poverty Is A Crime
2. Paper Chase
3. Ya Too Strong
4. Danksta Life
5. When Ya Homie Dies
6. Everybody Wants To Be A G
7. Bud Berries
8. Smoke Buds & Down Brew
9. Medicine Man
10. Dis Type Of Shit
11. Ups & Downs (featuring Snoop Dogg)
12. Love Got My Mind Trippin’

Mediafire

Harvest For The World (1995, Pallas Records)

1. It Don’t Stop
2. Pound Of Herb
3. Can You Feel The High?
4. You’re All I Need
5. Untitled
6. Bud Berries
7. Untitled
8. Untitled
9. Scene Of The Green (Demo)

Mediafire

Props to TROY forum members basta & bignormy for the original uploads.

-Echo Leader