J-Zone’s Talks About His Desert Island Cassette List and The Slow Decline of Tape Sales
This is a companion piece to my interview with J-Zone where we talk about cassette sampling techniques. Read that interview and learn more about how we connected by clicking here.
Gino: Do you have a favorite rap album that is only available on cassette.
J-Zone: Baritone Tiplove tape comes to mind. The album is called Livin’ Foul. It was re-issued on double vinyl like four or five years ago, but it was a super limited run. It was cassette only until 07, so for 15 or 16 years it was cassette only. Livin’ Foul is definitely my number one pick. Baritone Tiplove is like J-Zone and Chief Chinchilla or Madlib and Quasimoto before they existed. The real guy’s name is Phil The Soulman. He’s a record dealer from Philly who I bought breaks from in the 90’s. He’s also known as Phil Most Chill. Baritone Tiplove was like the Chief Chinchila or Quasimoto of Phil Most Chill, it was his alter eager. I had never heard Livin’ Foul until 04 when he sent me a couple of cuts from it. When I listened to it I was like, “Yo, I gotta hear this whole thing.” (Editor’s Note: You can read Phil Most Chill’s write-up on the making of Livn’ Foul by clicking here.)
People always said that when I did Chief Chinchilla, I was biting Madlib and his Quasimoto album. But in reality I was biting Baritone Tiplove. I don’t know if Madlib knew about Livin’ Foul, but that was the original Chief Chinchilla or Quasimoto. It was really well produced. I’ll say it on record. It was on the level of The Bomb Squad and Public Enemy in terms of production. Production wise, it was as good as Fear of a Black Planet. A label called Easy Street put it out. I don’t even know if they ever put anything else out. They might have done one or two other releases, but they weren’t really accustomed to dealing with hip hop, so they kind of didn’t know what they had on their hands.
Livin’ Foul came out in ’91. The Biz Markie lawsuit had just happened and that album is chock full of tons of samples. The label basically panicked because of the lawsuits and didn’t want to put it out on other formats. I remember Phil telling me it had something to do with the samples he used, so they made it some low key shit that was only available on cassette. I can’t imagine that shit getting out of the East Coast at all. It probably came up in batches of one and two in certain record stores, but the cover is so crazy that you would probably bypass it and think it was a joke or something. It just fell under the radar. I’m surprised that record hasn’t caught on more with today’s generation that goes back and looks for stuff. It was the precursor to so much stuff that blew up later, whether or not we knew that we were borrowing from it.
“I’ll say it on record. It was on the level of The Bomb Squad and Public Enemy in terms of production. Production wise, it was as good as ‘Fear of a Black Planet’.”
Gino: Obscure regional tapes have become very popular on Amazon and EBay in the last five to six years. Do you have any tapes that fit that mold?
J-Zone: I also have a bunch of regional shit on cassette. The Ichiban label had a lot of stuff that I don’t remember ever seeing on CD. Albums like the 1–5 Posse’s Lifestyles of the Young and Crazy. That had some really good production. I’ve never seen the CD, I’ve only encountered the cassette.
I have an MC Sergio album that didn’t come out on CD called Making A Killing. It has bonus cuts that aren’t on the vinyl and never came out on CD. MC Serigo was on Warlock/Idlers records. He’s from Brooklyn. He came out in 89 or 90 and his producer and DJ was Backspin, who went on to do beats for Leaders of the New School and Busta Rhymes. Backspin did beats on both Leaders albums and he did shit on Busta’s first solo album. He was Sergio’s DJ and producer back then. They had a click called ISP (Ill Squad Productions) with Cut Master KG and Dollar $ Bill. They were just a bunch of guys from Flatbush that were in the same crew. Making a Killing was very generic for the time. It had funky samples, battle rhymes, and wasn’t very well mixed, but it has a campy appeal to it. Kind of what an indie album would sound like at the time.
“I think a lot of times, the places where we listen to our music steers where the technology goes.”
Gino: When did you start to notice the decline of tape sales and new formats taking over?
J-Zone: I would say cassettes started to fade in maybe 96–97. The last time I remember everybody buying the tape for something was Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Everybody called it the purple tape because of it’s purple shell. Slaughterhouse was yellow, Illegal’s tape was red. I have Cuban Linx on vinyl. All the DJ’s had it on vinyl and all of my friends had it on cassette. That was 95. By the times Iron Man and Wu-Tang Forever came out, everybody had the CD.
Cars also started having CD players in them. I think a lot of times, the places where we listen to our music steers where the technology goes. I have a 01 Volkswagen with a cassette player and the CD is a trunk loader. It’s such a pain in the ass to put CDs in the trunk that I always listen to tapes in my car, because I can control it, it’s right there. If your car doesn’t have a cassette deck, you’re not going go out of your way to buy one. I think cars and portable music players determined what was available to the consumers. It was a domino effect. By 2000, the cassette section of music store was like a piece of one wall of the store. At that point, stores had to look at what was feasible and what people would buy, because they were trying to run a business. A lot of the stuff just got phased out because it was forced out.
Gino: With defunct forms of media, there is always an issue of maintaining the condition, especially if you actually use it. If you take care of vinyl, it’s pretty durable. I know that with repeat plays cassettes can wear down quickly. Do you convert all of your cassettes to digital so that you have them backed up, just in case?
J-Zone: The valuable ones I do. My last car didn’t have a cassette player. A lot of my cassettes, I would run them through Pro Tools, clean them up, make them sounds good, then bounce them down to CD. The car I just got is actually newer than the last car I had and it still has a cassette deck. My 99 Mazda didn’t have a cassette, but my 01 Volkswagen has a cassette. So now that I have a cassette player in the car, I’ve gone back to using tapes. Store bought tapes get worn down so I either dub them to another cassette and use that or make MP3s out of them. For old radio shows and shit, I’ll digitize them. Those can never be found again.
Connect with J-Zone on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and Twitter @jzonedonttweet.
Want more engaging narrative non-fiction music journalism and curated playlists? Sign up for the Micro-Chop Substack newsletter.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following my Micro-Chop publication.
