Listen Up

Sometimes things stick in your mind and I’ll never forget the day I was leaving the 40 Acres and A Mule store in Brooklyn all those years ago and this kid came up to me as I walked back to the subway and started hassling me to buy this record he was trying to sell. He only wanted two dollars for it and wouldn’t leave me alone so in the end I just gave in and handed him the money. All the way back to Union Square I sat there staring at this 12” by a rapper I had never heard of called E Rule entitled “Listen Up” and it was really only by pure chance that I even bothered to put it on the turntable when I got in. What I heard though from the first bar was one of the most amazing hip-hop tracks ever recorded. Dope lyrics over an amazing beat with a Roy Ayers sample thrown in for good measure and some of the craziest scratches I had ever heard. To the best of my knowledge E Rule never did anything else of note but this track is such a classic it’s worth its weight in gold. For those of you who don’t know it, check out the link below, and for those of you who do, I know you’ll agree with me. Real train-spotters will also tell you it was used in Larry Clark’s Kids and he couldn’t have picked a more perfect track.










http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnmqaULUcb0