I was a bad younger brother.

The blogs are coming in thick & fast with the sad news of Derek B’s death -- a heart attack at the still tender age of 44 is the saddest part but rather than go into an ill-researched break down of the man’s career i just wanted to share an anecdote with a nod to the bad young brother.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned on the show a fair few times that being the youngest in the family I inevitably wound up being the weird kid in school who was more into my bother’s/sister’s records than the pop of the time but there was a moment back in ‘88 when a young Derek Boland from Bow, flirted with the charts with his single “Bad Young Brother”. Suddenly there was this conflict of misguided adolescent will verses ‘wait a minute, there’s a tough tune on the Capital Chart show’.

Now picture about 30 kids on a musty coach heading out to the Kent countryside for an overnight school sojourn. I hadn’t yet heard the said single but I had come armed with a muffled tape of By All means Necessary and Memory of a Man & His Music. A kid called Michael Smith asked for a listen and passed me his own brick-like walkmen and within seconds I was “finger poppin to the sound of the drum and bass that kicks…”

Sadly what with the temperamental and almost bi-polar behaviour of the average UK Hip Hop fan I don’t think Derek was taken too seriously as an MC once his LP dropped, at least amongst school kids anyway but he’d cemented a love for UK rap with me none the less as the next couple of years were all about Overlord X, Merlin, London Posse etc etc not to mention some of the amazing records released on Music Of Life where Derek was effectively the A&R.

Anyway, back to the coach and we’d ditched the walkmans, I say I wasn’t into pop but there were still those breakthrough moments in the charts like the one which led to a huddle of teenagers tormenting a weary driver with what must have seemed like a never ending rendition of Walk The Dinosaur by Was Not Was. Even now I can imagine the sheer hell of being forced to endure an ill-ventilated bus full of smelly kids chanting “BOOM BOOM ACKALACKALACKA BOOM”, maybe the poor driver still wakes up in a cold sweat with our squeaky voices echoing through his frazzled brain, hands shaking at the thought of even touching a steering wheel again.

So why am I sharing this almost unrelated odyssey? Well…

A Potential Success Story.

Another day another death; it looks like I’m gonna remember 2009 as the year that killed off my childhood. For those that missed it we lost Mr Magic yesterday, a Hip Hop institution who’s been immortalized in wax for almost as long as rap music, with his debut record hitting the shelves barely months after “King Tim III” and “Rappers Delight”.

I’d be under rightful scrutiny if I claimed I was listening to Magic’s Message at the time, nor would I make out that I was somehow tuning into The Rap Attack radio show which he started in ‘83 on New York’s WBLS-FM. I actually don’t think I even knew who he was until well into the 90’s when I heard records like the epic disco rap of “Potential” and the heavily sampled “Rappin With Mr Magic”. It was around this time I read an interview with KRS One pinpointing Mr Magic as the accidental instigator of the short lived but meme inducing Bridge Wars -- the Bronx vs Queens battle sparked by KRS dismantling MC Shan’s “The Bridge” and rebuilding it across the East River as “South Bronx”.

My 1st bridge wars purchase was “The Bridge Is Over” by BDP, with it’s unbridled disrobing of Roxanne Shante and further attacks on Shan & Marley Marl, it’s now bewildering to think that a guy from Connecticut started the whole thing. Back tracking a couple of years, BDP started life as The Celebrity Three then quickly became 12:41, it was in this incarnation that KRS went to see Mr Magic in the hope of some recognition for his Mantronix endorsed “$uccess Is The Word” which Magic instantly wrote off as wack. With Magic championing his assistant Marley Marl’s Juice Crew, a disgruntled KRS went straight home and penned South Bronx, dissecting and deriding the crew that up until that day he’d supposedly wanted to be a part of, and the rest is career affirming (and in some cases career destroying) history.

I’d considered compiling a bunch of youtube links to the original bridge battles but alas they’re not all up there, obviously I could have focussed on Mr Magic’s back catalog but you could always head over to Stones Throw and pick up their excellent The Third Unheard LP which features hard to find early tracks from Mr Magic and his Connecticut cohorts. In the meantime, what’s the word..?