Let’s go back, way back…

The soundtrack to the original hip hop movie Wild Style gets a re-release for its 25th anniversary next month. Not the first document of hip hop culture, the 1982 film and soundtrack nonetheless seems as good a place to start as anywhere. Hugely influential in every respect, the tracks here from the likes of Cold Crush Brothers, Busy Bee, Rammellzee, Double Trouble and DJs Grand Wizard Theodore and Fab Five Freddy seem to blueprint most of the music that followed from the Beastie Boys to A Tribe Called Quest. Musically, Wild Style still finds hip hop stuck in the disco instrumentals phase of the Sugar Hill Gang era and the backing tracks - produced by Blondie’s Chris Stein - are largely indistinguishable.

The film also gets the deluxe repackage treatment with Rhino releasing a version with remastered audiovisuals and extras including interviews with the film’s stars, the aforementioned MCs and DJs themselves, and footage from the 20th anniversary reunion concert.

If that isn’t enough to satiate your hunger for back-in-the-day hip hop goodness, the 'rhyme inspector' Percee P releases his long-awaited official album debut this month on one of our favourite labels, Stones Throw. We say ‘long-awaited’ but, really, most people gave up waiting 10 years ago. Percee is frequently described these days a ‘fast rap’ legend, known for a style that recalls the mighty Big Daddy Kane for his Vesuvial way with the adjectives. It’s a long story but somehow Percee managed to play his part in both the late 80s and mid-90s hip hop boom periods and this album, appropriately titled “Perseverance”, manages to summarise much of the best of both. Stones Throw’s special weapon, Madlib, steps up to produce and sounds great delivering a more straight-up set than his recent jazz and beatstrumental excursions, making this one of the strongest artist albums the label has released in a while.