I have this vivid memory of opening the door to my 5th grade classroom, back in my teaching days at Henderson Elementary. It was about 7:30 in the morning, I always got to school early to set up for the day ahead. I opened the door, turned the lights on, and walked towards my desk. I put my bag down and began unpacking my usual items including my teacher’s manuals, the notebook where I kept my lesson plans, various papers I graded the night before, and if I was good to myself, a lunch. One new item was in my bag this morning though, it was a mixtape by an old friend of mine, Naledge, who was going to be speaking in front of my class this afternoon. The mixtape was Will Rap For Food, a new mixtape he released, hosted by Chicago radio personality Mike Love. It was literally the first CD I held from a friend of mine. Like what felt like a real CD, made off in the magical land of the music industry, or what I understood that to be back in 2005, a year and a half out of college and doing interviews on my free time.
I reconnected with Naledge probably a year or so before his appearance in my 5th grade classroom, after DJ Metrognome interviewed him in for SoundSlam.com, a website Metrognome and I ran together from 2004-2006. I vivdly remember reading that interview as well, looking at the picture and saying to myself, ‘yo, that looks like Jabari.’ Turned out that it was, and my former teammate had ventured off to UPenn, linked up with Double O and started Kidz In The Hall around the same time I went to IU and then Teach For America. Not only was Naledge the only friend I knew that signed a record deal, but it was a record deal with Rawkus Records. The Rawkus Records, which as lame as it kind of sounds now, was like a Hip Hop bible for me as a teenager. This was the Rebirth of the Razor, and the launch of Kidz In The Hall.
When Naledge came to my class, he took some questions from my students. I had been incorporating Hip Hop into my lessons since the first day of school, and posters of Mos Def, Talib Kweli and others hung around the room with various quotes. They had absorbed it well, evidenced when one of my students asked Naledge, ‘do you know Talib Kweli? And what do you think of his quote, “Life without Naledge is death in disguise”? We both looked at each other, somewhat in disbelief, before he answered the question…
A couple days ago Naledge put a post on Twitter that he was looking for the song “Cold Outside” featuring Bump J, one that was featured on Will Rap For Food. I’ve DJ’ed for Naledge and done so many mixtapes with him that I think I have EVERY Naledge/Kidz In The Hall/Feature/B-Side track recorded. I told him I had the record, and we talked about the full mixtape. It happened at such a different time in the music business, as well as both our lives that I asked him about reposting the whole thing on RubyHornet with some commentary about what was going on in his head around the time of its release. He obliged, and below we offer the mixtape along with a little peak into the mind of Naledge circa 2005 and the creation of Will Rap For Food…
Via Naledge:
When you asked me to write about the Will Rap for Food mixtape that I put out in late ’05/early ’06, it brought back a ton of memories. There has not only been a ton of growth in me musically, but also in my industry savvy, and just plain where my mind state was as a man. Back then, music was still very fun and innocent to me. I made the decision to live with my eventual manager, Dan Solomito,in a house in Atlanta and was heavily involved in doing voice over work at the time. That Thanksgiving, I came back to Chicago and I needed a studio to work out of to get the voice over work done as well as record music. This was where my relationship with Mike Kolar was formed.
Memo from the Molemen referred me over there, and I recorded a majority of the mixtape with him and Double O in the presence of John Monopoly. It was this mixtape that got his interest as well as the people at Rawkus. I remember at this time just having no clue how lucky I was to be in a position to have a record deal so young. I thought the label was supposed to “make you a star.” I found out firsthand that the deal is only when the real work starts.
Still, I consider Will Rap For Food one of my best tapes lyrically, and the last tape I made as a person working a 9-5 and moonlighting in the studio. I try to conjure that same type of hunger every time I get in the studio to this day in order to get over this hump of breaking through with our new projects. I was super naïve at that time, and everything was so new to me.
I miss those days when we were partying at Jet Vodka Lounge, Icebar and Minx. This tape brought real fond memories back… The record “Cold Outside” featuring Bump J is probably the biggest reminder of how much time has passed. He was a great talent who now is incarcerated. Hopefully, songs like mine will allow his legacy to live on…
Tracklist and download link after the jump.
Download Will Rap For Food
1. “Intro”
2. “Got ‘Em Sayin’
3. “Life”
4. “F The World”
5. “Don’t Wanna Hear That S**t”
6. “Cold Outside” featuring Bump J
7. “Gotta Be That Way”
8. “Therapy”
9. “My Liftetime”
10. “Flickin'”
11. “Broke Diaries”
12. “Some S**t That I Wrote”
13. “It’z You”
14. “Heaven Knows”
15. “Wheelz Fall Off (’05 ‘Till)
16. “Locksmif”
17. “Back 2 Africa”
18. “My Country”
19. “Jook It”