I've already talked to you before about this, if you have any questions as to what is original and what isn't, I would be the guy to tell you. I don't need to repeat myself all over again but I guess you have to hear everything multiple times before it sticks. I have been personally collecting, archiving, engineering, selling, trading and directly dealing from the sources for 2 decades now. I've also worked with distributors and local shops, artists and producers personally. It is immediately apparent to me what I am looking at. I understand the typesetting methods, I know where they were pressed, I know the equipment used, I know exactly how they were made, where they were ordered from. That said, I have also been following bootlegs for just as long as I have been working and I could tell just by looking at the style of bootleg, when and where it was done and name the names associated with them. Running from the original bootlegs, to the different shop's boots, to TWIII & Stuart's represses, all the way to Player 1's recent mp3-to-cassette boots, to the modern German counterfeits which attempt to mimic what are thought to be the original pressings. There has always been bootleg prevalence in Memphis since day 1 due to the scarcity of original pressings, and it has only gotten worse due to folks as yourself that have no idea what you're talking about, and just continue to spread misinformation. I'm not from Chicago, I'll let you talk all day about whatever you got to say and I could care little to throw in my uneducated opinion. But Memphis on the other hand, I will make you sound like damn fool in about 5 minutes if I let you talk by yourself and then I have to come in and clean up. Honestly it seems that you rarely know what you're talking about, so you just make things up out of thin air 50% of the time, and the rest of the time you just wing it. You also get numerous things wrong, it's like you hear what actually happened, it goes into your head, and when it comes time to say it out loud again, you have it flipped backwards and upside down. It would be best if you just didn't comment.
There was never a Memphis rap website in 1996-1997, i don't know what you are talking about. Who the hell was on the internet downloading Memphis rap in 1996?? That's my first question... The first Memphis site MTownBound was created in 2000 & ran by B-Low, the same guy to also dropped numerous compilation CDs and also later ran Down-South.com. He sold bootleg tapes that were clearly sold as bootlegs. His tapes looked nothing like the originals. They were squared white sticker labels & big printed font, many of which have their images used all over youtube videos today. Those were not meant to be counterfeit, they were sold as cassette copies, and usually copies of old bootlegs. King JC's site came up next MTownRap and with Basement Tape Distribution's represses that he also sold on Southwest-Connection forum. At the same time, TWIII was also booting all sorts of tapes at Stuarts and selling in huge bulk to stores outside Memphis, & thats where plain cassette & sticker tapes came from.. THOSE were the bootleg floods of the early 00's.. THOSE are not the originals.. all just brand new bootlegs of old tapes and sometimes boots of boots.. Somewhere along the line in the mid 00's, the internet, (I'm guessing yourself included since you were apparently downloading underground Memphis Rap in 1996) decided that anything you saw online was the original tape. And folks like Medicine Man who ripped all those poor quality bootlegs to digital, and folks like Pistol Creep who bought those low qualilty bootlegged mp3s and packaged them up as "remastered" CD's, and folks like yourself who are interested in buying up all those shit quality CD-R's in bulk to resell them, are all continuing the cycle of garbage that makes up Memphis Rap's online presence of "Remastered" this and "OG Tape Rip" that... All the while the folks who actually still have the original tapes have to deal with you all and all the mess you made and/or contributed to online.
Like I've told you before if you don't KNOW *key word* KNOW what you're talking about, please stay the hell away from it, you only make it worse. The truth is the original tapes have excellent sound quality, not ridiculous amounts of tape noise and distortion. Not the crap you hear on youtube. They were mixed down to master tapes from 4 track, taken to professional duplicators, typsetted, preloaded, and pressed at quantity then sold as either bulk to the Mom & Pop shops, as consignment to the Car Stereo Shops, or out the trunk. After the tape started selling out, either they were reordered and pressed again or that was it. Once they were gone, they were gone. If you missed your chance to buy a copy or your tape got lost/stolen, you'd run over to Cat's or Pop Tunes, or Ikes and hope they still had a copy. And if they didn't then you know you could just stop over at Boss Uglys and just get a bootleg for a buck or two. That was it, and that was the old game. And like I also told you before, the majority of original tapes were imprinted, color shells, colored ink, special artwork, special typesetting, color covers etc, and NOT just a tape with a white sticker. Please STOP saying that. In reality, hardly any tapes were released as just a tape with a sticker label. Almost all original tapes had covers and/or some sort of unique trait to protect itself from the original bootleggers. The goal was always to make tapes unique so that any bootlegs were obvious, and they have always been obvious. And you knew you were buying a bootleg when you did. If you were there in that time, you would know. You're on the outside looking in years later and all you have to go by is whatever you can see on the net. Today very little original pressings come up, I happen to still have hundreds which I have acquired over decades of working with numerous ends of the music business, trading, my personal collection, & leftover stock. It's been my personal project in recent years to archive everything, old bootlegs and all. If you have questions, ask.. don't just spread your assumptions.
