All The Way Live: Stan Ipcus Breaks Down Live Favorites Off His Best of IP Freestyles Mixtape (All-around Breakdown Edition)
All The Way Live: Stan Ipcus Breaks Down Live Favorites Off His Best of IP Freestyles Mixtape -Written By: Daniel Isenberg (@stanipcus)
Stan Ipcus, the extremely handsome, multi-talented, and, dare I say, Top 5 Dead or Alive Caucasian Emcee of All-Time (yeah, I said it. What are you gonna do about it?) just released a Best of IP Freestyles mixtape featuring over 30 tracks of pure fiery spittage.
The tape's contents and cover, inspired by "Best of..." mixtapes that you might have found on a Canal Street corner in the early 2000's, features Ipcus unleashing his reckless brand of intricately-constructed raps over beats by everyone from The Beatnuts & A Tribe Called Quest to JAY-Z & Jim Jones. And through it all, he sounds as confident as ever. In fact, on the chorus of his previously unreleased "Ballin'" freestyle, originally recorded in 2007, after absolutely destroying the first verse, he emphatically states over the chorus melody, "who's f***in' with me? No one." And to be honest, with bodacious bars and slick slang like he's exhibiting over the mid-2000's anthem, he's probably right.
But even with the ridiculous amount of studio-recorded freestyles on the tape that span over two decades, what might be most fascinating are the live recordings Ipcus managed to dig up, including a few from his collegiate days in the late 90's at The University of Maryland. You can hear the young energy and passion in his cocky, yet calculated, rapping and feel the raw emotion of a hungry emcee eating mics for the first time.
During a moonlit, lakeside hang last week, the elusive Ipcus talked through some of his favorite live freestyles from the new mixtape, as we played them loudly off a Bluetooth speaker while guzzling Sam Adams Summer Ales and selfing sour-filled jibs. As he flipped through the tracks on his phone, he was enthusiastic to talk about the various performances that helped define his career. Here's a breakdown of four of his favorites from the tape, which is available now exclusively on Bandcamp.
"Blues Brother" (Live @ Kaffa House)
Stan Ipcus: The East Flatbush Project's "Tried By 12" was, like, the quintessential underground instrumental from the second-half of the 90's to freestyle over. There was a tape I had of Biggie rapping over it live on The Wake Up Show that I used to listen to all the time; he kills it with his rhyme from "Kick In The Door." So, when I started doing shows for the first time during my senior year at Maryland, that was one of the first joints I used to always pull out to rap on.
The Kaffa House show hit around the end of the first semester of my senior year. Kaffa House was this little Reggae club in D.C. on U Street. My DJ friend, Grant, who, actually, let me hold the "Tried By 12" record in the first place, was the one who put the show together. It was, basically, a bunch of young Hip-Hop artists from D.C. & Maryland, including a couple I went to school with. There was, actually, a dope little Underground Hip-Hop scene at Maryland when I was there. Dudes like Peter Rosenberg, ODDISEE, Kev Brown, Ceez Mics—they were all in the mix.
But that night, all I remember is us being in there crazy deep with all our friends just wilding out. Lots of blunts and girls everywhere. There was no stage, but it was "official" enough that my boy DJ Roz had the turntables all set up and me and my boys, K-Wet & Max Bent, all had mics. I didn't really have actual songs at the time with hooks or concepts. I was just rapping over industry beats. But I was on-point enough that my verses were timed perfectly with the chorus breaks, so it felt a little more thought-out than just a regular verse over someone else's beat.
The illest sh*t is that Grant hooked up a MiniDisc player and recorded the whole show, so the quality of the live tape is crazy for 1999. And you can hear how hard we were going and get a feel for the vibe of the night with K-Wet introducing me and spitting gunshots over the chorus and ad-libs. And as much as the opening bar, "it's The Blues Brother boning your mother with no rubber under the covers with her lesbian lover puffing bubblers," is one of my most quotable lines by all my friends, the second verse is, actually, my favorite. That's that Young Ipcus pocket and me really finding my flow for the first time. I still remember writing that verse during a summer class. I love that verse.
There's another recording from that Kaffa House show on the tape, too, with me rapping over Redman's "Da Goodness" beat. That sh*t is kinda crazy, too, and was another staple in early Ipcus sets during my college years. Peep the third verse on that when Roz pulls the beat out.
"WMUC Freestyle #1" with Max Bent
Ipcus: So, this is literally a recording of the first time I ever rapped over my boy Max Bent's beatbox. Actually, it's the first time we ever met, period. I didn't even know him at the time. In fact, if you listen closely, as I get on the mic to rap, I say, "you're killing it, Gabe," because I thought his name was Gabe, but that was, actually, his friend's name, who was up there with him.
Anyway, to set the scene a little bit: this happened at, like, five o'clock in the morning on campus at our school's radio station, WMUC. I used to live across the street from campus on Knox Road and it was, like, a three-minute walk to the radio station, which was in the same building as the dining hall we all used to go to. We would go out to the bars and party all night and, then, go up to the radio station and rap on our friends' late night Underground Hip-Hop shows. Peter Rosenberg had his show right before my friends' show, so I used to see him up there all the time and, I believe, that's where we first met. Rosenberg's the man. We've remained friends since college and he's always showed love and played my joints over the years.
Anyway, that night when I came up, Max was beatboxing for a bunch of different emcees on the air, as I came into the room. Off rip, I just remember thinking he was so nasty, doing beatbox versions of all the popular Hip-Hop beats out at the time. Then, it was my turn and I just stepped up and did my thing with a verse I had written back home over the summer while I was working the desk at the Delfino Park tennis courts. I think I was still a junior at this time, maybe, it was '98? All I know is, if you listen to this, you'd think Max & I had been rapping together for years. There was instant chemistry; we were right in-sync with each other, as he nailed beatbox renditions of Gang Starr's "Work" & Das EFX's "Real Hip-Hop" while I rapped. Most of that is a testament to his ability to cater his beatbox to the emcee spitting. He's incredible at that. I sound mad young, too.
But this was the start of a life-long friendship and I'm so glad someone recorded it. Over 20 years later, Max & I are still making music together. Most recently, when DJ Premier started playing our emcee/beatbox collaborations, "Big Ip Don't Play" & "Pumpkin Cheesecake," on his show multiple weeks in a row, I told Max how excited I was to be sharing such a dope moment with him after all these years. We've been through a lot together and been overlooked a ton, too. So, to get that validation from one of our Hip-Hop heroes meant the world to us. It was like after over two decades of doing shows and recording songs together, we finally got our props.
"Boom Bip" with DJ Destro (Live @ CBGB's)
Ipcus: In the mid-2000's, I was doing a decent amount of shows around The City. I was opening up for legendary artists, like Smif-N-Wessun & Slick Rick, and rocking my own solo sets at places like Don Hill's, Piano's, and Joe's Pub. And, though, there was a brief moment that I was performing with a live band, my boy from White Plains, New York, DJ Destro, was usually the man behind the wheels of steel holding me down.
Destro was a few years older than me and I always looked up to him. We worked together at the time at an after-school program I directed at Highlands Middle School—he taught a class on DJ'ing for the kids and it was awesome. We became friends and, eventually, started performing together when I was getting booked for gigs and needed a DJ.
One thing very important to note—Destro is like Hip-Hop royalty in White Plains. His cousin, Top Quality, is really the only Hip-Hop artist to come out of White Plains and have a major label deal. T.Q. was an Unsigned Hype artist in The Source Magazine at first and, then, when he landed his deal, Destro produced his single, "Magnum Opus," which, also, got written up in The Source.
Anyway, Des and our mutual friend, Lord Judah, who, also, taught at the after-school program, used to hang after classes and mess around with beats and rhymes and stuff. And Des had this routine where he used to catch Q-Tip's rhyme, "the boom, the bip, the boom bip," from A Tribe Called Quest's "Push It Along" and keep bringing it back and cutting it up to make it into a beat. When I saw and heard him do that for the first time, I was blown away. So, I ended up writing a rhyme to it and we started performing it as a little emcee/DJ routine at shows.
One night, we had a gig at the legendary club CBGB's, like, a month before it closed down. It was probably the second or third time we had done the routine together live and someone caught it on video. So, I jacked the audio for the mixtape because I love this sh*t so much and it's such an ill showcase of how Des & I used to get busy. At the time, I truly believed no one could do the type of sh*t we were doing on stage. Just like the beatbox stuff I was doing with Max, this is Hip-Hop in its purest form.
"Sway Freestyle" with Matisyahu
Ipcus: This is the most recent freestyle on the tape. It's only five years old, but this was a huge moment for me. All I ever wanted was to have the opportunity to flex my skills on the air and rapping on Sway In The Morning is like the ultimate platform for an emcee to do just that.
Let me start at the beginning, though. See, Matisyahu is one of my best friends. We grew up together in White Plains and beyond just being kids who played ball and hung out all the time, we always bonded over music. In fact, my first times ever rapping were over his beatboxes at high school keg parties. And through all his success, we've always stayed close and recorded and performed together.
In 2017, Matis was promoting his new album, Undercurrent, which I had a guest verse on at the beginning of the song "BSP: Blue Sky Playground." He hit me up, like, "yo, you gotta come up with me to Sway." How could I say "no?"
The crazy sh*t was we went up on a Friday morning, the same day his album dropped. But he, also, had an album release show Downtown at midnight the night before, where he was performing the whole album start-to-finish for his fans. And he invited me to rock at that, too, since I was on "BSP."
So, I drove from Northern Westchester down to The East Village, hung out for the night, and rocked the show with him until, like, three in the morning, got home, probably, around four, woke up and got my oldest son on the bus for school, walked to the train station, and hopped on an 8:47a.m. train back into The City to go see Sway up at SiriusXM.
I was definitely hurting a little from the night before and my train got delayed on the way down just north of White Plains, so that was stressful, but I made it just in time. The plan was that Matis was gonna do an interview with Sway and, then, toward the end, we were gonna spit. So, I just kind of sat off to the side, off-camera sort of behind Heather B. while Matis & Sway chopped it up and, then, Matis pulled me in when it was time to rap.
This dope producer, Black Saun, was up at the station playing beats all morning, so he provided the instrumental, which was a hard joint that had the same sample as that old Rampage song, "Wild for The Night." After I got introduced on the air, Matis looked at me and gave me the nod to set it off, so I spit the "BSP" verse first, which is a pretty nice, lyrical 16 on some smooth, emcee sh*t. I thought it came off cool, but I was pretty laid-back about it all, almost like I was just getting warmed up. Maybe, too laid back, in hindsight.
Then, f***ing Matis came in hard with the Reggae flow and started killing that sh*t on another level. I can't front, he had me fired up. So, when it was time for me to come back in, I dropped a new verse I had on some storytelling sh*t, spitting about a day in my life as a dad from getting the kids ready in the morning to taking conference calls and pitching ideas to clients at work. It was a verse I rapped the night before at the album release show at the end of "BSP" and it went over really well on stage, so I figured I'd bring it back.
Well, the rhyme and the flow hit perfectly with the instrumental and my energy was so up from Matis killing it that it all came together and ended up being one of the craziest moments of my life. If you watch the video on YouTube, there's a spot about halfway through the verse where Sway stands up smiling, like, "yo, this dude is kinda killing it!" And the reaction in the studio at the end of the verse from everyone is priceless.
This has gotta be a Top 5 Hip-Hop highlight for me. To be up there with one of my best friends going back-and-forth on Sway's show was truly special. I gotta say thanks to Matis for always bringing me along for the ride—this was a big one for me.
Ipcus: Peace, what's up, everyone!? Here's a brand new track I produced titled "Cream." I was at a friend's house the other night hanging out listening to a bunch of random sh*t and he threw this Classic Rock banger on that you'll instantly recognize and I was like, "yo, I wanna rap on that!" I went home, looped it up, wrote a couple verses and a chorus, recorded it and boom—this is it. Enjoy, and thanks for the continued support. And check out the Best of IP Freestyles mixtape on my page, too, if you missed it, think you'll like that, too. Over 30 mixtape, radio, and live freestyles dating back to my college days in the late 90's. It's a fun collection of me rapping on a bunch of classic Hip-Hop beats from back in the day.
