As Chicago winds up another long, hot summer, plagued by violence and riddled with tragedy, Typical Cats lob in another time bomb, a Qwazaar solo slab entitled "Reflections from the Porch." Anchored by a Natural beat awash in harmonies, bittersweet guitar, and, as always, dust-covered knocking drums, "Reflections" is a two and a half minute masterwork, a miniature history, and a meditative moment from one of the premier MCs of his generation. Described by Hip Hop Renaissance man Kevin Beacham as "one of the best natural Rappers of this era," Qwa is in excellent form here, leaning back into the stories, sipping from a jarful of memory.

"I remember beating on the tables / no interest from the majors / high school talent shows / booed us off stages... / wardrobe busted up -- couldn't afford the labels / cheap-ass backpacks -- sneakers that'll match that." In 4 bars, Qwa time-travels us decades back, digging into pre-TC lore and further, inviting us to examine the soul topography of a quintessential survivor.

Reflections From The Porch

As summer approaches, Typical Cats return with another gem, a blistering slab of frosted lunacy entitled “Bitter Cold.”  One of a constellation of Qwel solo shots from TC’s latest (3, G4), “Bitter Cold” marries a sinister Natural beat that swings like a gypsy funeral with inspired verses from TC’s resident embedded journalist.  Qwel rasps like a man knocking at the lid of his coffin.  He examines the rampant nihilism of post-Keef Chicago while sparring pugilistic drums and a swirling zydeco sample. 

“It’s all love so they say / but it don’t cost and it don’t pay / somehow he lost his way up in this maze / and the world turned him cold…”  With another long hot summer looming over the city, TC aims for the antidote. 

The Bitter Cold

On My Square

For more stuff like this peep - http://www.mixcloud.com/djnatural/

Peace good people. As promised, we bring to you another gem from the TC vaults. Live on WHPK, May 31st, 2000, Qwazaar and Qwel are heard here doing what they were doing just about every week at that time on DJ Natural & Kid Knish's Wednesday Night Rap Show. 

Typical Cats had just coalesced, and the members were spending all their time chilling together in Hyde Park, smoking their brains out, and working on the songs that would eventually make up their first LP. 

A few days before this show was recorded, DJ Natural gave Qwa the beat for "It Won't Stop" for him to write to. Little did Nat know, the verse that Qwa would spit live on air the following Wednesday night was destined to be pared with it. Even though he defied just about every mandate in the prevailing rulebook for rapper self-presentation, Qwel was definitely the "it" dude back then. Everybody was either quoting his punchlines, praying that they'd never face him in a battle, or just standing next to him, hoping dopeness would rub off on them. 

Thankfully, what could have been just a passing moment turned out not to be. As always, a super big shout out to DJ-Algoriddim for digitizing Natural's tapes and for being dope ass reggae DJ... enjoy

Typical Cats - WHPK Classics - May 31, 2000; Qwa & Qwel

Any Day

Style Wars Theory

No Man Island

Justice Coming

Denizen Walks Away

For more stuff like this peep - http://www.mixcloud.com/djnatural/

Qwel killing it live on WHPK in 2000. The radio show featured freestyles and live performances by just about everyone in the Chicago scene at that time, but nobody was doing anything like this....

Live WHPK, May 2000; Qwel, Red Meat Acapella

Qweloquiallisms

Easy Cause It Is

Classic group track from the self-titled LP

Take A Number

Better Luck

2000 Classic from Typical Cats off the debut self-titled LP. 

88.5 Chicago. Yeah. 
I shoot the gift on the radio station 
88.5 WHPK was the only station that would fuck with rap 
88.5 Chicago. On the radio station. 
Takin' a train [repeat/fade] 

The thin red line is the thin spine 
I roll down the back of a city overgrown and overtaxed 
The wack stands of the rich pick a thin 
pockets bare and scatter, the skeletons of cultures with no rent control 
Pattering feet of prostitutes and penny brown 
children trades glass glades sweet for someone to pay or to listen 
I glisten like the question in the shorty's eyes 
sleeping in the train-car at the Lawrence stop when I get in 
Making pillows out of bare arms while I'm posturing poems 
but I can't name these eyes or the idea of less than home 
Home be unfinished it that fate hasn't sown 
in the skirt of an evening over mornings waste blown 
I see the moon I see the go going by on stilts 
as mouths wilt and turn blinded to girls' eyes 
Fate's hands have holes, we hold hope by the collar 
color red the closed eyes shut tight on the dollar 
Wills rock-heads to sleep, my eyes peal all the way 
to memorize a sleeping girl's face and bring it to PK 

Oh, shit I'm late I got a bus to make to take the 35th and State 
Get on the Dan Ryan red line and head downtown 
With head down experience life in surround sound 
Rhythematic speech occurs when the crowd's around 
Besides I'm still waiting on the train, plus I'm late already 
and how the fuck am I gonna get downtown and back to WHPK 
Man its already 8:40, too much thinkin 
I gotta keep this freestyle steady, now freestyles over things 
like this point to the fact that I'm sober 
I need weed, yo fuck the mission to the record store 
to put CD's on consignment just for fickle fans to not buy it, 
I thought they liked violence but anyway skip downtown 
I turn around I hear the train coming, head out now 
Train stop, hop in the backseat like a fuckin' taxi 
and I heard that DJ Nat be having fat sacs a weed 
Get off and catch the 55th and Garfield to University 
Hyde Park chill, I feel a dark chill when I hit the building 
Here with the intention to kill it 
Finally made it now where the hell is Qwel and Denizen? 

Reasons run thin by the end of the line 
but the signs can be read if you learn them in time [x2] 

Yo it's already Wednesday night, time for HPK's rap show 
but waitin' on sacs yo makes me late 
Fuck it gotta hit this open mic 
hopin' to leave stress at the rest so I can flow tonight 
I grab my rhyme book and hit the elevator 
lighter square freestyle the tale I'ma tell later 
Hike to the thin red line that's Sheridan 
by the time my name dries waitin' for the train here it is 
Amongst the chatter of workdays and old dreams 
The thin red line holds me to window seats 
The wind blows beats with sin don't sleep 
but neither can I with open mics on my mind 
My pen and pad describe 65-minute lifetimes 
from Sheridan to Hyde Park provides spark tight lines 
Who's these Typical Cats flexin' insane 
"It's the Q-W-A", "Denizen Kane" 

Good to see yall cats late again some typical shit 
For sure don't sweat it Denizen, yo it's cool that you made it in 
Yo my bad Denizen I had to catch some medicine 
Oh I feel the pharmacology, cats were just guessin' when 
we three breath these free prophecies 
Catch me settin' outer limits to these than HP 
to MC's that hate me probably cause they take themselves too seriously 
My fear is not being there you see to hear'em speak 
fo sho you know these flea-bitten felines is found 
And the loose tooth get left in the booth 
that's my man Dan in a fine fickle fix of fellowship and fools frontin' 
Fact remains Benneton ads on crack make you move something 
Similar to Hi-Tek and Talib only at hi-speed, fools frontin' 
but the fact remains they still won't do nothing 
Who's bluffin', fuck that, I'm all concerned with whose cuttin' 
Yo fuck who's cuttin', yo it's cool if you two dudes is puffin', huh skid? 
Not to crush this fat rap oh shit check out this Typical Cat Nat scratch 

[DJ Natural cuts it up] 


Thin Red Line

Puzzling Thing

The best graffiti song ever? TC classic off the first Typical Cats LP.

The Manhattan Project

Typical Cats, fabled phantoms of Chicago’s fertile underground, after recently dropping the third full-length of their critically acclaimed oeuvre, one which many fans feared would be their last, return with a treasure from the vaults, a “lost” record that has flecks of classic songcraft imbedded in its recombinant DNA.  Cooked up by producer extraordinaire DJ Natural, with additional spice and marinade by invisible wunderkind Big Danny S, “Zulu” sounds like a 45 spinning in a jukebox blaring from a corner bar that never existed.  The all-important signature knocking drums are there, bassline like an insistent heartbeat anchoring swirling organ and skritchy guitar riffs that underpin an off-kilter apocalyptic travelogue wrapped in sun-drenched melody.  “Meet me in the lion’s den,” Denizen Kane intones, in a clipped, gravelly tenor, jumping from death threats for the oppressor to survival advice for those in Babylonian exile, bursting into clean, limpid, legato lines as the beat blooms into Afropop territory.  “I’ve seen the miles that stretch their arms and legs along the open dial.  I’ve become an orphan son of the open road like a highway child.”  Allegedly penned during TC’s 3 Tour (a beautiful, chaotic affair that involved a fistfight with New Mexico police and at least 2 UFO sightings) and recorded at Qwa’s California compound (since decommissioned), “Zulu” is a top 40 single from an alternative reality, a classic for AM radio in a parallel universe.  Attune your transistor to the TC and see.

Zulu

Classic Denizen Kane solo track off the self-titled LP. 

Snake Oil

The long awaited new typical cats record drops september 25th everywhere....TYPICAL CATS 3....thetypicalcats@gmail.com for inquiries or to just show love yall--http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1157638957/the-return-of-typical-cats

Typical Cats Mega Mix (TC3)

The first single, “The Crown” is a frenetic display of jagged guitars and style-shifting that makes it a perfect complement to the Orange Album’s classic “Reinventing.”  The name, however, is something of a misnomer.  TC have never been interested in being kings.  They’ve been griots shouting from the village limits, stoning the village idiots, interrupting thieves, and solidifying sterling reputations as rappers’ rappers, smokers’ smokers, underground Gs, tribal chiefs.  There will never be another Typical Cats.  They leave the set like five men exiting a burning building, leaving wrecked stages and a catalog of classics in their wake.  With their exodus, we find ourselves suddenly grown, having come of age with the culture, standing, as always, at the crossroads.  With the music, we move like Gayle Sayers, howl like Magic Sam, see the city like a kid on the project bench, and mark it all down in a black book that will never close.  It is what it is.  Forever.

The Crown - Typical Cats

In the final years of the last millenium, two native New Yorkers added a page to Chicago's hip hop history with the advent of the WHPK Wednesday Night Rap Show. Although short-lived and never formally christened, the Show had heads from Roosevelt to the Hundreds stuck on 88.5 FM midweek. In the show's aftermath, from the ashes of countless vinyl crates and echoes of chaotic show-closing freestyle sessions, Typical Cats was born. 

Featuring MCs Qwazaar, Qwel and Denizen Kane, producer/dj Natural and media assassin Kid Knish, Typical dropped a self-titled full-length on Galapagos4 Records and began a relentless campaign to restore a fallen hip hop world to its former promise and glory. The talent assembled was unmistakable, the sound created was formidable. Firmly planted in tradition, unorthodox in invention and possessed of a strength only earned in the furnace of experience, their Sound is the Future that hip hop's Past would have had if its Present weren't held hostage by the uninspired and unrepentant. A flurry of solo projects later, Chicago's prodigal sons return. Hip hoppers rejoice. Suckers duck and cover. Typical Cats come to conquer. Battle champs, hotline legends, poetry circuit kings. 

Tuck Your Pride In 'Cause All Lyrics Connect At The Soul. And it's on and it's on and it's on. 

QWAZAAR - A native of Chicago's gritty Low End, Qwazaar strikes from hip hop's essence. Whether the subject matter is inner city or interplanetary, the flow remains untouchable - a percussive yet fluid attack that evokes South Side rain and helicopter blades in a single breath. The content is heavy- "After the dust settles, witness the blood puddles..." Lights out, kids. The Q-W-A is here. 

QWEL - You first seen his name dangling a quarter mile up on a suspension bridge from your scratch-bombed window on the Orange line. You first heard that distinctive melodic/abrasive storm of syllables on old Nacro and Scam Artist tapes with inserts printed at the Kinko's. Now the heat's been perfected-and this nasty North Side revelation music rebel is out to wake the sleepers. From Ted Turner's devil ass to the so-called competition-everyone and their mama gets dealt with when the kid laces up his boots. 

DENIZEN KANE - From the rum and coke rumble of Chicago's North Side flow spots to the celluloid veneer of Def Poetry Jam's main stage, Denizen Kane rips the party with a poet's heart and an outsider's eye. Journalistic, impressionistic, real-life and drastic, young Kane's late night Red Line revelations turn into heathen hymns on tape, capturing the moody face of the metropolis in color. How long can a lost one roam until he finds his way home? Listen to your city fall apart through the muddy mouth of an immigrant.

Typical Cats

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