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For the second year in a row, Hot 97 ran a month long "Black Fist Friday" series at noon this past February to celebrate Black History Month featuring various guest dj's playing hour long mixes of old school records. As Hot 97 has strayed further and further from its hip hop origins - Macklemore's Thrift Shop is the edgiest rap track you're likely to hear as the station grinds through its otherwise continuous loop of Rhianna hits during the day - Black Fist Fridays once again justified 97.1's top placement on my car stereo's list of saved radio stations. It is perhaps telling that Mister Cee turned to a series of former WBLS dj's to get the job done - namely: Kid Capri, Chuck Chillout, and DJ Scratch (the fourth guest dj being Clark Kent) - but nevertheless it was the musical highlight of the year for the station thus far.
The most notable moment of the series for me came during DJ Scratch's set. After an hour of cutting up various old records - including the source for All About the Benjamins (Love Unlimited's I Did It For Love) - he closed things out with a recreation of GQ's battle routine from the movie Juice:
DJ Scratch - GQ "Pump It Up" DJ Routine (right-click to d/l)
Omar Epps claims that he performed the GQ routine himself during filming of the movie after three weeks of training from Scratch, the former DJ for EPMD, but I find that somewhat hard to believe. Here's the clip from Juice, judge for yourself:
DJ GQ - DJ Battle from Juice
In any event, the whole Black Fist Fridays series is worth downloading. Each of the four sets is available online (links jacked from InFlexWeTrust):
Chuck Chillout on Black Fist Friday
Clark Kent on Black Fist Friday
DJ Scratch on Black Fist Friday
Kid Capri on Black Fist Friday
Last year's coverage of Black Fist Fridays with Q-Tip, ?uestlove, Pete Rock and DJ Premier
3/06/2013 7:30:00 PM posted by Fresh