Run DMC - 'Christmas in Hollis'

What a record. No, not the cheeseball title track, although that does have a certain swagger that demonstrates Rick Rubin's ability not only to polish a turd, but also have it mounted and displayed in a gallery and have people coo at it like the Damian Hirst of hip hop.

And not the track that follows it either, although 'Walk This Way' is a track that still hasn't lost it's visceral thrill despite repeated listens. If ever I'm lying unconscious, don't take my pulse or hold a mirror over my mouth. Just put on 'Walk This Way', and if I fail to purse my lips and do the angry pigeon head-nod, then finally I have found peace.

No, the star of the show here is of course 'Peter Piper', a track so simultaneously raw and full of life that every time you play it, you run the risk of B-boy zombies besieging your crib, screaming 'BEATS! BEATS!'

What does it remind me of? So many things. My first job. My first DJ set. The first time I managed to drop the opening acappella lines over another record (clue - the word 'piper' falls on the second beat of the bar). But most vividly, I played this at Dust in Leeds the week that Jam Master Jay was murdered. As I dropped the opening rhymes, someone walked up, choked up with emotion and cheap beer and reached out to shake my hand. As he did so, his sleeve caught the head of the stylus and zzzzzzzzzipped it of the record. Everyone turned and looked, and I screamed 'Jam Master Jay was killed this week, show some love people', dropped the needle back onto the record, and everyone went mental.

This record totally kicks ass.

Freq Nasty feat. Pheobe One - 'Boomin' Back Atcha'

Bask in the day, I used to be really into vinyl hunting. Partly it was crate-digging - listening to loads of old records in the hope of finding a forgotten gem - but it was also the belief that, as a DJ, that was part of my job. I wanted to go out and dig out funky, groovy records that would make everyone shake their asses to a tune that they'd never heard before.

I don't know why I bothered.

But this is typical of the records that I bought in that spirit. It's a great big slab of bass-heavy hip-hop breakbeat, great production, great vocal, and in a just world, it would be the perfect transition from warming up the crowd to people actually shaking it. But I played this to blind indifference, and after half a dozen tries gave up on.

But when I put this on the other day, not only did it still sound fly and fresh, but my three year old son started dancing and having a stab at the vocals, which demonstrates to me that if only we could find our inner child a bit more, we'd not only have more fun, but I'd also look like a great DJ.

Spiky Records - 'Pi EP'

There was once a time when I was quite the dude. I managed, in February 1998 (I think it was) to snag a single of the week in the Vibes section of the NME. Notorious hyperbolist Steven Wells said something like 'this record will make you piss blood and blaspheme in Spainish. Like me, it is strong and clean and perfect'. I'm certainly not going to refuse that praise (if praise it be), but I am aware that Swells may not have been in his right mind when he wrote that.

On the back of that, my bandmate/partner in crime Aidan and I went down to London to be interviewed by Ben Wilmott, a journo on the paper. Spiky Records was his label, not that there was anything even vaguely nepotistic or narcissistic about a music journalist having a record label. Actually, I thought Ben was a very sound guy - he liked my band Speakerfreaks - no, not the ones who released 'POS 51', we were the ORIGINAL Speakerfreaks.

Anyway, the Pi EP sits somewhere between early era Art of Noise, and late period Kraftwerk. It's OK, but it doesn't particularly grab me now, which makes me think it diddn't particularly grab me then.

Flipping it over, I note that Osymyso's name is on the label. He was quite cool for a bit, wasn't he?

Collapsed Lung - 'DIS MX'

After the warm reception my previous post received (mostly, it has to be said, from former members of the band), I was a little worried about how this would sound. And it's perfectly of it's period, in that the opening track is that elusive beast, the extended dance remix.

After a couple of minutes of looping drumbeats that pay more than a passing nod to the works of Depth Charge, the funky trumpets start up, and I swear you can hear the actual fertilisation of the egg that went on to gestate and become Collapsed Lung's world conquering anthemn 'Eat My Goal'.

Overall, it's a pretty standard romp, with some nice lyrical action, and fairly dirty production. The standout bit for me is the couplet 'Liberate the decks, liberate the decks, give 'em to the people who would least expect access'. Wise words indeed.

What does it remind me of? Oddly, nothing much. I remember playing this quite a bit, but it doesn't have that flashbulb eidetic moment for me.

Collapsed Lung - 'Down With The Plaid Fad'

It's funny that this should turn up on the weekend when Channel 4 is showing it's 'How Hip Hop Changed the World' weekend, because this is a particular slice of British hip hop that is very dear to me.

One of the central tenets of hip hop culture is 'keeping it real'. Exactly what that means is open to debate. KRS-1 would have you believe that REAL is an acronym for 'Rhymes Equals Actual Life'. Modern commentators seem to agree that hip hop hasn't been in a good place for some time now. You don't have to wait very long on Kanye & Jay-z's new album to hear Kanye brag about how has two big-faced Rolexes. Nice one Kanye - I'll loot Argos and steal an armful of Swatches in ironic homage. As Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip point out, 'guns, bitches and bling have never been part of the four elements, and never will be'. The four elements of hip hop are breaking, MCing, DJing and grafitti, as any fule kno.

The four elements conspicuously don't include sloppy, culturally accurate grunge-hop, but if you want an an example of a band keeping it REAL, look no further than mid-90s Collapsed Lung. I saw them in Manchester in 1995, and they were hilarious, and in a good way. A bunch of guys, playing tight, funky rocky grooves, two rappers trading rhymes over the top. It was like having the whole of global musical culture condensed into 3 minute snippets, lyrically tight and culturally smart, thrown back in your face with a cocksure swagger that said 'yeah, we know, it's all a bit mad, but you know what - we're kicking ass, and you're loving it'. It's the very antithesis of where hip hop is today, either a global sell-out or a ghettoised artistic statement.

Fresh stoopid rhymes, sloppy loud guitars, distorted vocals, hell yeah, I still love it today like I loved it then.

Earthling - '1st Transmission'

Wow, this is almost Proustian in it's ability to vividly transport me to a particular place and time.

It's a Saturday afternoon in Leeds, 1994, and I'm round at Rob's old house on Brudenell Road. I lived in Manchester at that point, but moved to Leeds a year later. Ali was there too. We'd been record shopping at Jumbo Records, and I'd picked this up.

It's basically 4 mixes of the same song, but the first version is so strong, such a fat, trip-hop, of-the-moment production that it just sucks you in. The rudeboy sound-system swagger contrast with Earthling's naive, almost childish vocals in a way that found totally captivating at the time. So much so that I listened to all of the mixes one after another, much to the obvious annoyance of Rob and Ali. I think I might have been going back to flip the record over and repeat the A side when someone mentioned that, perhaps, that might be enough of that for now. I was a bit bemused by that then, as I am now.

This track combined everything that I loved about music and lyrics - fat production, someone with their own flow, lyrics that sort of told a story and sort of hinted at someone immersed in their own world. It totally inspired me to start writing lyrics and rapping, and I remember one night waking up and having to find a pad and a Bic biro, the rhymes tumbling out in an unstoppable torrent. Well, maybe not an unstoppable torrent, but a couple of sides of A4 written down as fast as I could manage.

Damn, I'm really happy to hear this again! To me, it's the sound of possibility, of performance without fear of pretension, of music production marrying with an emotion behind a set of lyrics, or vice versa. Happy days.

Schizoid Man - 'Karate Juice EP'

What's amazing, looking back, is that this record was distinctive and different enough for me to pick it up in a record shop (Jumbo in Leeds, the price tag says), listen to it, and think 'cor, another slab of funky, beat-driven sampler music, I'll have some of that'.

It's a decent enough tune, the sort of thing you play early in the night just before you want to get people omto the dancefloor. It signifies a move from taxi-ing trip-hop to ass-shaking hip-hop. I remember doing just that one night at Leeds' Elbow Room, playing head-to-head with Moose (aka Paul Curtis, founder of a lot of things, but www.symbollix.com is his latest thing).

To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, worth hearing, but not worth going to hear