Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Animal's Most Wanted: Champion Of Love


Tonight on Animal's Most Wanted, we take a look at the One and Done group: 991 Volts. 991-wha? Trust me, I know...to explain it, I would have to take you back to '89. So let's go...

In 1989 your host was the average 16 year old rap/beat junkie. I watched Video Music Box a hell of a lot more than I studied and they always had acts on that you would never see on MTV(which I didn't have at the time) or BET. Ther you could see peeps like Divine Styler(kind of a De La knock off in his video...oh yeah, listen to where House of Pain got the horns for Jump Around), MC Rell or 991 Volts. Admittedly, my knowledge of them is limited. As a matter of fact other than the lead MC being named Royal, I don't know jack about them. Boy could rhyme his ass off though.


He had a story teller style with a rapid fire delivery. Like an amalgam of Fresh Prince and Kwame on speed. I don't think they had an album but I do remember having the 12" for Champion Of Love/She's Sneeky. The B-Side is a total wipe from my memory but damn, Champion was catchy as hell. It was just the simplest of breakbeats with a sampled bass line and a chant of "Whoa-oh yeah!"(whose source escapes me but when I'm told I'll go "OH YEAH!" because it's familiar.) Royal had potential but I think he was a few years too early and wasn't affiliated with any of the hot crews at the time: Juice Crew, Native Tounges(who Divine Styler was down with as of De La's second album.) etc. I never heard from them again. And after high school, I think my DJ partner took that when we split the records. Either that or it's in one of my crates.


In conclusion, I loved this song and it's like a piece of my youth. If anyone out there in the blogoverse has this on mp3, holla at ya boy! I've tried searches and come up empty. There aren't even any pics of the group on the net. If anyone has any ridiculously hard to find request, post them in the comments or the CBox. Maybe we can all help each other?


Peace. One.

4 comments:

The Master said...

The group members were: Royal T, Kev Lew, Prime Choice, and Moe Skeezer. This is Prime checking in ( Prime Bangas now ). Me, Royal and Kev are still around the way, Moe just recently went SOUTH. Grimey management killed the group, although we were offered a deal with Polygram, minus the manager, but couldn't break the contract. Anywho here's a link to a vinyl rip of the track. Enjoy! http://www.mediafire.com/?enxetwiidgz

Animal Mother said...

Holy shit! Props for that man! Nice to hear y'all are still around. Thanks fo rthat. I'ma holla at you soon!

One.

Unknown said...

I guess great minds do think alike

http://www.cocaineblunts.com/blunts/?p=582

The Master said...

The funny thing about us making the records is that we were virtually unknown in our area! The track and video got play in NYC, but not in our own town??? Both A Sides ( we also released a single on B Boy Records ) had to be fought for to be recorded. The tracks the record companies wanted to release were WACK!!! We got conned in to doing demo's to attract a deal, and it would have been awful if those songs were released. The track for the Mercury/Polygram deal was straight New Kids On The Block!!! LOL With that being said, most of the material that we had at the time was different than what was actually put out. I can say with all honesty that we were WAY better than what was represented. Tone and Moe were BEASTS on the mic, and they never got a chance to show the world their talent. Me and Kev never really worked together/ colabed on tracks, but had our own individual styles. Me, Tone and Moe were a group at first, then me and Moe formed a group and Tone found Kev. Kev caught the ear of B Boy, but Tone brought Me and Moe in to seal the deal. The Name 991 Volts was just a song title at first, but Tone wanted the newly formed group to have the name also. " Shock the World " is what he said. Rock House Mc's was the original groups name, which Tone took with him and shortened to RockHouse. B Blast Inc was the name Me and Moe took, which stood for: Be Bad and Last! LOL Corny, I know, but this was the 80's!! Coming from CT, with no backing ( we were BEFORE STEZO ), we didn't have anything to fall back on after we fell out with our management. And it's too bad, cuz we would have TORN SHIT UP!

Well, that's a little of the backround story, told here fisrt, and exclusive if you will. I still have most of our early work on 4 track and 2 track cassette. Maybe one day i'll dump it into the PC in mp3 format for archival purposes. Holla if you'd like to hear some of these old ass songs.

Later