Alchemist - Cutting Room Floor Mixtape, Vol. 1 Review

Posted by Phil Watts, Jr on 07.16.2008

One man’s trash is another man’s mixtape compilation.

(ALC Music Recorded Library, 2003)

One day, Alchemist and Big Twins of Infamous Mobb were in the studio where they found lots of old tapes on the floor. When Twins asked what’s all this shit on the floor, ALC tells him it’s nothing but TRASH. Throughout the course of this compilation, Twins plays some of those tapes to convince Al that those joints are anything but trash!

This leads to ALC’s CUTTING ROOM FLOOR mixtape, filled with material that, in some cases, he feels iffy about, but puts it out there for the people anyway. This isn’t the first time a producer has taken his throwaway material and put it out there for the people to enjoy. Pete Rock gave us PETESTRUMENTALS as an outlet to put out his cutting room floor material (unused instrumentals), and Large Pro followed suit with his BEATZ series. It’s good to clean out the vaults sometimes. However, there are some instances where the unreleased material was unreleased FOR A REASON.

Since this is a compilation, I’m doing the track-by-track deal. There are many skits and radio clips between selections, so I’m concentrating strictly on the songs.

MOP & Kool G Rap, “Street Team” (remix)

Al takes MOP’s colab with their musical father, Kool G Rap, and places the vocals on top of the instrumental to Ghostface’s “The Forest”. The whole combo works perfectly. It’s always good to hear those three together. I guess with the Ghost version getting the most play, I could understand why Al opted not to put this one out.

Havoc, “Walk With Me”

Even though this is ALC’s compilation, they included two Havoc solo joints in here (both produced by Hav). This is the first, and the only word to describe it is, “Ehh…”. Hav’s attempt at a sparse keyboard track is a bit on the snoozy side and seems way out of place here.

Lil’ Dap, “Deep Meditation” (aka, “Get It”)

If Lil’ Dap had more songs like this, no one would complain about the fact that he’s not working with Premier anymore. Well…at least not as many people would complain. Anyway, Al’s sinister organ track fits very well with Dap’s vocals, and the fact that there’s no Malachi around (“We make you wanna JUMP---PSYCH!!!“) is a plus.

The Mobb Show Intro

Remember the slow intro that started off Masta Ace’s “Saturday Night Live” joint? ALC takes it, speeds it up a tad, and uses it as a Mobb Deep intro theme with various Mobb Deep vocal snippets (“Mobb Deep and all thatatatatatat…”) It should be made mandatory to have intros like this start off every Mobb-related project.

Freeway, “Still In Effect” (snippet)

This is a fun little one-verse snippet of Rocafella’s resident Amish negro getting busy. At least no one can accuse him of having no energy. To me, Freeway is one of those guys who, while dope, works a lot better as guests providing 16’s to spruce up somebody else’s shit, but gets lost working by themselves.

Havoc & G.O.D., “First To Drop The Beat The Boldest”

The second Hav cut. Hav returns to that sound he made famous in both INFAMOUS and HELL ON EARTH. This would have made a decent filler cut for those two albums.

Nashawn, “In Jail”

ALC does his interpretation of the Fat Boys Disco 3’s “Jailhouse Rap” (“In jail without the bail!”) I almost forgot how dope that song was. In fact, I kinda wish they were still around (Rest in peace, Buffy), because Nashawn does NOT do this beat any justice.

Prodigy, “P Broke the Switch”

“Fuck that homo shit/butt niggaz get wet/fuck that fag shit/my gat/it leave niggaz fucked/I’ma straight touch niggaz up--WHO WANTS SOME?!?!“ There’s nothing funnier than hearing someone claiming “no-homo” and then making homoerotic threats in the same breath. Hilarious. ALC provides some slow, guitar-driven funk shit as background music for the P to make threats over.

CNN & Kool G Rap, “Thug Shit, Queens Cliques”

Capone & Nore take their turn colabbing with G Rap over a so-so beat. When MOP did it, they were in synch with G Rap and worked well with each other. The same can’t be said for CNN, with Capone’s squirrelly vocals and adlibs and Nore still being Nore. G Rap outshines them both without even trying.

Dilated Peoples & Prodigy, “Thieves”

A colab of ALC’s running buddies, using the same Eddie Kendricks sample that Kanye used for Nas’ “Papa Was a Player” (from Nas’ own Cutting Room Floor album, THE LOST TAPES). However, Rakaa is the only one who does this track any justice, as P sleepwalks through his short verse (“They know not to touch theyselves while holdin’ a pump.” Uh…) while Evidence brags about his ’sleek-ass vocals’ right after stumbling his first few bars!

Big Noyd, “That’s My Style”

ALC hooks up a track that comes close to Havoc’s material this time out. He should’ve gotten Hav to rap on it, because Big Noyd comes off weak. The annoying hook doesn’t help (“That’s my style--my style’s ill!””).

Inspectah Deck, “Stay Bent” (snippet)

A short one-verse Deck joint. If this had made the cut on Deck’s last album, THE MOVEMENT, it would’ve been the only good song on it.

Mobb Deep, “Backwards”

ALC brings a fun little wonky track that you wouldn’t expect on a Mobb Deep album (which was probably the reason why it got axed…although it would appear on a few more compilation albums, including INFAMOUS ARCHIVES). Hav tries his best to make it work. And then there’s P:

Yo dunn I love it when these niggaz think it's somethin' sweet wit P
Love it when people doubt me
Love it when you niggaz write songs about me, I love confrontation
Love it when a nigga that don't rap, he hatin'
I love it when they think it's only a song, I'm fakin'
I love to see they face when my gun bangin'
And I would love for us to bump it to each other on a humble
Your niggaz is stabbin', my niggaz'll buck you
Y'all niggaz is flaggin', yeah we got one too
INFAMOUS, I heard you screamin' our name, whatup with you?
Let me explain somethin', we the world's most
Y'all rap niggaz, we do this shit for real
Look, listen, I knock ya hustle down kid
You's a fraudulent ass nigga, I’LL MURDER YOU, BITCH!!!
I would love to WATCH YOU BLEED and take ya last breath
Give you pain, and let you get acquainted with death, boy!!!

Uh…okay…

Infamous Mobb & Chinky, “Kay Slay shit”

This is really two tracks: The first is another ALC sinister number with Infamous Mobb; the second is ALC’s reinterpretation of Mtume’s “Juicy” (or Biggie’s “Juicy” for all you new jacks) with Chinky trying to sing over it. However, both were used to put over DJ Kay Slay. Anything to get him to play your shit, right?


THE GOOD (“Hold up, man--you can’t throw THAT away!!”): “Street Team”, “Get It”, The Mobb Intro, “Drop The Beat The Boldest”, “P Broke the Switch”

THE BAD (“You found this in the right place---GARBAGE!”): “Walk With Me”, “In Jail”, “Thug Shit Queens Cliques”, “That’s My Style”

The 411: As a compilation album, this isn’t particularly bad, thought he has released some better ones since this (1st INFANTRY, NO DAYS OFF, INSOMNIA, etc.) While there are some bright spots, you do get the sense that these songs didn’t make the cut for a reason, whether it’s songs that use already used instrumentals (You think Al was gonna go through another Jadakiss/Ras Kass fiasco? To hell with that!) or songs marred by subpar performances. Still, Al’s production is top notch, for the most part. Decent compilation, but I would suggest getting some of his later compilations before tracking this one down.

Final Score:  6.5   [ Average ]