Marq Spekt‘s The Shoplifter was one of my favorite songs back when I was listening to Company Flow type material every day of the week. Released in 2001 (yeah I know… but that’s technitalities; musically this is the 90s New York underground in its very purest form) on Sub Verse Music – the label that Bigg Jus created (and which in all honesty did not meet the same success as Def Jux (well, on the other hand we didn’t have to bear with Jus making Trent Reznor music), even though an initial rooster included Blackalicious, Rubberroom, C-Ray Walz, and MF Doom) after Company Flow disbanded – this song is lyrical PCP. Find one single on El-P’s label that won’t get fucked up by The Shoplifter, I dare you.
The other songs on the 12″ stand on their own, Liquid Smoke and No Dessert Til You Finish Your Vegetables being fine examples of the sound of the era. But The Shoplifter made me come back a decade later. With the most basic kick, snare and hi-hat, and a simple, hypnotic, distorted piano-loop, a sinister atmosphere is established. Bad shit seem to happen in the background. It’s a sound that continues from Havoc’s gloom on The Infamous, from before where RZA went digital.
But the vocals make the track. The beat is really just a backing for Marq Spekt making your eyes pop out. Not that generic stuff. Only the most graphic street venom. Rakim, Kool Keith, 4th Chamber type material. “Drop my gloves and hold the mic with chopsticks / Yo, how you you gonna protect your neck when you’s an ostrich / I’m a hostage in an apocalyptic cockpit.” A minute later: “You playing yourself like paying for sex / Incorrect studying steps / And you can catch me carving crop circles in your chest“. This record has that live feeling which we love, and can’t live without. Rap this dusty is no more.