Flip to any page in Brian Coleman’s latest tome, Check the Technique Vol. 2, and you'll likely find a revelation that reflows hip-hop history and/or blows your mind. There's MF DOOM, in the midst of discussing KMD's Black Bastards, revealing that MF Grimm feature, "What a Nigga Know? (Remix)" was recorded the day before Grimm was paralyzed. "He was standing up when he did that track," recalls the former Zev Love X, "and the next day he got shot."
Prince Paul reveals lost "Prince Rakeem style" RZA verses cut from Gravediggaz' 6 Feet Deep, his experience being recruited as a DJ for Stetsasonic ("Those guys came running up, saying, 'That's him!' And I thought they was gonna kick my ass"), and the fact that he was working on the beat to name-making 3rd Bass hit "The Gas Face" while everyone else he knew was having a 4th of July party. MC Serch reveals the personal seeds of Beastie Boys dis track "Sons of 3rd Bass", when a seemingly heartfelt conversation with Mike D about Def Jam and business advice concluded with Mike throwing things at Serch for no apparent reason. ("But they weren't as bad as Hammer," laments Serch.)
Brian Coleman's Check the Technique series started in 2005 as Rakim Told Me, was expanded into the first CtT volume two years later, and goes even deeper in the just-released second volume. The book aims to correct for the scant documentation of the process behind notable hip-hop moments and Vol 2. goes deep on early classics (the breakbeat score to Wild Style), pop blockbusters (DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince's He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper), gangsta rap turning points (Ice Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted), East Coast legends (Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…), and underground favorites (Dr. Octagon's Dr. Octagonecologyst).
What you wind up with is a mixture of compelling, odd trivia—sating those amongst us who’ve wondered how dialogue from The Holy Mountain wound up on Company Flow's "Help Wanted"?—and heavy personal reminiscence. Crew formations and breakups, business machinations, left-field inspiration mixed with long nights of grinding—these are gap-filling stories given completist insight. All this backstory merits the critical deconstruction, received-wisdom mythmaking, and narrative making that it gets in Coleman’s book.
That it cuts off at 1998 with Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star and the Coup's Steal This Album is telling of the way the process has been made public since; internet distribution, blog reportage, and social media has moved the creation of an album from a retrospective context to as-it-happens log. That could be why this volume of Check the Technique is said in Coleman's preface to likely be his last—it's an undertaking he entrusts to "the next generation," one that's already doing a lot of the legwork. But the same principle is always going to apply: focusing on all the different ways albums became beloved works is crucial to inspire or renew the music, as well as the process that created it.