Hieroglyphics - Menace II Society (update)

Original Post: Link

Had an opportunity to ask Domino about the track. Here's what he had to say.

...I do remember that track and believe I have a cassette copy somewhere. I will look around for it and if Cas is cool, I will post it at some point.

The story behind that track is, Jive was doing the soundtrack to Menace to Society and had Casual and Souls submit songs for it. The Souls submitted “Our Secret” a song we has left over from the 93 til sessions. Casual went in and did a new song on a beat by Extra Prolific. It was recorded in NY around the same time (late 92’) we were mixing Fear Itself and 93 Til.

The Main thing I remember is the chorus with Ex Pro saying ”I’m a menace and its like that.” and Casual following with “I’m Menace, and ain’t nobody gona strike back”. The beat was kinda dark and uptempo but thats about all I can recall…..and one Cas line “basically, the way I live is trifelin’.

We submitted them and The Hughes Brothers rejected them both saying they were not West Coast sounding enough. Based on what ended up on that soundtrack, it probably wasn’t a good fit anyways.

I will look for that tape and hopefully I can share it with everyone.

Dom

Shout out to Domino for always being cool with fans. The track may see the light of day.

Good call by The Hughes Brothers not accepting the track submitted by Souls of Mischief. Great track, but maybe not the right tone.



Doesn't really seem to fit in with tracks like this:

A (Very) Brief Conversation: Casual

Casual and Snupe: The Pimp Hieroglyphics

@Smashrockwell speaking of extra prolific, does a song titled "menace to society" (w/ Snupe) ring a bell? Saw the title in the BMI database

@wboothe you work for BMI? Was there an audio file? Thats was a song we recorded for the Movie Menace 2 Society.. Bellrung.

@Smashrockwell nope, just being a diehard hiero fan doing research. no audio file on the site. dont suppose you have a copy, do you?

@wboothe Domino does i'm sure.

@Smashrockwell you know that's some holy grail shit right there? hope it surfaces some day.




From a historical standpoint, this is a pretty significant track. The proposed title track to one of the seminal Hood Films of the 90s, I'm really surprised Jive didn't include this track when the album was released. Casual and Snupe - both perhaps a little more "G" than their peers - were signed to Jive and inclusion on this soundtrack may have increased their exposure, possibly growing their audience beyond those in New York and LA who have a high appreciation of freestyles, complex flows and lyrical stylings.

Cash Money (featuring Casual) - Extra Prolific

"even if our demo tapes add to the myth of Hiero's gifts..." - Del

The conversation brought me back to a time before swapping MP3's was the norm. When I first started finding music on the internet (97ish), we used to trade cassette tapes through the mail. Most of this was done on the Hoopla - the official message board of Hieroglyphics. All of these unreleased gems were gold to me. I tried sharing them with friends, but they couldn't get past the really shitty sound quality. Never bothered by these hiss filled recordings, I was instead highly appreciative of the fact that I had music that no one outside of the artist and their crew was supposed to hear. The demo experience has always been a mind blowing one for me.

As you can see, I didn't directly ask Cas to put the track out there, but if you have no compunction in doing so, add him to your twitter and ask him to do so on some "hey, i saw your tweet mentioning the menace to society track. could you please...".


Hieroglyphics - Bubble Up


Extra Prolific - Jheri Curl


Casual - Oakland Survival