These days, if you were caught singing, "How many dudes you know roll like this ... not many, if any", in public, you might get looked at strangely and branded "so 2003".
Still, if you care to let rip with those rhymes in the privacy of your lounge, then you will find Scribe's chest-beating party anthem, Not Many (The Remix), still fires even the most meek and mild mortal up into a hardcore rapper.
The same can also be said for Stand Up, which will get you "ready rock, ready roll ... y'all ready to flow". Those two songs put New Zealand hip-hop label Dirty Records, formed in 2001 by DJ and producer P-Money (real name Peter Wadams) and Callum August on the map back in the early 2000s. This 21-track collection charts the decade-long reign of the label whose small but solid stable of artists is made up of P-Money, Scribe, Frontline, PNC, and David Dallas.
The earliest tracks here are Scribe's first call to arms Scribe 2001 ("my stories just begun, huh, you never hung in the streets where I'm from.") and the eerie yet soulful stomp of Synchronize Thoughts off P-Money's Big Things album. And along with the hits from Scribe's debut album The Crusader (produced by P-Money), they still sound fresh and familiar in much the same way that How Bizarre or Poi E do.
What tends to date some of the tracks these days are lyrical references like "got plans to take over Japan like the D4"; lucky The Theme From the Crusader with lines like "I'm running things like Robbie Deans, I got a champion team", is not included here because the Crusaders (thankfully) are not the rugby force they once were.
