By Richard Watson

The Jamieson’s quaffing chaps over at Unkut have just unearthed three bona fide unreleased Showbiz & AG tracks, reputedly from their ‘Live Hard’ sessions. Click here to check them, and then keep reading for HHC Digital’s turn-of-the-year check-in with Show about other regions of his dusty vaults…

Over the years, DITC fans have been treated to a lot of rarities and previously unreleased tracks. Have we heard everything or is there more still to come?
“There’s more to come. Finesse has a couple of unreleased albums he’s putting out, and myself and AG have some unreleased stuff from the ‘Runaway Slave’ album. It’s different versions of tracks. It’s a couple of unreleased tracks but mostly original versions because a lot of the stuff that came out was like remixes and stuff like that. So the original tracks that’s coming out are just different versions that we remixed to put on the ‘Runaway Slave’ album.”

Is it just you and AG on the tracks or are there any guest appearances?
“It’s just me and AG. I believe he has Party Arty and D-Flow, but other than that it’s just different versions of tracks that’s on our album.”

Do you have a similar batch of unreleased stuff from the ‘Goodfellas’ album?
“‘Goodfellas’? I do have stuff but it’s not coming out at this moment. It’s on two-inch reels and I haven’t transferred the reels yet. But I definitely have some stuff.”

Are you sitting on any remixes that are yet to see the light of day?
“I got remixes of ‘Tres Leches’ with Pun and Prodigy and all that. I got a few remixes that I might put together and make into a whole album of unreleased stuff.”

How about recordings by your original crew, Maxwell House? Are they available in any shape or form?
“The Maxwell House stuff was pretty much just demos, you know? I doubt if anybody’s gonna have any of that. That was just personal.”

Premier was always closely affiliated with DITC. Was there ever any talk of him being an official member?
“Nah, ’cos Preem just basically helped us get on. He had a hand in Finesse’s career and me and AG’s career. Premier’s a little older than us and he was in the game before us. So, you know, he always been down for us and we’ve always looked out for each other but he had his own thing going before we even got involved in this, so it wouldn’t have been cool for him to get down with us when he was already poppin’ before we even got on.”

Have there been artists who almost became DITC members but, for whatever reason, never joined?
“It wasn’t no negotiations with anybody who was gonna be down and then didn’t make the cut, but there was a lot of people that were around where we just didn’t end up in their careers like that. On the unreleased things that we have, there’s a couple of people that we put demos together for and it didn’t happen the way we thought it was going to turn out.”

Were there any of those artists that you thought could really have added something to the crew?
“We had an artist named Silky Black who I think had a whole bunch of potential to do big things. He was one who I wish we had continued with. It wasn’t ’cos of his talent, it’s just the timing was real bad.”

Last year, the DITC-produced demo version of Freddie Foxxx’s ‘Crazy Like A Foxxx’ debut was made available. Do you have fond memories of working on the project?
“Yeah, definitely. It was a good time ’cos we both was just getting our foot in the door. Freddie Foxxx just came around and we had Buck’s new tracks and Finesse’s new tracks. It was a good time and we just vibed and it wasn’t like hard to do. We just went in there and worked and Freddie Foxxx worked real fast, so he was knocking out like a song every day, you know? It was definitely a good time.”

Of course, there’s nothing obscure about the beat you gave Foxxx for ‘8 Bars To Catch A Body’, as, soon after, KRS-One used it for his classic ‘Sound Of Da Police’…
“Oh, I like Freddie Foxxx’s version also, but at the time he was signed to Flavor Unit and Latifah liked the record but Shakim didn’t like it. So we had to scrap the project and then at the same time KRS was doing his album. He just came over and was like, ‘They don’t want that record? I’ll take it.’ So it was a good look for me and I’m glad Kris took it because obviously he made a good record out of it. I was just happy and excited to be working with Kris for the first time.”

(Click here to check for those three unreleased Show & AG moments.)