Hustler's Convention [Original recording remastered]

Track Listings

1. Sport - Kool & the Gang, Lightnin' Rod

2. Spoon

3. Café Black Rose

4. Brother Hominy Grit

5. Coppin' Some Fronts for the Sets

6. Hamhock's Hall Was Big (And There Was a Whole Lot to Dig!)

7. Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand

8. Break Was So Loud, It Hushed the Crowd

9. Four Bitches Is What I Got

10. Grit's Den

11. Shit Hits the Fan Again

12. Sentenced to the Chair

Hustler's Convention,Lightnin' Rod,Varese Records,Fusion,Hip-Hop,Old School Rap,Pop,Rap,Rap & Hip-Hop

Hustler's Convention [Original recording remastered]

Average customer rating:

Big Pimpin' Detroit Style

The Break was so loud, it hushed the Crowd

One of the GREATEST recordings of all time ! ! !

A Superbly Exuberant Album

A moralistic blaxploitation film on record

Hustler's Convention
Lightnin' Rod
Manufacturer: Celluloid Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music
General | R&B | Styles | Music
General | Soul | R&B | Styles | Music
General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
Old School | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Indie Music | Stores | Music
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Tracks:

Sport - Kool & the Gang, Lightnin' Rod
Spoon
Caflack Rose
Brother Hominy Grit
Coppin' Some Fronts for the Sets
Hamhock's Hall Was Big (And There Was a Whole Lot to Dig!)
Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand
Break Was So Loud, It Hushed the Crowd
Four Bitches Is What I Got
Grit's Den
Shit Hits the Fan Again
Sentenced to the Chair

Customer Reviews:

Big Pimpin' Detroit Style.......2007-05-11

This CD is the bomb!! In th '70s I owned the LP and people kept stealing it from me. If you want to hear true urban poetry The Hustlers Convention is for you.

The story is both real in it's message and vivid in the descriptions by Mr. Lightin Rod. Additionally, the underlying soundtrack is subtle but very hip.

If you want something different buy this CD NOW!!!!!!

The Break was so loud, it hushed the Crowd.......2007-01-25

Classic album featuring Kool & The Gang! There was a number of other surprise appearances on here as well. Great imagery through the spoken word story telling delievered as smooth as any playa' could hope for. A must for funk, hip hop, and rap entusiasts!

One of the GREATEST recordings of all time ! ! ! .......2005-08-25

Shame on our culture for at one time letting this album become rare and out of print... and hands up for it going back in print.

Part blaxploitation on vinyl part Jazzoetry, this recording features some incredibly funky and jazzed out backing music by none other than KOOL AND THE GANG as Lighnin' Rod (a former Last Poet's member) tells his Iceberg Slim style tale of getting over.

A CONCEPT ALBUM taken to ridiculous extremes, Hustlers' Convention is the album that influenced not only the evolution of rap, but document the now almost lost art of Street Poetry...

Fans of Gil Scott Heron, Rudy Ray Moore and the Last Poets will wet their pants within moments of the opening track... and so too will fans of funk and '70s soul... Even I know half the lyrics by heart (however, trust me, you won't hear me making a schmuck out of myself trying to recite it in public...)

Tight production, tight rhymes, tight music and a tight tale... never before was a recording like this made and never will it be made again ! ! ! This is performance, art, poetry, story telling, Jazz, funk and a tale with a moral taken to extremes...

A timeless tale of pimpin' that will never be out topped !

(P.S. Anybody remember who did that avant garde big band recording of Honkytonk Bud in the early '80s... ???)

A Superbly Exuberant Album.......2005-03-02

I first read about "Hustler's Convention" nearly 20 years ago in Greil Marcus's book "Mystery Train." I finally received a copy through Amazon.com this week: it was worth the wait, but by the same token, why didn't I buy it sooner?! Having read Marcus's synopsis of the album, I knew what to expect in terms of its bleak story line and its connection to the Blaxploitation culture of the early 70s. I was unprepared, however, for the exhuberance of Lightnin' Rod's performance, as well as the tunefulness of Kool & the Gang's musical accompniment.

This is a classic album, and why it has not achieved the fame of contemporaries such as Sly and the Family Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On," Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions," the O'Jays' "Back Stabbers," or Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to "Superfly" is a mystery: it is every bit as good as these more celebrated albums, and it is distinct from all of them.

In terms of contemporary Black culture, "Hustler's Convention" is prophetic. It is a crucial link in the historical development of hip-hop culture, and many of the most compelling themes and techniques of rap music are presented here with astonishing force and clarity. The model for Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, Prince Paul, the Roots, Talib Kweli, and even Chris Rock is to be found on this record, which builds a bridge between the music of the past twenty years and the glorious tradition of George Clinton, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and the great concept albums of late 60s rock music.

Anyone interested in African-American music of the last 30 years should seek this album out; I hope as well that a decent record label (Rhino Records: hello?!) will reissue this album and finally give it the distribution and visibility it deserves.

And all this is just my first impression, having heard the album once! I can't wait to play it again!!!

A moralistic blaxploitation film on record.......2003-02-27

This is a GREAT CD! I enjoy listening to just about every genre of music and this CD would be in my top favorites of any style. Lightnin' Rod, AKA Jalal Nuriddin, AKA Alafia Purdim, was a charter member of the Last Poets. This CD can be seen as proto-rap for its attention to street lingo and engagement with the ghetto underworld. Of course, all slang by nature changes rapidly, so some may find the rhyming corny. The first line of the album DOES start out with the single most notorius rhyme cliche: "moon - June", but the complete package of non-sampled music, toasting and interesting storyline makes for an irrestible listen. The story seems quaint compared to the much more violent 'modern' rap albums. If it's quaint, though, it's infinitately more believable, realistic and therefore more involving than the fantasy-based gangsta rap. I can't wait to see how well a lot of 'modern' rap ages when listened to 20 years from now; betcha nowhere near as well as this album does. Hustler's Convention features boasting raps over the cool beats of Eric Gale and Kool & the Gang. If it's actually in print when you read this, you'd be crazy not to pick up a copy.

Average customer rating:

Hustler's Convention
Lightnin Rod
Manufacturer: Dead Line
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | R&B | Styles | Music

General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00008FHS9
Release Date: 1991-01-29

Average customer rating:

Would hip-hop exist if this didn't?

Hustler's Convention
Lightnin' Rod
Manufacturer: Varese Sarabande
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music

Old School | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music

Pop Rap | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00006LWS3
Release Date: 2002-10-15

Tracks:

Sport - Kool & the Gang, Lightnin' Rod
Spoon
Caflack Rose
Brother Hominy Grit
Coppin' Some Fronts for the Sets
Hamhock's Hall Was Big (And There Was a Whole Lot to Dig!)
Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand
Break Was So Loud, It Hushed the Crowd
Four Bitches Is What I Got
Grit's Den
Shit Hits the Fan Again
Sentenced to the Chair

Customer Reviews:

Would hip-hop exist if this didn't?.......2003-01-24

"It was a full moon, in the middle of June, in the summer of '59/ I was young and cool, and shot a bad game of pool, and hustled all the chumps I could find/ Now see they called me Sport, 'cause I pushed the bar short, and loved all the women to death/ I partied hard, and packed a mean rod, and could knock you out with a right or a left/ I had learned to shoot pool, playin' hooky from school, at the tender age of nine/ And by the time I was eleven, I could pad-roll seven, and down your whole quart of wine."

Thus begins the blueprint of hip-hop, Hustler's Convention. Released in 1973, a side project of the black nationalist spoken-word group The Last Poets, and featuring a musical score by none other than Kool & the Gang ..., this album is so hip, it comes with a leg attached.

It tells the story of two slick hustlers, Sport and Spoon (his "ace-boon-poon"), preparing for a huge gathering of every underworld character fathomable: "Now you could feel all the tension building up at the convention, as the hustlers began to arrive/ Musta been 9000 or more that came through the door, the time was 11:55." They pit their skills and street-savvy against the best dice, pool, and card sharks you could ever hope to meet, culminating in a car chase and shoot-out with the cops (complete with great sound-effects). It ends with Sport's jailhouse musings on the structure of society, and how "it had cost me twelve years of my time to see what a nickel and dime hustler I had really been..."

This was a favorite record of the cats we now look back on as the pioneers of rap music. It's been sampled by the Beastie Boys, Steady B., a Tribe Called Quest, Main Source, and the Jungle Brothers, and its atmosphere is what Tarantino wishes he could evoke. I've known sections of it by heart, like my hip-hop forebears, since I was thirteen years old, and it's exciting that this incredible musical treasure is once again available, after being out of print for years. Anyone one who thinks they know anything about hip-hop, but is unaware of this, is delusional, and, as Sport says, "if you ain't down, you best not hang around, 'cause you sure as hell will get beat."

Hustler's Convention
Average customer rating:
Hustler's Convention
Lightnin' Rod
Manufacturer: Hudson Vandam
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music
General | Soul | R&B | Styles | Music
General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
Old School | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
Pop Rap | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000003ZN3
Release Date: 1997-02-25

Tracks:

Sport - Kool & the Gang, Lightnin' Rod
Spoon
Caflack Rose
Brother Hominy Grit
Coppin' Some Fronts for the Sets
Hamhock's Hall Was Big (And There Was a Whole Lot to Dig!)
Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand
Break Was So Loud, It Hushed the Crowd
Four Bitches Is What I Got
Grit's Den
Shit Hits the Fan Again
Sentenced to the Chair

Average customer rating:

Hustler's Convention
Lightnin' Rod
Manufacturer: Charly UK
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Jazz Fusion | Jazz | Styles | Music

General | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music

Old School | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music

Pop Rap | Rap & Hip-Hop | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000023YYO
Release Date: 1999-07-01

Tracks:

Sport - Kool & the Gang, Lightnin' Rod
Spoon
Caflack Rose
Brother Hominy Grit
Coppin' Some Fronts for the Sets
Hamhock's Hall Was Big (And There Was a Whole Lot to Dig!)
Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand
Break Was So Loud, It Hushed the Crowd
Four Bitches Is What I Got
Grit's Den
Shit Hits the Fan Again
Sentenced to the Chair

Average customer rating:

Lightnin Rod
Hustler's Convention
Manufacturer: Vinyl
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000057ISI
Release Date: 1999-07-16

Tracks: