Pick up KC & The Sunshine Band’s (or is it George McCrae’s) “I Get Lifted”, throw it in the SP-12, and add equal parts simile and metaphor. What do you have? Simply a Pittsburgh classic that heads still go bananas to in the club, to this day. One could liken it to the craziness that goes down when a Philly selecta throws on Tuff Crew’s “My Part Of Town”. I am talking of course about Mel-Man’s classic introduction as a solo MC (formerly part of the Hardcore Crew Collective) ” The Mel-Man”.
Released as a very limited (I’m gonna take a stab and say 500 pieces) promo pressing in 1991, followed by a full-length cassette “The Melman Delivers” shortly after. On any given day, you could hear Mel’s raspy heavy Pittsburgh accent emanating from various car stereo kickers. Mel even made a bass-heavy ode to his followers that pumped his music in their “Kickers”. My memories of Mel go back to my early days at WPTS. I vaguely remember holding headphones over his ears while he was rhyming in studio B. Not quite sure why he didn’t want to sport the headphones, maybe he just got a fade at Wade’s. Nope, that was actually Tuffy Tuff that was known for that catchy “I Get My Fade At Wade’s” jingle that bleesed the Pittsburgh airwaves, more on him later. Mel was performing with English Eddie, Love Letter, and the legendary DJ Double K. They had just released another Pittsburgh classic “The Crew Got Paid” in conjunction w/ the late Mel Plowden, and were up at WPTS to promote the single. Mel is from the Hill District, and the PTS antenna (high atop the Cathedral of Learning) was perfectly aligned with his neighborhood for full mega wattage. Also, WPTS had some sort of grandfathered non-commercial radio clause that allowed them to reside in the less saturated commercial radio band. These two forces combined gave WPTS a signal that was unprecedented for any college radio station.
Mel migrated to the west coast around 96-97 and began to work with Dr Dre’s aftermath camp. Co-producing Eminem’s debut lp w/ Dre and rhyming on the Chronic 2001’s, “Shittin’ On the World”. He has been pretty quiet as of late. Last I heard Mel was in the ATL but that has yet to be confirmed. Check our an exlusive Mel-Man freestyle session from the “Nightshift w/ Mike C on WRCT (1994) after the break + some other Mel/Hardcore crew rarities.
Mel-Man-”The Melman”
Downloads
sO mElvin bradford was the Mel man not Mel plowden ? I grew
up on wpts. I always thought they where the same guy , I even met the late great jazzy mel-p and asked what happened
to the hardcore crew , do you have their album or any more songs ? I got some pts tapes but the quality might be a little shaky recorded from my house in aliquippa
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