Nas
Photo: MTV News

• Nas
• Snoop Dogg
• LL Cool J
• DJ Marley Marl
• Marley Marl

Marley Marl
Photo: MTV News

NEW YORK — "Can you feel it?/ Nothin' can save ya/ For this is the season of catchin' the vapors."

In 1988, Biz Markie rapped about him and his music family, the Juice Crew, making the ultimate I-told-you-so, ashy-to-classy hit song, "Vapors." And why wouldn't he brag? Biz was on fire, teammate Big Daddy Kane had a hit record worldwide and the rest of their crew's core members — Kool G Rap, Marley Marl, Masta Ace and Roxanne Shanté — had established themselves in the game as well. Also in '88, the Juice Crew made one of the most definitive hip-hop posse cuts of all time, "The Symphony," which appeared on Marley Marl's In Control Volume 1 compilation that year.

Now, the team's rise is being documented and brought to the silver screen to mark the 20th anniversary of the Juice Crew's breakthrough. The movie is aptly titled "The Vapors."

"Right now, it's in the casting stage," Marley Marl, the legendary DJ and producer behind many of the Juice Crew's collective and solo hits, said about the film last week at Hammerstein Ballroom. Marley, who hails from Queensbridge and also works on outside projects for LL Cool J, was getting ready for a special gig: spinning as Nas' DJ during a recent concert.

Blackfilm.com had previously reported some casting choices for the film, including David Banner as Biz Mark, "ATL" co-star Jackie Long as Big Daddy Kane, Keke Palmer as Roxanne and Cuba Gooding Jr. as Marley. Marley Marl told MTV News the filmmakers have talked to a slew of talent but insisted that no definitive casting choices have been made.

"We're not reaching out — a lot of stars are reaching out to us because that's an important movie in hip-hop history," he further explained. "It's basically me, Big Daddy Kane and Biz's life story leading up to 1988. How we got there. How we made the golden era pop. ... A lot of ups and downs, a lot of personal sh--. It is what it is."

Marl, who dropped his most recent project, Hip-Hop Lives, with KRS-One last year, was politically correct when asked who he wanted to play him in the film.

"The best actor possible," he smiled. "We gonna tally it up at the end and see who it could be. We need the movie 'Vapors' to make its point, and a lot of the young kids to know what birthed the golden era. That's what it is. It's a 2008 release. My boy Furqaan [Clover] is directing it. I told him the idea, I fed it to him, and like within two weeks I started reading about it. So it's moving very, very quickly. They got the investors. This is something that everybody's excited about, and it should be one of the pinnacle [hip-hop] movies. You got 'Scarface,' 'Krush Groove,' whatever in your [DVD] rack, [you'll eventually] have 'Vapors.' "

Marley is currently working on the film score to the movie "The Wendy Williams Experience," a biopic revolving around the controversial radio personality. Clover is directing that as well.

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• Marley Marl
• Juice Crew
• Biz Markie
• Big Daddy Kane

MIAMI — On the last day of the 16th Annual Winter Music Conference, the signs of burnout were everywhere. The 11th Street Diner, the meeting ground for high-profile DJs, producers and promoters, was empty; the open-air-patio vantage point from which to see who's coming and going and with whom was unpopulated save for an elderly local couple discussing IRAs.

On the beaches, German, Italian, Spanish and French replaced DJ shoptalk. Hotel pools, once networking hotspots, were quiet again, as sunbathing mothers and their young daughters read Vogue and Seventeen instead of dance music mags such as Urb, Mixer or XLR8R. Rental mopeds — two-wheeled demons that threatened pedestrians all up and down Collins Avenue in previous days — were parked in banks, waiting for the next crop of show-offs.

Even the numerous pizza parlors lining Washington Avenue, which offered up one of SoBe's cheapest food choices, were empty, the servers looking either bored or totally relaxed in Miami's 85-degree weather.

The remaining loci of energy seemed to be South Beach's DJ specialty shops, where attendees fought over the crop of vinyl shipped to Miami for the conference. Grooveman and Uncle Sam's Musicafe, both Washington Avenue record stores located at the heart of conference activities, were packed with DJs fighting over "white labels" (unreleased test pressings of potential dancefloor hits) and Winter Music Conference samplers.

Each WMC, "conference records," or songs that get so much play by the top DJs that they become instantly popular among attendees, sell like hotcakes from the Miami stores. This year's songs included "Jump 4 Love," a track by the soulful house duo Blaze. Comprising Kevin Hodges and Josh Milan, Blaze have long been considered one of the most talented production teams in the underground. Combining soul, R&B, funk and African music, several of their productions — including the arrhythmic "My Beat" — are already "classics" among house-music cognoscenti. Nathan Haines' "Earth Is the Place," produced by Phil Asher (often credited as Restless Soul) was another conference anthem that had already been broken by Ron Trent at Giant Step and Timmy Regisford at Shelter. But perhaps everyone's favorite record, from DJ to producer to dancer to promoter, is Erro's "Don't Change," a beautiful, swinging, Latin-based track with a male singer urging his love to stay just as she is. Each time it played at the conference, from Friday's Respect Is Burning event to Saturday's KingStreet party to Monday's Masters at Work extravaganza, "Don't Change" was met with cheers, claps and audience sing-alongs. Those standing around the studio-apartment-size DJ booth at Opium Garden, the conference's hottest club, nodded to one another in approval as the track dropped yet another time.

The record stores thinned out by mid-afternoon as attendees made it to one last day of parties. The Corrective Collective event, held at Opium Garden, featured a lineup of house DJs and producers.

Weaving African elements (chants, instruments or rhythms) into house is logical, as house is basically an African-American music, much like soul, R&B and funk were in their heyday. Several producers and DJs, such as Giant Step's Trent, excel at this style of play. His set Wednesday ranged from house classics to his own productions, including those from his label Prescription. Conga player Sundiata OM performed alongside Trent.

DJs Boo Williams and Glenn Underground, legends of Chicago deep house — "deep" is a subgenre categorized by emphasis on the bassline, absence or subtle use of vocals and a minimalist construction that allows the music to breathe — resurrected their S.J.U. (Strictly Jaz Unit) project with a live horn section. Atlanta DJ/production duo Kemeticjust treated the crowd to a beautiful set combining minimal house, jazz-inflected selections and traditional African sounds.

Keeping the sounds very deep were DJ Anthony Nicholson, from the Clairaudience label; Sweet Abraham, representing Diaspora Records; and Jaymz Nylon, a New York DJ whose "Afro-tech" sound combines hard rhythms with ambient, atmospheric African and Latin elements.

Also performing on the last day of the conference were the enigmatic hip-hop producer-turned-house icon Armand Van Helden, Chicago booty-house producer Felix da Housecat and French kitsch specialist Jacques Le Cont (also known as Les Rythmes Digitales). And for those who were saturated with house music, Wednesday provided a major alternative: A party by Metalheadz, an iconic British drum'n'bass label, featured Goldie, Storm (whose DJ partner Kemistry died in a car accident in 1999) and MC Marley Marl.

As is usually the case, house music ruled this year's WMC, but Detroit techno-heads, the broken-beat intelligentsia and trance's glow-stick-twirling tribe made some inroads, showing that "dance" is a broad, diverse category of music meant to be grooved to, whether it's pumping in your headphones, on the dancefloor or in your living room.

• Blaze
• Marley Marl

QUEENS, N.Y. - Rap's old school got down with the new over the weekend, when MC Shan and Marley Marl hooked up with Nas, Capone, Nature, Tragedy, Havoc of Mobb Deep and Cormega to shoot the first video from the upcoming ode to Queens, Q-B's Finest.

Nas amassed a who's-who of the borough's rap icons for the compilation, which hits stores November 21.

"Marley Marl and MC Shan had laid down a foundation back in the day, and then that inspired all of us," Nas said of Queensbridge's hip-hop heritage while shooting the video for QB's Finest's "Da Bridge 2001" [RealAudio]. "They laid down one of the first neighborhood records, 'The Bridge,' the original. Years later, here come Nas, Mobb Deep, Capone, Noreaga, all these [acts]. We're just from this one same neighborhood."

The work that Marley Marl and MC Shan did on "The Bridge" brought rap's street sound to a wider audience in 1986. Marley Marl's Cold Chillin' Records was a force to be reckoned with in rap's formative years.

However, for Nas, Capone, and the rest of the current crop of rappers on Q-B's Finest, the album provides the opportunity to salute old-school rappers, as well as the neighborhood that inspired them.

"We all wanted to do this for the longest time, but nobody really took the first step," Nas said of the album. "It was something everybody wanted to do, because we all grew up together. We may be on separate sides of the planet, everybody doing their thing with their crew and their cliques; one dude from one block, he from that block, I'm from this block. But at the end of the day, we're all from this one hood. That, that's what this is all about." [RealVideo]

Q-B's Finest track list

• "Intro"
• "Da Bridge 2001"
• "We Live This"
• "Real N---as"
• "Find Ya Wealth"
• "Straight Outta Q.B."
• "Oochie Wally"
• "Our Way"
• "Fire"
• "Pile Raps"
• "Street Glory"
• "We Break Bread"
• "Money"
• "Self Conscience"
• "Die 4"
• "Kids In Da PJs"
• "Teenage Thug"

• M.C. Shan
• Marley Marl

QUEENS, N.Y. - Rap's old school got down with the new over the weekend, when MC Shan and Marley Marl hooked up with Nas, Capone, Nature, Tragedy, Havoc of Mobb Deep and Cormega to shoot the first video from the upcoming ode to Queens, Q-B's Finest.

Nas amassed a who's-who of the borough's rap icons for the compilation, which hits stores November 21.

"Marley Marl and MC Shan had laid down a foundation back in the day, and then that inspired all of us," Nas said of Queensbridge's hip-hop heritage while shooting the video for QB's Finest's "Da Bridge 2001" [RealAudio]. "They laid down one of the first neighborhood records, 'The Bridge,' the original. Years later, here come Nas, Mobb Deep, Capone, Noreaga, all these [acts]. We're just from this one same neighborhood."

The work that Marley Marl and MC Shan did on "The Bridge" brought rap's street sound to a wider audience in 1986. Marley Marl's Cold Chillin' Records was a force to be reckoned with in rap's formative years.

However, for Nas, Capone, and the rest of the current crop of rappers on Q-B's Finest, the album provides the opportunity to salute old-school rappers, as well as the neighborhood that inspired them.

"We all wanted to do this for the longest time, but nobody really took the first step," Nas said of the album. "It was something everybody wanted to do, because we all grew up together. We may be on separate sides of the planet, everybody doing their thing with their crew and their cliques; one dude from one block, he from that block, I'm from this block. But at the end of the day, we're all from this one hood. That, that's what this is all about." [RealVideo]

Q-B's Finest track list

• "Intro"
• "Da Bridge 2001"
• "We Live This"
• "Real N---as"
• "Find Ya Wealth"
• "Straight Outta Q.B."
• "Oochie Wally"
• "Our Way"
• "Fire"
• "Pile Raps"
• "Street Glory"
• "We Break Bread"
• "Money"
• "Self Conscience"
• "Die 4"
• "Kids In Da PJs"
• "Teenage Thug"

• Marley Marl
• Nas
• M.C. Shan