For a long time the "Lyrical Maniac EP" applied to be Blade's debut release, printed on 691 Influential back in 1989. With a limited press of 300 copies Blade tried to sell his EP to the crowd but it failed so he decided to complain the records and kept only 10 copies for himself and some friends. Later (1992) the record got thankfully re-released.
Recently some heads unearthed the lost 12inch single "Chart Moves" which is Blade's essentially debut release. Printed in 1988 the single contains 4 versions of the track "Chart Moves" which were produced by Mastermix. At the board "Heroes Of UK Hip Hop" Blade shared a little bit of history about that record ... anyway ... with the rumour that less than 100 copies are in existence this will become a holy grail status. All copies were pressed on transparent orange coloured wax.
"Chart Moves was a monopoly style of board game that my manager at the time had come up with the idea / concept of. I have to say, it was a pretty good concept even though I never played the game but knew the rules for and it was quite clever how it all worked, the idea being to educate people on how the music industry works. As a favour to my manager, I did the music for the game which was a limited edition vinyl which was to be given away with the game. I basically had to put the rules of the game into a rap and the track was produced by Mastermix. Not as hard hitting as some of my other earlier stuff for obvious reasons, and if truth be told, not really my idea of music that defined me .... just something I always saw as doing my manager a favour.
After I walked away from my agreement with my manager for him basically using all our record label meetings as an excuse to sell his product rather than my music, I played a little difficult and pushed for the record to be omitted from the game, which it was, but gave permission for whoever else was to do the remake of it to use the lyrics I wrote for it without ever asking for any royalities in return. The girl they got in to do the track after my exit used pretty much 80% of what I wrote and I left it as that and never pursued for any royalities but just left that scenario completely out of my life from there on. I don't have a copy of the vinyl as I was never given one and never asked for one ...... two tracks - a side / b side" [source]
A1: Chart Moves (Basics)
A2: Chart Moves (The Rules)
B1: Chart Moves (The Rules Extended Club Mix)
B2: Chart Moves (Instrumental)
Soundclips available here.
My special thanks goes out to Blade and ThirstyDragon. All copyrights reserved, posted for promotion only.