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The late nineties and early 2000s were an incredibly fertile time for underground hip-hop and two of the LP highlights from that era were Boston producer/ MC/ DJ Edan’s only two studio LPs to date. Debut, Primitive Plus made big waves but what followed was bigger still – a hip-hop Sergeant Pepper’s…to its predecessor’s Revolver. Utterly psychedelic from the swirling
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Tag Archives: re-issue
EDAN: Beauty & The Beat (Vinyl re-issue)
SAUKRATES: The Underground Tapes (Re-issue) (2017)
Right then who’s up for a Socratic dialogue? Didn’t think so, but what about a hefty helping of Saukratic monologue? Yes, that’s more like it. Could there be some material by veteran Canadian emcee, Saukrates, in the offing? Yes, there could because his 1999 debut studio LP The Underground Tapes has been re-mastered and re-released along with no less than five extras and
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DR OCTAGON: ‘Octagonecologyst’ deluxe re-issue (2017)
Stumped for what to get your mum for Mother’s Day? Unfurrow your brow – the answer is flowers of course! Blue Flowers to be precise. In fact why stop there? Why not go the whole hog and get her the full Octagonecologyst? Wait – what!? You’re going to get your mother a hip-hop LP named after a torturous bit of word play on the word ‘gynaecologist’?! Doctor what do you think? …I
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PAPAS’ GOT: I Wanna Love 12″ re-issue (2017) + AL KENT edit
Papa’s got a re-issue and an Al Kent edit! Nope nothing to do with James Brown – other than the fact that Jamaican-born Rowland Abrahams loved dancing to Mr Dynamite so much he got a JB-related nickname – Papas’ Got – complete with misplaced apostrophe. Which he then used when recording his ’79 disco LP I Wanna Love in Paris. Said album yielded a killer funky-afro-disco biscuit
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RUN-D.M.C: Run-D.M.C. (2016)
Next up for a deluxe re-issue from Get On Down is one of the most influential hip-hop LPs of all time – Run-D.M.C.‘s Run-D.M.C.. To say that this self-titled debut was a wake up call for hip-hop would be an understatement. Out went the comfortable ‘rhymes over hookless, seven-plus minute disco grooves’ that had pretty much been the model from Sugarhill onwards; in came shorter track-
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MF DOOM: Operation Doomsday (2016)
It’s fair to say that he-of-a-million-names, i.e. the man currently known as DOOM and variously known as Zev Love X of KMD, Viktor Vaughn, Metal Face Doom and King Geedorah (among others) is rather influential in hip-hop – a mythic figure even. It’s also fair to say that Operation Doomsday (i.e. the first album the man dropped following the sad end of KMD, the mid-nineties
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PETE ROCK & CL SMOOTH: ‘All Souled Out’ 25th anniversary re-issue (2016)
Rating: Hearing Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s All Souled Out EP in 2016, you might be tempted to ‘dip, dive, dip’ but if you caught their ‘gateway to the big time’ release the first time around then there’s an even chance that now you really might ‘break a hip to the sound that’s legit’ since this record has just reached its quarter century. Which means of course that you’re twenty-five years older. It also means that here is something ripe
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GHETTO BROTHERS: Power Fuerza (re-issue) + DJ Akalepse promo mix (2012)
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Some records are merely rare. Some are so rare that the artists in the act that recorded them don’t even have a copy. Power Fuerza by New York’s Ghetto Brothers is one such album. Happily for them it’s getting a re-release on its fortieth anniversary. Admittedly its mixture of Latin-flavoured soul and rock from 1972 is probably not
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