I never heard the full length LP Lord Finesse & DJ Mike Smooth - Funky Technician.

Now it sounds dated, the beats are good but don't 'go' anywhere sometimes - the rhyming is good, but maybe too influenced by BDK.

Ton's of quotables from it, tons of music you've heard referenced or re-used after it - but an odd experience to hear it in this context.

I wonder what Criminal Minded would sound like hearing it for the first time today?

.for the first time in maybe since 2005; I only have one cd player that works in the house (my car cd player has a cd stuck in it for the past year) and 99% of the time I only use that cd player/cd burner to burn cds.

Anyway I got a ton of cassettes and two boom-boxes that have tape decks that work but the cd player on both are dead, so I listen to cassettes and vinyl most of the time, so I got a 90 min. tape with "Illmatic" on one side and "Word...Life" on the other side; so I saw it in a pile of tapes and pulled this one out to listen to, I use to play this tape a lot back in the late 90's (especially when I had a car with a tape deck in it) but probably 'round 2001 I think was the last time I listened to it, and last time I heard "Illmatic" from beginning to end was when the 10th Anniversary cd was released in 2004.

I still listen to other albums by Nas & O.C. and their singles but their firsts it's been a while, "Illmatic" sounds like it always did, I still want to skip "One Time 4 Your Mind" so bad, "Life's A Bitch" sound so ahead of it's time while back then I hated the beat back then, and still want to hear "World Is Yours Remix" which I added on the end of the album instead of the original, and forgot that I put the remix to "Life's A Bitch" on there too.

Anyway with "Word...Life" that kind of sounded dated with most tracks, the beats still knock which I just zoned out to more than listen to the rhymes, some songs like "Story" or "No Main Topic" I wondered why they picked over the ones I remember hearing from the "O-Zone Originals" EP but I can understand that an after the fact situation; it was better back then; but his second album was a classic and way better than his first but his first was a good introduction to O.C. and you can't take that away from him.

The last 'old' album I heard semi-recently was KRS's Sex & Violence. I half-remembered the singles, Duck Down and 13 and Good. Duck Down still goes, but for the most part the album was disappointing and dated. Granted that album was from '92, so the fact that the album's sound doesn't match contemporary standards isn't surprising.

But as far as listening to old albums for the first time in a while, I listened to some of ATLiens and MAN is that still a great album.

I didn't get into that album when it came out. I dug Elevators but my ears were just too young to really appreciate the groundbreaking nature of that album.

But if that album came out today, it would still be a classic, maybe more so. Whether it's the lush soundscapes or the clever use of sampling or the diversity of flows on the album, it's immensely creative and original. I haven't heard Stankonia or TLB/SB lately, but I think ATLiens might hold up the best out of all of their albums.

Similar to alot of 80’s records, for some reason imho they aged better then some seminal 90’s imho since the beats were so simple and in my mind i don’t just them against modern rap because the rhyme patterns are so different.

i listened to as much stuff from 79 to 83 that i could.

this was a lot of singles but also albums from kurtis blow, grandmaster flash and the furious 5, sugar hill gang, and all of the whodini albums.

i had heard a lot of the big songs before but never the whole albums. it was interesting to hear the slow r&b cuts on some of these albums. over all i was happy to hear most of these. definitely increased the songs in my rotation.

i loved hearing beats and lines that have been used in newer music. some of them i figured were shout outs to older songs but some i thought were original in the new songs.

its crazy how long some of the songs were and it was just straight rapping. i kind of thought what would this style sound like now but then i remember jurassic 5. i always liked them and i like these old tracks too.

i think i dont hear old stuff and see it as dated, maybe a new song with an overplayed style might sound dated. i hear the music with some context of what was happening at the time it was released but mostly just appreciate it for what it is.

the breakin' ost was straight up wack to me but wild style was still dope. you could just feel the energy on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZNn5lAQplE




Bottoms up....and the devil laughs..




http://soundcloud.com/rayandersonjr

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg
http://Tupreme.com

The music is outstanding, I just cant get past the "lyrics" to justify this being an all time great.

Had a debate at work Illmatic vs IWW...IWW still sounds as boring to me now as it did when I first played it in my El Camino in my homeboys front yard the weekend it came out.






Bottoms up....and the devil laughs..




http://soundcloud.com/rayandersonjr

*eyeroll*

>Had a debate at work Illmatic vs IWW...IWW still sounds as
>boring to me now as it did when I first played it in my El
>Camino in my homeboys front yard the weekend it came out.

Do you feel like their contemporaries like, say, Tribe, Guru or C.L. were on a higher level lyrically?
Is your main gripe with the lyrics on Blowout Comb mainly style or quality?

It's funny bc some songs do just sound super super old...but the great songs still sound amazing to me.

Always

But something like Let's Get Crazy or Teacher Teacher? Maybe so

Good lord that Black Sheep album is a textbook case of a sophomore slump. A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing is a classic (I'd almost give it 5 stars is they remove La Menage), so there was bound to be some letdown, but very little worked on their follow up for me. 3 songs max, and one of them was the remix to 'Without a Doubt', which should have been on the album.

Don't Sweat The Technique was like listening to 2 different Rakims. Either that or you could hear where he was losing a step. Tracks like 'Know The Ledge' or 'What's On Your Mind' were still raw, but those were written earlier for movies (between Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em and Don't Sweat The Technique). 'Casualties of War' had that same feel, but may have been left off the prior album in place of 'In The Ghetto'. Then you have songs like 'The Punisher' or 'Relax With Pep' that just didn't quite work (I swear The Punisher sounds like something Prime Minister Pete Nice would have written). As much as I still love the title track, you could hear something was just slightly missing in Ra's wordplay.

sounds a bit awkward on that Bomb Squad type of beat.

Something was off.

I was cool with Rest Assured though...

I find they hold as well as anything. It's always good to understand the context in which they were released and the "purpose" of the album, etc.

I first really got into hip hop around 2005, and I made it a point to work my way back through the canon (lurking here helped shape my choices), but a few years back I stared to really grow tired of the casual misogyny and virulent homophobia of the golden era (I honestly don't know I love BDP's catalog as much as I hate it). Obviously not every old school artist was guilty of this, but enough were that I started to avoid listening to new (to me) stuff.

I think the last classic album I listened to for the first time was Chubb Rock's And the Winner Is... about 6 months ago, and before that was probably a couple of MC Lyte's mid-career albums.

Tangent: B4.da.$$ is one of my favorite hip hop albums of this last decade because it was like listening to an old classic, except I wasn't worrying about when the rape threats would show up or the wrong kind of F-bombs would start dropping (at least until Action Bronson accidentally admitted to statutory rape at the end, but that was a bonus track, and fuck Action Bronson anyway).

not the biggest redman fan but oddly came across
an interview of him saying its his worse album

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg
http://Tupreme.com

Both from 1989 and in heavy rotation for me recently.

Kings of Pressure - Slang Teacher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-fNjcWmiZk

https://cratesofjr.blogspot.com/2017/07/1989-debut-by-philly-hip-hop-crew-too.html

and I liked it a lot. I thought it was very listenable considering its age and I kept it in the rotation for a wihle. For comparison, I also listened to 3 Feet High and Rising for the first time in the same general time period and I felt like it was very dated and harder to listen to.

______________________________
http://i.imgur.com/v2ye7l2.jpg

Being a Kool Keith fan since I first heard Black Elvis, this was a real treat to venture back to. It's been on repeat all week...

That's an album I retroactively discovered in college some 15 years ago, but have always appreciated it when I go back to it. Definitely a timeless album.