Featured
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Pay Jay Productions
J Dilla – Ruff Draft: Dilla's Mix
$39.00
Visit product page →When Ruff Draft saw its initial release in 2003, J Dilla possessed production skills on par with anyone in hip-hop – technically and creatively. “At the top of his game,” says longtime friend and collaborator, Karriem Riggins. After years of building while modestly deferring to others of both greater and lesser notoriety, Dilla finally completed the first solo endeavor on his own label, entirely on his own terms.
The project would go on to spur his collaborative album with Madlib – Jaylib’s Champion Sound – and would first showcase the template that he would take to his greatest heights with 2006’s Donuts. This definitive reissue of Ruff Draft takes Dilla’s recently discovered mixes of the album – only ever issued on the rare, original vinyl EP – and restores his vision for the project… “straight from the mothafuckin’ cassette,” as he phrased the sound he was going for on the EP’s intro.
LP 1 presents Dilla’s EP as it was originally released, LP 2 presents the alternate sequence that Dilla had for the project, with tracks unissued in 2003. Cassette presents Dilla’s EP on side 1 and his alternate sequence on side 2. 2CD comes with both sequences on disc 1, with bonus instrumental disc. Author Ronnie Reese details Dilla’s story in a booklet complete with never before published photographs from the Ruff Draft photo session by Dilla collaborator Waajeed. (Note: booklet only comes in LP and CD formats.) – Rappcats
Label: Pay Jay Productions – PJ015
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 21 Apr 2018
Genre: Hip Hop
Style: Conscious, Hardcore Hip-Hop, Instrumental
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Sub Pop
Shabazz Palaces - The Don Of Diamond Dreams
$39.00
Visit product page →Ishmael Butler and Tendai “Baba” Maraire of Shabazz Palaces have always been proud iconoclasts, consistently breaking ground in spaces once thought incompatible with hip-hop. They were among the few rap acts signed to Sub Pop; they were pretty much the only rap artists to ever perform at the avant-garde Big Ears festival in Knoxville. This adventurous spirit continues down the Butler family line with Ishmael’s son Jazz, aka Lil Tracy. It seems that Jazz’s work has had a profound effect on his father’s project; in recent interviews, Butler cites his own son as an influence.
As one of the original members of the GothBoiClique, Tracy is an important figure in the development of “emo rap,” and what’s fascinating about Shabazz’s new album The Don of Diamond Dreams is the degree to which Ish seems to be learning from the new generation. Like polarizing label mates clipping., Shabazz’s brand of “alternative” hip-hop is not so much opposed to the mainstream as it is reflective of it, absorbing tangents of influence from trap, Auto-Tuned R&B, chopped and screwed, and other variants. Their lyrics are often shaped by the hip-hop hegemony too, playing off Rap Caviar tropes and taunting the Top 40 with a tongue-in-cheek braggadociousness, the kind that lets you know that Butler is still the same MC who told us he was cool like that all those years ago.– Pitchfork
Label: Sub Pop – SP 1335
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: USA & Europe
Released: 17 Apr 2020
Genre: Electronic, Hip Hop
Style: Conscious, Leftfield
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SPITdigital Recordings / Enemy Records
Public Enemy – Man Plans God Laughs
$45.00
Visit product page →“The first generation of rockers who grew up in public faced their share of ridicule, a fact that does not escape Chuck D. A keen observer of history who also possesses a sly sense of humor, he raps over a sample of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" on Man Plans God Laughs, Public Enemy's 13th album. Like the Stones, PE have been around so long and their influence has been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that it's easy to take them for granted, but where Mick & Keith played arenas, Public Enemy consciously shrugged off the majors and remained fierce insurrectionists, existing just under the radar. By the end of the 2000s, they may not have been regulars in mainstream music publications, but they still had underground hits, such as "Harder Than You Think," which surprisingly became the group's biggest-ever British hit in 2007. PE brings back that track's producer, Gary "G-Wiz" Rinaldo, to produce the entirety of Man Plans God Laughs, and he helps Chuck D create a hard, furious flash of a record that deliberately leans on Public Enemy's history while keeping a steely eye on the present. All the self-allusions -- samples from Nation of Millions, lyrical callbacks, horn stabs straight out of the Bomb Squad -- aren't a way to revive the past but rather to provide a context: this isn't music that came from nowhere, it is tied to history as well as the future.” – All Music
Item description:
Artist:
Public Enemy
Title:
Man Plans God Laughs
Label:
SPITdigital Recordings, Enemy Records
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album
Pressing:
USA, Canada & Europe
Release Date:
31st July 2015
Genre:
Hip Hop
Style:
Conscious, Boom Bap
Catalog No:
SDER1016L
Condition:
New
