Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Road to Riches LP - Yellow w/ Purple & Blue Splatter Vinyl (/300)

Untitled

Omerta (2017, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Road to Riches originally came out in 1989, but I never heard it for whatever reason.  I was well aware of Kool G Rap's reputation of being one of the best lyricists in hip hop, but I don't recall seeing many, if any, Kool G Rap and DJ Polo videos on Yo! MTV Raps.  Most of what I knew about them was from what I read in the source.  At some point over the years, I listened to their third album, Live and Let Die, but I don't really remember thinking it was anything special, so i didn't dig any deeper.

While I was listening to an episode of the Take It Personal podcast (which I recommend if you want to hear some old school 90s style mixes) they played this amazing song with an excellent piano sample.  They didn't identify it at the time, but I went back to try to figure out what it was.  It was the opening track to this album and I love it.

So, next step was to track down a copy of Road to Riches.  I ultimately got it from Discogs at an OK price, but with the shipping it certainly wasn't cheap.  I'm not sure why so much of the good hip hop reissues are on labels based out of Europe.  But, once it arrived I found out it wasn't just the title track from this record that was worthwhile.  Pretty much everything was great with it feeling pretty ahead of its time for 1989.  I'm probably going to give their 2nd album a try to see if I like it as much as their debut, but if nothing else Road to Riches is pretty much a stone cold classic that I really wish I had heard back when it came out.

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Road to Riches:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lD5gt1WPQqrd-Iv7DP9-zdnMuFPCok9-Q

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