Capital Tax - The Swoll Package LP

MCA (1993)

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.

There's very little that has been as exciting to me in recent years as finding one of those perfect, early 90s golden era records that I didn't know about.  It's like uncovering a lost artifact that totally captures a time and a place that's so very near and dear to me.  You can put Capital Tax on that list of more recent discoveries.

I have had this record sitting around in my 'to write about' pile for a decent amount of time.  I'm not really sure why it took so long.  Sometimes you just get distracted by the newer, shinier record that came in and then all of a sudden you're neglecting something that's just sitting right there.  Capital Tax shouldn't be ignored.  This is an album packed full of the sort of hip hop production that I love.  Lots of upbeat bass lines, thumping drum tracks, jazz horn loops and killer scratches in the breaks.  It came out in 1993, that's one of the high water mark years of hip hop production and this Capital Tax record fits right in.  

On the lyrics side, the MC duties are held down by TMD, Total Mind Devastator.  You've got to admit, that's a pretty slick MC name.  I dig it.   His gruff vocal delivery over the hard hitting beats make it so surprising that this crew was from Oakland.  Everything about it kind of screams East Coast style to me.  But if you're making an album this good, it's pretty irrelevant to me what zip code you get your mail delivered to.

It's so surprising to me how many great albums are still floating around out there waiting to be discovered.  This LP wasn't even all that much on Discogs.  But, they are cramming 58 minutes onto a single LP, which is a bit much.  This is one of those albums that I'd really like to see a nice double LP reissue for.  Hopefully someone steps up.

Capital Tax - The Swoll Package:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kkzIwhoCRcRGt5Ylhg5W7aIncuNx69P8U