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.
I'm not positive, but I believe that Illegal was meant to be part of EPMD's Hit Squad before that collective (and EPMD) splintered. It feels like the gimmick was every crew needed some kid rappers back then. Illegal stayed affiliated with Erick Sermon and he produces three of the tracks on their 1993 album, The Untold Truth. He's joined on the boards by Diamond D, Bi Markie, Lord Finesse and others. A real smorgasbord of producers as was becoming the trend. Luckily the album still sounds cohesive with the sort of '93 era beats that I do tend to enjoy.
Lyrically, Malik and Jamal are really skilled for being younger teenagers. Their rhyme schemes are sophisticated and their delivery is about as rugged as you can be at that age. The disses of other kid groups like Kriss Kross sound pretty silly these days, but it's not like they cornered the market on diss records back then. More than anything, I think this record benefits mostly from coming out in 1993. It was pretty hard to miss on beats back then, unless you were barking up some G-Funk tree, which Illegal is not.
As usual the 90s Tapes reissue is everything you'd want and more. Even though the artwork is simple, it looks great. The songs (which to be honest sometimes overstay their welcome a bit due to their length) are spread out over two LPs with a bonus 7" that has an extra Lord Finesse helmed remix of "We Gets Buzy." While not a record I heard back in 1993, it's a slice of that time that I miss and am glad to have a new record from that time in the collection.
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