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.
You can count Class A Felony among the many golden era hip hop groups that I missed the first time around. Their debut album originally came out in 1993 on Mercury, but I had never even heard their name until several years ago. I actually picked up this LP a few years ago, but it's another one of those albums that I've put off writing about as something a little more exciting would keep jumping in front of it. I'm trying to make a conscious effort to get through some of this backlog so here we go.
One of the things I love about this era of hip hop is the quality and creativity of the samples that were used. The other thing that makes me prefer the early 90s to the eras that followed is the tempo of the production. Class A Felony has both things going for it. Excellent samples, and for the most part, the songs are pretty fast, throwing down more bpms than pretty much anything happening these days or during the sleepy late 90s. The samples are put together in a way that reminds me of the first Godfather Don record, which harkens more to 1990 or 1991 as opposed to when this Class A Felony album originally came out in 1993. In that way, if may have sounded a little behind the times when it was released, but not having heard it then, I can only same that to me, the production is timeless.
MC duties are handled by Dumar and he does a perfectly serviceable job. He's attempting that Guru/Rakim laid back style and doing it well enough, but the songs would probably feel more exciting if he emoted a bit more. Lyrically, he's fine. But he's lacking some in the delivery department and that might be why the record didn't light the world on fire originally.
The reissue is sort of lackluster in that the artwork is just a white sleeve with a sticker on it, but this album had never recieved a vinyl release before, so you take what you can get. The vinyl color is listed as being translucent red, but it leans more orange to my eyes, but I'll still put red in the title because that's what they say it's supposed to be. Is this a must have album? Maybe not, but I think the production is strong enough to carry the album and it's a record worth a listen if it's not on your radar.
Class A Felony - Class A Felony:
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