Rascalz - Really Livin' LP - Orange Vinyl

Smoke On (2020, 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 thirty 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.

Rascalz have an interesting story that I'm going to do my best to piece together as succinctly as I can with the extremely limited information that I can find online.  It all starts off in Canada in 1992 when the group was called Ragga Muffin Rascals.  They released an album called Really Livin' on in independent label.  Said album garnered the interest from Sony and they got signed to rerelease that album.  Feeling that the album was already dated and that their sound had evolved past that, the group opted to redo the album with new songs and redone versions of a few songs from that first album.  The result is pretty much a completely different album released in 1993.  Also called Really Livin', which is the part that I found confusing trying to figure out what was going on.

The 1993 version of Really Livin' is the one that Smoke On Records rereleased in 2020.  It took me a while to find a copy of this for a good price as I had missed the boat on the reissue when it first came out.  This is the first time either version of Really Livin' has been available on vinyl and it's great to have this album that was completely unknown to me when it originally came out.

Perhaps if I had grown up in Canada as opposed to New Jersey I would have been more aware of Rascalz in 1993.  But I never remember seeing them on Yo! MTV Raps or reading about them in The Source.  Much like fellow countryman Maestro Fresh Wes, it would be years and years later that I discovered their record only to be blown away and annoyed that I hadn't been able to listen to it from the jump.

This is a perfectly produced 1993 style record.  Lots of upright bass riffs, giving it that jazzy undertone, while having the loud cracking snare drum bits and hard hitting percussion that keeps things sounding energetic and harder than some of the sleepy production of the later 90s.  Lyrically, they remind me a little bit of the Pharcyde in places, but mostly due to the how the vocals sound and the cadence a bit.  The whole package doesn't really sound anything like The Pharcyde, but the vocals combined with the xcellent production makes this album really stand out.

It really is a great record that I feel is probably lost in time to a lot of people.  I certainly missed the boat on it completely for decades, but I'm glad that it finally hit my radar as it fits in wonderfully with the other 1993 hip hop albums that I love.

Rascalz - Really Livin'
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kMslu2PD5ISli5X-irOs4bBSqsoTBvmM8