Dust & Dope / Hip-Hop Enterprise (2021)
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.
Brothers of the Same Mind were active in the late 80s and early 90s. Hailing from Sir Mix-A-Lot's backyard in Seattle, they had a few indie singles and EPs during that time, but the full length album that they were working had never been released until Dust & Dope and Hip Hop Enterprise stepped up to finally unleash their shelved album into the world in 2021 - 30 years after it should have originally come out. This is another one of those records that I've had in my to-write-about piles for way, way too long. But better late than never.
The first thing that jumps out at me is the production. For material recorded between 1989 and 1991, it has that early hip hop sound. I always feel like Low End Theory is the key marking point in hip hop production in that year. Before its release there was a sound and after its release the sound moved forward very quickly. Low End Theory isn't the only album in 1991 that ushered in that next stage of golden era production, but it's always the one that stands out to me as I noticed it in real time as it happened when I was 14.
So there are times where the production on this album sounds a little dated, with one foot still in that late 1980s sound. Which, don't get me wrong, I like that sound, but it's one that I need to be in the right mood to listen to. When I am in the mood, Brothers of the Same Mind do that sound as good as anyone else of that era. The beats are upbeat, the samples are not subtle and there's lots of hooks built on scratching key vocal parts of contemporaries. If you think for a second KRS-One's "Gotta Have Style" lyric isn't the foundation of the title track, you've been asleep at the wheel. And it's not the only time we hear KRS on a sample.
Lyrically, the MCs all do a great job. There's at least four of them, assuming DJ Swift doesn't end up on the microphone, but this is another example of me not really knowing who is rapping when as they don't identify themselves all that frequently. But again, for late 80s, super early 90s, they hold their own with any of that pre-Low End Theory crew. Not that everything is perfect. I do not like the R&B sung hook of "Cool Drink (In The Springtime)" at all. I never liked that crossover appeal sort of thing and when ever you get someone singing the hook like that it's an immediate turn off for me. But a song like that is the exception, not the rule on this album.
I love finding these unreleased gems getting another chance 30 years later. It makes me wonder what could have been had they been released as planned. It makes me bummed that I had to wait so long to hear them. But it mostly makes me feel relieved that albums like this are not just out there in someone's closet rotting away. Stuff like this deserves to be heard.
Brothers Of The Same Mind – Gotta Have Style:
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