Casual - Demo Sessions 12"

Dope Folks (2019)

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.

This weekend I'm going to go see Hieroglyphics play live for the first time.  Though I have seen Del The Funky Homosapien and Souls Of Mischief, I've never seen the whole crew together.  One of the main reasons I want to see this show so badly is to finally be able to see Casual live.  Casual's debut album, Fear Itself, is in my upper echelon of hip hops albums.  I'm always in search of anything that sounds like the early 90s Hieroglyphics sound, often to no avail.  But what better way to find sounds like that than from the people that made them originally.  

Dope Folks put out this EP a few years ago that has six Casual songs that predate Fear Itself.  While EPs are not my favorite way to consume songs (which I know is blasphemy in hip hop, but I just love listening to all length albums), there was no way that I wasn't going to pick this up.  Though like a lot of things I'm writing about lately, it's taken me years to get around to saying something on this site about it.  

Of the six songs, one of them is a remix of the Fear Itself standout, "Me-O-Mi-O."  I do love me an early 90s remix.  To this day I'll contend that the remixed version of Del The Funky Homosapien's "Wrongplace" is superior to the original and it's not the only song I feel that way about.  I don't really think this remix is better than the album version, but that one is an all timer and has been lodged in my head for over 30 years.  The remix is an interesting take on it, but is more of a novelty for me on this release.

The main events are the five previously unreleased tracks.  They vary in quality both from a sound quality standpoint (these are demos after all) and song quality.  Some of the slower tracks like "Fear No Evil" and "Gotta Lotta" don't hit as hard for me.  The production and beats are OK, but they don't really service Casual's flow in the way that much of his classic material does. 

That isn't the case at all with side two of this EP.  "Where They At," Can You Feel It?" and "Rippers" all hit it out of the park.  The beats are more uptempo than what you'll find on the first side and this lets Casual uncork his rapid fire lyrical madness.  He's got an effortless flow that veers from freestyles to battle raps to punchlines, sometimes all in the same bar.  He's one of the most overlooked MCs out there and the fact that he was cranking out songs like this when he was still in high school (which is also when I was in high school) flabbergasts me.

Casual - Demo Sessions 12":

https://soundcloud.com/dope-folks-records/casual-fear-no-evil-demo-sessions-ep-coming-soon?in=dope-folks-records/sets/df0094-casual-demo-sessions-ep#t=0:00