Capitol (1990)
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.
C.P.O. is mildly confusing to me. It's a group, but it also ended up being a person (Lil Nation is in the group, who later became Boss Hogg who also was CPO?). But what I do know about C.P.O. is that they are affiliated with MC Ren of N.W.A. How do I know this? He guests on two tracks, he co-wrote almost every song on here, he's the producer and on the back of the record there's a larger font, bolded thank you paragraph to him that is borderline embarrassing to read. Don't get me wrong, I like MC Ren, I don't think he ever gets his due for how important he was in the history of N.W.A, but his name is on this LP more than anyone actually in the group.
I wasn't aware of C.P.O. when this album came out in 1990. I discovered them when Paramount+ uploaded about 75 old episodes of Yo! MTV Raps a couple of years ago and I proceeded to watch every single episode (they are sadly gone again, but what a glorious ride that was). I saw the C.P.O. video a few times and decided to check out the record. 1990 was when I started watching Yo!, though I don't remember seeing C.P.O. back then. But still, better late than ever.
The record itself is a strong album as far as what the production of 1990 sounded like. It's a little dated sounding listening to it today, but in the context of when it was actually released, it holds up. Lil Nation is totally solid on the mic. You can certainly hear the MC Ren influence and co-writing, but it's not like he doesn't do a good job when he's spinning his yarns. Though MC Ren completely dominates the spotlight every time he comes up. Again, I don't think that guy gets the credit he deserves for how good he was during this time period.
Is this album great? No, it's not great, but it's pretty good and is a cool snapshot of the villain in black at a period between Straight Outta Compton and Efil4zaggin. Oh, and there's a group called C.P.O. here too. When I picked up this copy I didn't realize that someone had written on the cover, but I'm not really bothered to go buy another copy to upgrade this copy for my collection. I think you can use that information to judge where I rank this album. Good enough to keep, but not important enough to upgrade.
C.P.O. - To Hell and Black:
No comments:
Post a Comment