Freeze / Priority (1994)
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.
I wish I knew a little more about Sham & The Professor. There's very little information about them that I'm able to find on ye olde internet, though that isn't exactly surprising as the actual informational content on the internet has been vanishing over the years. That's a completely different, and very depressing, topic. But all I can really find about this early 90s hip hop group is their list of releases on Discogs.
Split Personalities is the debut Sham & The Professor full length album though there were a bunch of single released leading up to and shortly thereafter its 1994 release date. There's also a follow up that came out in 2001, but I haven't delved into that one just yet. I don't even remember exactly how I stumbled across this album. It may have been from those recommendations that show up at the bottom of Discogs listings, but I'm not positive. However I found it, I'm sure glad I did as it's a great album.
1994 is that transitional year in hip hop for me. While there's lots of great records, there's also quite a few that are moving in a direction that I don't care for. On the production side, Sham & The Professor sit right where I want a record to be. This is bass heavy, thick production with pounding drums and the sort of samples that take control of my neck, rendering me incapable of not nodding my head along in approval. There's also some nice fast beats, as one of my biggest peeves about mid 90s hip hop is how slow it is.
Lyrically, both Sham and The Professor can hold their own. They complement each other and pass the mic back and forth with ease, reminding me of how seamlessly groups like EPMD are able to do it. The content is serious, though they are certainly able to battle and do so on occasion. The way that they fold their flows into the beats is super impressive and it leaves me scratching my head about how these guys slipped through the cracks for me for so many years.
It took me a minute to find a nice copy of the LP at a reasonable price, and mine was sealed before I popped it open. The only complaint I have about any of this is that Split Personalities is one of those 90s hip hop records where the vinyl is a single LP and because of that there's not as many songs on it as there are on the CD version. So we only have 11 of the 17 tracks on the vinyl, which bums me out. Especially egregious is "Murder on My Hands" being missing from the vinyl. That's a killer song. Maybe someday one of those great reissue labels like 90s Tapes will do a fancy rerelease of this, but for now I'm just happy to have the record period.
Sham & The Professor - Split Personalities:
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