Chopped Herring (2018)
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.
A few years ago I stumbled across an album called Neva Sellin' Out by Tha Anthom 'N Mike B. It was an incredible album full of really nice production. I've been patiently waiting for a follow up, but that' isn't something that has materialized just yet, so in the meantime I went about trying to find this album by Last Jazz Club.
Last Jast Club features the production and DJ skills of Mike B from Neva Sellin' Out fame. Here he is paired with an MC from San Diego called Veks. Veks does an admirable job on the microphone, weaving his higher pitched vocals over, around and through the beats. If I had to do a side-by-side comparison to Tha Anthom, I probably prefer Anthom ever so slightly due to a small preference for the tone of his voice, but both have the vocabulary needed to fill out their respective albums.
Where Last Jazz Club really shines for me is in the production. As the name of the group likely implies, we've got buckets of jazzy loops and samples creating a warm, textured sound. There's so much great upright bass driving the bulk of this album and when paired with the loud, thumping drums, it hits that perfect sound. While I do think that the tempos as a whole run a little slower than I typically like, the way the sounds are crafted and the loops are used make complete sense in the context of the album. Not everything has to be fast for me to enjoy it and the laid back groove of this album shows that you can decrease the BPMs and still keep me interested.
Last Jazz Club - Jazz Is...:
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