Organized Konfusion - Stress: The Extinction Agenda 3xLP

Fat Beats (2024, Reissue)

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 twenty-five 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 wrote about the bootleg version of this Organized Konfusion record and lamented that no one had been able to figure out a proper reissue.  Well, Fat Beats has corrected that with a lavish triple LP reissue of the second Organized Konfusion album Stress: The Extinction Agenda.  They really went all out by including the entire album, remixes, bonus tracks and instrumentals.  

The album itself is a classic, even if it's a classic that I wasn't aware of when it was originally released.  The slow, jazzy beats churn throughout the album while Pharaohe Monch and Prince Po unleash lyrical mayhem on every track.  These guys deal in hyper complicated, stacked rhymes that dazzle, but they never feel like they're showing off just for the sake of it.  All of the rhymes serve the beats and vice versa, making it one of those albums that fires on all cylinders.  I typically prefer my hip hop production a little more upbeat than what's on Stress, but everything just works. 

Hats off to Fat Beats for finally figuring out how to get this album back in print.  I do sort of wish they made a version where you didn't have to buy the instruntal versions along with the main album, as I don't often listen to those for any record really.  It mostly just makes this more expensive for me/. But that's a minor complaint as Fat Beats made a super deluxe version that sounds great and allows me to retire the bootleg version that has held this spot in my collection.  Now, who is going to step up and rerelease Organize Konfusion's debut?

Organized Konfusion - Stress: The Extinction Agenda:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kDvj6SIEh08bvffjPcDPsyD82D9ZsPojA

Organized Konfusion - Stress (The Extinction Agenda) 2xLP

Hollywood Basic (1994, Bootleg Reissue)

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 twenty-five 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.

Like my copy of Organized Konfusion's self titled debut, the version of their second album that I have is a bootleg.  For whatever reason, no one has been able to give either album a proper reissue, but I'm happy to say that this double LP bootleg version sounds great, so it's good enough for me.

I had mentioned last time that I never listened to Organized Konfusion back in the 90s.  I should have as they were shouted out by several of my favorites at the time, but I never heard anything by them and never ended up buying either of their records.  My first exposure to them came much later as I tried to hunt down some hip hop albums that I hadn't heard back in the 90s.  

Stress is probably a stronger album overall that the first Organized Konfusion release.  The beats are pretty solid, mostly relying on jazzy samples and drum loops.  The production tends to be somewhat low key in nature with the tempos being on the slow side most of the time.  But the songs as a whole don't sound slow as Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po lay down dizzying raps with complicated cadences and internal rhyming structures.  It's almost as if the slower production gave them more space to cram in more lyrics on top of lyrics on top of more lyrics.  It's a nonstop display of technical mastery and Stress is an album that really deserves to have a proper reissue so it doesn't have to exist on the fringes as a bootleg purchase.

Organized Konfusion - Stress (The Extinction Agenda):
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WOhm6q1v2zk

Organized Konfusion - Organized Konfusion 2xLP

Hollywood Basic (1991, Bootleg Reissue)

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 twenty-five 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'm not exactly sure why I never listened to Organized Konfusion in the early 90s.  It's probably because I never saw any of their videos on Yo! MTV Raps, but it's not like that stopped me from stumbling upon other acts that weren't getting any airplay.  Even more puzzling is the fact that they were shouted out by name on Hieroglyphics tracks, which was pretty much a guaranteed way to make me go buy your records (See: Kurious).  But for whatever reason, it wasn't until many years later that I started to delve into the Organized Konfusion catalog.

I picked up this LP from Discogs about a year and a half ago.  I was able to snag it at a really good price considering what I had seen it go for.  The caveat is that this is the 2xLP version, which means it's an unofficial or bootleg release.  The positive is that said bootleggers didn't try to cram an overly long album onto one record, which is what happened with the original, official release.  In a lot of ways I prefer this double LP bootleg, though I would have preferred someone just reissue it properly.  Considering all of the old rap reissues out there, there must be something wacky going on with the rights for this to still be ignored.

As far as the music goes, this is fun golden era hip hop.  The production is solid and very good most of the time, but it's not in that top tier, upper echelon of the era.  I like it a lot, but it's not the sort of thing that gets my head nodding like a lot of the other records that came out around this time.  Lyrically, it's pretty amazing.  Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po are pretty amazing, stringing together complex rhyme structures while playing off beats of varying tempos and styles.  At the end of the day it's a really cool album that very obviously helped pave the way for the sounds of underground hip hop that would spring up towards the end of the decade.

Organized Konfusion - Organized Konfusion:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_knJZD3Psd8I7IZOO7R0a-Gk766a53ZjpU