Big L – Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous LP

Columbia / Legacy (2026, 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 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.

Big L is one of those MCs whose reputation as an elite lyricist has only grown since his tragic murder in 1999. His only full album released while he was still allive was 1995's Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous.  While it is an exceeding popular album with those in the know, this is one of those albums that I was completely oblivious to when it originally came out as there wasn't much in the world of hip hop that I was following after 1994 wrapped up.  I've written about it a million times, but the sounds were changing and I wasn't on board.

In later years, I first discovered Big L via a guest appearance on the Showbiz and AG song "Represent."  It's the sort of appearance that makes you immediately head to the internet to see what is out there and that's how I discovered Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous.  For a 1995 album, this is way more up my alley than a lot of records released that year.  It almost always boils down to the production, and there's enough upbeat tracks with soulful samples to keep me engaged.  Yeah, there's some slower ones on here, but even then Big L has an energetic flow that can transcend the few beats on here that aren't my particular cup of tea.  His style and cadence are firmly rooted in the early 90s and it's obvious that many of the songs here were gestating long before 1995.

It took me a while to get my hands on this album as it's been out of print since 2019 and the price had gotten pretty out of control.  It was nice to finally be able to get a copy at a reasonable price, but it is kind of lame that it's a single LP instead of the double LP reissues that came out in the 2010s.  But when the price different is plural hundreds of dollars, the single LP will do just fine by me.  I'm just happy to have a copy for the collection and am always excited when I can find another post-1994 record that clicks with me.

Big L – Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kZ8B8ikaWoDlSe0ZVV7AXduy8qFKt-Q_8

Terminator X - & the Valley of the Jeep Beets LP

Rush/Columbia (1991)

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.

There's fewer and fewer hip hop albums that I had as a teenager on CD that I need to replace with vinyl, but this Terminator X album checks another off the list.  I don't have this CD anymore, it must not have survived one of the many CD purges that I did in the early 2000s trying to survive on a shitty music industry salary.  My buddy Zach actually reminded me of the record again a couple of months ago when he posted a picture of his CD.  This was on my radar, but I put a little more emphasis on tracking it down and now it's here.

It still holds up as a great album I think and in a lot of ways, I like it even more now than I did back in 1991.  I'm pretty positive the reason I bought this CD way back when was because I saw the video for "Buck Whylin'" on Yo! MTV Raps.  With Chuck D and Sista Soulja holding down the vocals, it's essentially a Public Enemy song without Flav.  The production is great and Chuck really turns in a great performance.  Soulja's "We are at war" battle cry also hits unusually hard in 2022.

The rest of the record is also a lot of fun.  The beats are consistently good throughout and a lot of MCs that really never got a chance to shine elsewhere turn in some cool performances.  In particular, I just love the song "Back to the Scene of the Bass" featuring a group called The Interrogators that I was never able to find out anything more about back in the 90s.  And guess what, in 2022, there's really no information about them either.  Kind of weird, but man what a song.

While no one would ever say this is as good as any of the Public Enemy albums of that era, it's a lot of fun and one I recommend picking up if you see the CD in a used bin somewhere.  Terminator apparently did another record in '94 that I was completely unaware of.  I'm going to have to check that out to see if it's anything like this one.

Terminator X - & the Valley of the Jeep Beets:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m7AcBj6xwdi2Mo-HuDbK8Bh6ytLQoga2U

Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill 2xLP - Red w/ Black Smoke Vinyl

Get On Down / Columbia (2022, 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 wrote about this record before when I added the basic, single LP version to the collection.  I don't really have too much more to say about it, but I will repeat how I hated the Cypress Hill song "Phuncky Feel One" the first dozen times I heard it on Yo! MTV Raps.  I also couldn't understand why they kept playing it week after week.  They they started up the second single, "How I Could Just Kill A Man."  

My first thought was "oh no, not another Cypress Hill song," but it didn't take long for me to recognize how great a song it truly was.  It lead me to liking Cypress Hill so much that for a little while I actually wore a necklace that had their logo on it.  Hey, I was fourteen years old and it was 1991, have some empathy.

This new 2xLP version looks great, has rad liner notes in the gatefold and finally gives the album enough space to breathe over 4 sides of vinyl.  They also threw on two remixes that weren't on the first version of the album.  If you have this record already, it might be worth considering the double dip, it's pretty solid.  But if you do not already have this album, this one is pretty much a classic of the era and if I were buying any version, this is the one to get.

Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nFuSAVZsc11fgTZYjM9Mn9jcNZ6v1VB4Y

3rd Bass - Derelicts of Dialect 2xLP

Def Jam / Columbia (1991)

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.

Derelicts of Dialect came out during the summer of 1991, the summer between 8th grade and my freshman year of high school.  I first became really and truly interest in hip hop when I was in 7th grade and Mama Said Knock You Out came out.  I loved that song and credit it immensely with pushing me towards finding more hip hop that I liked.  Even though I never ended up being that big of an LL Cool J fan, that one song is responsible for shifting the way I looked at music immeasurably.

Back to the summer of 1991.  I was aware of 3rd Bass from "Gas Face" being played on Yo! MTV Raps, though I didn't pick up The Cactus Al/Bum until after I had gotten Derelicts.  "Pop Goes The Weasel" was the first single from this new album and it got a lot of play on Yo! and eventually was in regular rotation on MTV.  This was a long time ago and I may have the timing wrong, but I'm pretty sure that summer was when MTV was playing blocks of videos all the same genre.  I remember sitting through trash waiting for more rap videos and 3rd Bass being a frequent part of them.  That prompted me to buy the CD.

I don't know why, but I have an unusually clear memory of buying this CD when I was a kid.  We went to this record store that was in a strip mall up where I grew up in Sussex County, NJ.  It wasn't a cool or hip shop, it was just an independently owned record store that pretty much sold the same stuff you'd get at Sam Goody.  It wasn't there long and I think this was the only thing I ever bought there.  Anyway, I remember picking up the long box CD from a rack and being excited they were actually carrying it.  Why is that memory so vivid? No clue. Nothing interesting happened, but that's when I bought this as a kid.

On to the vinyl. Derelicts of Dialect hasn't been reissued on LP since 1991, so I had to hunt down an older copy.  I picked this one up on Discogs at a reasonable price and am psyched to have it in my collection.  I think it holds up really well, though like a lot of albums of that era, it's probably a little too long and would benefit from a shorter, tighter tracklist.  That happened a ton on early 90s hip hop albums with everyone testing the capacity of CDs.  

In particular the title track, "Pop Goes The Weasel,"No Static At All" and "Ace In The Hole" are jstill really great.  Thirty years later and I'm here nodding my head along with the bass.  Crazy.  Also crazy is how young the 3rd Bass guys look in all of the pictures and videos.  When I was in 8th grade, they seemed like grown up rappers.  Seeing them now, I realize they were kids too.  Wild times.

3rd Bass - Derelicts of Dialect:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nIZPSqZeRagDH2T9z4pyY80w_HOkrRphY

Cypress Hill - S/T LP - Red Vinyl

Get On Down / Sony /Ruffhouse / Columbia ‎(2017, 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 25+ 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.

The first dozen or so times I heard the song "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung when I was a kid, I absolutely hated it.  I would cringe when it came on and wanted nothing to do with it.  For whatever reason, that song was omnipresent in 1986 and I just couldn't avoid it.  But a funny thing happened, I started to enjoy it.  I'm not exactly sure how it happened or why I had a change of heart, but I asked my dad to buy me the 7" of it.  I played it to death.  To this day it's my favorite song of the genre of music people are talking about when they say 80s music.

How does Wang Chung play into a Cypress Hill review?  For me, Cypress Hill was a very similar thing.  The first song I heard from their self titled debut was "The Phuncky Feel One" and I saw the video for it quite a bit on Yo MTV Raps.  I really did not like that song and was pretty annoyed that Yo was wasting their very valuable time with this video.  Eventually it went away, but soon after that the video for "How I Could Just Kill A Man" showed up.  Much to my surprise, I was taken in by that song.  While B Real's nasally vocal delivery annoyed me in "The Phuncky Feel One," here it was a real positive and meshed well with the more upbeat production.

I ended up buying the album and just played it so, so many times.  It became one of my absolute favorites and to this day I still get a fuzzy nostalgic feeling when I listen to it. I never really liked any of the other Cypress Hill albums as much as this one.  Black Sunday had some good songs on it, but "Insane In The Membrane" kind of got played into the ground back then.  But, this first album is a little slab of perfection and was a key album to pick up as I replace my hip hop CDs with vinyl.

Cypress Hill - S/T (YouTube Playlist):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DylcCVjEyiw&list=PLEF46578166FFCF03