R&B

Featuring: Abstract Rude and Mikah 9. Contains the single Rally 'Round the Home Team All 9 tracks are dope. This is an excellent release.

This 60-track Spinners set is intended only for Spinners fanatics who want a comprehensive look at the group's late-'70s and early-'80s work . The Detroiters' recording career began as the top dogs on Harvey and Gwen Fuqua's tiny Tri-Phi Records, but bottomed for eight years after Motown acquired Tri-Phi (and the Spinners). The fall was rough and rocky. Motown required that the band do odd jobs like chauffeuring and packing records to earn miniscule salaries. They only managed a couple of regional hits at Hitsville U.S.A.: I'll Always You and Truly Yours and one big one, It's a Shame, which came near the end of their contract. But the time proved well spent. Those less-than-lucrativ e years garnered a loyal following and respect from insiders like Thom Bell, who picked the Spinners from a... Less

Of the dozen musicians who made up Earth, Wind & Fire and its horn section during the funk band's glory days in the '70s, only four appear on their 1997 album, In the Name of Love. On hand, however, are the three crucial figures--lead singers Philip Bailey and Maurice White, and bassist Verdine White. Bailey and/or the White brothers cowrote eight of the songs, and Maurice produced the whole project. Moreover, the band has largely forsaken its ill-fated late-'80s attempts to update its sound with new-jack moves and has returned to its classic horn-driven funk grooves of the '70s. The result is the best EW&F release in 16 years. With one harmless exception, the band avoids the sort of political sloganeering and vague spiritualism that made its lyrics so embarrassing in the past, and sticks... Less

The Street Certified Mixtape is a Who's Who among regional artists with major street buzz. Street Certified is the credibility given to these artist who have achieved or is foreseen to be tomorrow's superstars. The lead single 'My Chain' by Gucci Mane was recorded the day after his release from a 7 month sentence, creating massive anticipation for the rappers return to the music scene. Gucci Mane has scanned over 100k albums to date. With the success of these regional radio hits like 'Stacks On Deck', TrowBack Boys, J's at my Door', Marc De Coca, & 'Hoe Sit Down', Maceo together on one album have huge radio audience. Street Certified also highlights national recording artist like Gangsta Boo (Grammy award - winning, Three Six Mafia) that have the street credibility along with their... Less

CD single with 4 versions / edits of title track + BEAT IT (Moby's Sub Mix).

Release Date: 1992-09-29, Audio CD, Avenue Records

Release Date: 2003-07-01, Audio CD, NuMEDIA

The music world is full of artists who like to think that they're beyond categorization when, in fact, they're quite easy to categorize and aren't nearly as unique as they would like us to believe. But Variable Unit (V.U. for short) really is difficult to categorize. Parts of Handbook for the Apocalypse are relevant to alternative rap, and yet, other parts of this 2003 release aren't rap in the conventional sense. V.U.'s Azeem raps at times, but much of the material is essentially spoken word with a track -- and that track could be influenced by hip-hop, soul-jazz, electronica or all the above. One shouldn't think, however, that V.U. is suffering from an identity crisis or that Handbook for the Apocalypse is unfocused. V.U. knows exactly what they're doing; this CD doesn't fit neatly into... Less

Release Date: 1999-10-01, Audio CD, Unidisc Records

Amos Lee received some solid critical notice for his first two Blue Note records and made it through to create a third -- an accomplishment in and of itself these days. As they were described, these albums walked some strange line between Neil Young, Bill Withers, and James Taylor. That's some heavy company to keep for a young man who used to be a schoolteacher. Last Days at the Lodge isn't a radical departure. Produced by Don Was, Lee's studio band includes guitar slinger Doyle Bramhall II, no less a keyboardist than Spooner Oldham, bassist Pino Palladino, and drummer James Gadson. All of these cats are super-choppers. The guests include the ubiquitous Greg Leisz on pedal steel and banjo, and a slew of keyboard players including Was, Justin Stanley, Rami Jaffee, and Jamie Muhoberac... Less

When Florida attorney Jack Thompson did everything he could to have the X-rated music of 2 Live Crew outlawed, his assault on the First Amendment led many free speech advocates to take up the group's cause. Thompson's actions inspired quite a bit of anger from both white liberals and African-American rappers, who saw something obscene about a prosperous lawyer declaring war on a young black entrepreneur who had avoided the pitfalls of Miami's Liberty City ghetto. Luke was under attack for doing the very thing Republicans consistently advocate -- using free enterprise to pull himself up by the bootstraps. Ironically, many of those who defended his First Amendment rights had little or no use for his lyrics. Banned in the USA, the Crew's first album for a major label and its first after the... Less

The latest and best entry in the Six Degrees label's Under the Influence series is a DJ mix by the well-respected X-Ecutioners alumnus and East Coast Turntable Champion Rob Swift, who has selected a brilliant program of rare vintage funk and soul recordings by such obscure masters of the genre as the Vibrettes, Chuck Carbo, and the Explosions, along with more recent material by Davy DMX and DJ Quik, and a couple of tracks from Afro-Cuban vocalist Bobi C spedes. As with any good turntablist set, half the fun is the source material itself, all of which works together as a sort of historic kaleidoscope of funk, and half of it is in Swift's artful juxtapositions and virtuosic cutting and scratching. Swift is maybe just a bit too respectful and restrained in his approach to the really... Less

DMX, the legendary Ruff Ryder who's sold 20 million albums, is back in the saddle with his eagerly-awaited sixth solo outing, Year Of The Dog Again, his previous album, 2003's Grand Champ, made him the only artist in the history of the Billboard Top 200 to have his first five albums debut consecutively at #1. Beyond iconic, DMX has been the voice of the hood since he first burst onto the scene as a representative of the street movement and record label Ruff Ryders. As hip-hop is assimilated into the cultural mainstream, it's time for the long overdue and much needed return of rap's prophetic visionary, DMX. The groundbreaking new album Year Of The Dog Again includes the single Lord Give Me A Sign, as well as the blazin' track We In Here.

Thanks to Handbook for the Apocalypse, many of the people who are aware of Variable Unit tend think of them as a sociopolitical group along the lines of Public Enemy, the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Boogie Down Productions, and Consolidated; when a group has a political agenda and is into hip-hop, those comparisons come easily. And yet, it would be a mistake to think of V.U. as a full-time rap group. They have included some rapping, but much of their work is best described as spoken word with a track -- and, of course, spoken word isn't the same as rap. Handbook for the Apocalypse found V.U. using both spoken word and rap to get their political and social points across; however, there's nothing sociopolitical about their follow-up album, Cold Flow. In fact, they stay away from spoken... Less