Murder Fam "Exclusive"

You know, I've given J-Love some (well deserved) shit on this blog for his mix-CDs, but I do have to give him his due. He's not a bad producer who's worked with some of the best MCs and facilitated a lot of music from them. He's got his fair share of criticisms coming to him, but the hip-hop scene would not have been better off without him.

Case in point: this little under-the-radar white label, titled "Murder Fam." It's one of a series of split 12"s he did with production partner Ric Nice. It's got no year on it, but other entries in the series came out in 2001, so it's safe to say this came then, give or take a year. It's just two mixes of one song (albeit with Dirty, Clean and Instrumental versions of each), one produced by J and one by Ric.

It's not "Greatest Hits" material or anything, but it's a a rugged little gem by Kool G. Rap, Jinx da Juvy (not Sir Jinx, as discogs would have us believe) and an underground MC by Ike Infa Diamond. Jinx had done a couple collaborations with G Rap around that time for his Giancana Stories album... in fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is another one of the many outtakes from that album.

It's a simple drum and bass line with a couple hot samples on it, a pure example of the New York crime rap genre. G Rap easily spits it sickest verse (and no, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been recycled anywhere), but the other two MCs try hard enough to copy his violent-mafioso-raps-twisted-into-mindbending-exercises-of-ill-wordplay style to hold up the rest of the record. The hook's just a simple vocal sample repeated a few times ("a man's gotta live up to his word") and a short, chanted refrain.

The Ric Nice mix is essentially the same but with a different sample or two. It's got a cool barrel drum sound, but otherwise the doesn't really hit as hard, especially the hook that just uses a high-pitched violin loop behind the chorus. It's good, though, and I'd be perfectly content with it if the A-side didn't exist.

Of course, J-Love recently threw this on one of his hacky mix-CDs, if you feel like hearing it in terrible sound quality with lazy radio blends at each end and J's "exclusive" name droppings all over it. Personally, I hope to never ever hear another song in that excruciating manner again in my life though; so I was happy to pick up this 12". I suggest you do the same. 8)