Omniscence's Tri-Factor

It's been a minute since the last one, but the third chapter of Omniscence's Raw Factors has just landed. And I'm excited to say that this time around I've never heard any of 'em. We haven't heard low quality, mis-titled portions on the online mixtape versions, none of these songs appeared on my promo EP. It's all completely brand new. ...Except, you know, that it's from the 90s.

So, like the previous entries, this is a simple three-song 12" with the instrumentals on the reverse. No sticker cover, no frills. Just top quality remasters of three long-lost joints that we've been waiting decades for. It's not fancy, just essential.

Factors 3 opens with its hardest joint, "Represent." It features a young MC I've never heard of named Lil Kalef, but he more than holds his own. Both of them come off rougher on here than any of the Omniscence material we'd heard back in the day - it kind of reminds me of when Kool G Rap debuted Jinx the Juvy. It helps that the track has a serious New York vibe, though of course it's actually by Fanatic as usual.

The next track, then, has a smooth, nighttime vibe. Om's punchline style hear sounds a little more forced and dated here. If this was a new song, I'd say it's a little corny; but any heads picking up this release are surely fiending for the old 90s shit they've been missing out on. So you're gonna be happy to hear it, and Om sounds good enough over this track that even if it rhymes did rub you the wrong way, you'd have to give this song an overall pass.

And we finish up with "Dick Suck." We might lose female listeners here, or just mature ones, who don't particularly care to hear Omniscence brag about how he's going to get girls to give him head over and over again. But it's not actually a sex song. It's just all about how he and his crew finally made it, putting out a record (little did he know), achieving success, and so "this year, we're gonna get our dicks sucked."  This song actually sounds feels the most like the classic Omniscence material we've heard in the past, and it even features an uncredited Big Kap, who also hosted the original snippet tape most of us heard on those booty "mixtape" versions of Raw Factor. Oh, and he performed "Amazin'" with Omni on the Illstyle Live album. This is the song that will really fit all your expectations of what an unreleased Raw Factor track is gonna sound like... and that's definitely a good thing.

Look, you already know if you're one of the people that needs this in your life. If you were a backpacker in the 90s, reading the monthly Hip-Hop Quotables and tracking down the indie hip-hop projects you couldn't hear on the radio. If you're one of us, all you need me to tell you is that this volume doesn't disappoint. It's every bit as good as the previous entries. So don't let the facts that this is the third in an ongoing series and there's nothing fancy or glossy about the packaging to resell you on the concept let you lose steam and miss out on this. Because you'll regret ti down the line when you don't finally have the complete, original Raw Factor in your crates.