Sunday, July 30, 2017

Big L Grail On Record Store Day

(This past Record Store Day, we got one killer release, with some very long-awaited music by the great Big L.  Youtube version is here.)

1 comment:

  1. Slappy White July 31, 2017 at 6:01 PM

    Nice Werner! It’s great to see another blog about L, it’s been a while since you’ve talked about him.

    This is a beautiful vinyl. And I agree that it’s nice to have those digital downloads, they make it very convenient to rearrange the album and include everything. In case anybody’s wondering, if you combine the promo tracklist with the retail tracklist, the complete Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous should be sequenced like this:

    01. Put It On
    02. MVP
    03. No Endz, No Skinz
    04. 8 Iz Enuff
    05. I Don’t Understand It
    06. Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous
    07. Devil’s Son
    08. I Shoulda Used a Rubber
    09. School Dayz
    10. All Black
    11. Danger Zone
    12 Street Struck
    13. Da Graveyard
    14. Let ‘Em Have It L
    15. Fed Up Wit the Bullshit
    16. Timez Iz Hard

    You’re dead right about Unexpected Flava: that’s the one grievance I had with this release. I know the hardcore fans were hoping that sixth track was gonna be How Will I Make It. That song is Lifestylez-era gold, and it’s still never been officially released.

    I do feel compelled to point out that Lord Finesse didn’t really co-produce Unexpected Flava, he just mixed it. Large Professor made that beat for Finesse (it was supposed to be the Extra P remix of “Isn’t He Something”), but Finesse never used it, so he gave it to L. So “co-produced” in this sense just means that Finesse conceptualized the chorus and laid in that sample from “Isn’t He Something”. The rest is all Large Pro.

    But this record does contain the earliest instance of L spitting over a Lord Finesse beat, and that would be School Days. That was one of the first songs recorded for the album, and up until that point every other beat L had rhymed over was produced by either Showbiz or T-Ray (with the exception of Unelected Flava, of course).

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