Brick City's Own Mytee G Poetic

Speaking of Gentleman's Relief Records collaborating with another indie label to put out some great, lost 90s material in different formats, this time they're working with a label called Dust & Dope Recordings.  I love seeing these labels work together instead of acting like bitter competitors; it's all for a great Hip-Hop cause.  Anyway, I don't know too much about Dust & Dope, but they're the guys that put out the long-shelved and coveted Raw Breed album Killa Instinct last year.  And the project they're releasing jointly here is Com'n Wit Nuff Ruffness, the unreleased album by Mytee G. Poetic.

This is a project you may've already seen me tweeting excitedly about.   Mytee is a Newark, NJ MC who put out a couple hot 12" singles in the 1990s.  One of the rare ones who doesn't seem to be connected with Nick Wiz.  haha  All his production duties are shared by himself and a bunch of pretty obscure cats: Mixture, Kool Ass Pat, Na'fis Majid, Brand X, Rashad Muhammad, Kasim, Noise System and Maddox.  The only name there I even recognize is Rashad, who did some stuff with The Fugees before they blew up.  But that's not a mark against any of them, because the production here is hot.  And consistent.

But let me back up a second and explain what we've got here.  This is a full length album of Mytee's tracks from '94-'96, plus one bonus track recorded in 1998.  It includes all six songs from his previous 12"s, including both versions of "Com'n Wit Nuff Ruffness," so if you missed any of them, don't worry, you're getting his whole discography here.  And that means we're also getting nine more never before heard songs, including two versions of one called "Poetically Incline."  And the good news is that the unreleased material is just as strong, in some cases maybe even better, than the 12" material.

Mytee is one of those rare rappers with a hard, take no prisoners delivery and a versatility with the wordplay to fit just as well in a backpacker's cypher or hardcore thug rap posse cut without changing up his style a bit, like Big L or someone like that.  And the production, despite having so many people involved, is steady and satisfying, probably due to Mytee keeping a hand in all of it.  There's also no guest rappers or anything on here.  It's all Mytee, and yet this whole album never starts to feel redundant or boring even after repeated listens.  It's basically hard boom bap tracks with some choice jazzy samples, with one or two tracks occasionally smoothing it out (like "Listen To the Lyrics," "Part Of the Game," and to a lesser extent, "Ghetto Journalism") to add a little variety.  Only that last 1998 track stands out as a little bit of a mismatch, but it's still a really tight track, so I'm glad for its inclusion.  As he laid it out in his first single, "what is it gonna be? Some bitch nigga singin' R&B, or a rugged rap show starrin' me?"

As with the Sons of Light, this is being released in limited quantities across all three physical formats.  But this time it's less complicated because all 15 tracks are on all three versions.  So there's the vinyl, which is a double LP in a full color picture cover, which is limited to 300 copies, the CD with a distinctly different cover image, which is limited to 150, and the cassette, which again is limited to only 50 copies, and is a cool dark blue tape.  A great piece of Jersey Hip-Hop history, or for anybody who was into the indie 90s scene.