Sometimes it's just downright weird how things end up in my music library. During my extremely brief stint at a community college radio station (with a heavy emphasis on "community") I was exposed to all sorts of wacked-out music. The weirder, more underground the music was, the better as far as the music programmers were concerned. My late-night radio show had to play at least 33% from the "current" shelf, meaning that there was absolutely no escaping this music. A lot of it was pretty crappy stuff, even though I'd listen to it any day over something like the Backstreet Boys (that was my NEXT radio gig, one that had very little influence on anything you will see here). Hip-hop was invariably in the mix, but definitely not the hits of the day like Snoop Dogg or Coolio. Instead, we played stuff like Blackalicious.
Since I remembered Blackalicious from their first album (circa 1998), I decided to take a chance on their second album, being freely distributed as a promotion from the new major label. Since getting these promos was more of a free-for-all, I would often grab stuff before others could and then "sit" on it for awhile, so I didn't give Blazing Arrow a real listening until much later. While I'm not converted by any means, I have a great deal of respect for the work of Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel. The lyrics are intelligent and the album is designed to be a complete listening experience. These are definitely qualities I like in hip-hop, as far too often what leaks out of the radio is the complete opposite.
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