MENTAL COMBAT

CD ONLY CLASSICS
The FUTURE SOUND - The Whole Shabang Volume 1
East West. 15 tracks. 1992

Definitely one of my favourite early 90s albums. It never really recieved the attention it truly deserved & I've noticed a championing of it on various message boards recently. I remember the day I recieved this in the mail from the label. On that same day I also had the first time pleasure of hearing Original Flavour & Organised Konfusions debut albums. It was a good day. The 2 emcees/producers were 20 year olds Flashback the Rhythm Kingpin (son of an Ambassador) & Relay the Funky Tactitioner (son of a Nation of Islam minister) from East Rochelle, New Jersey. Musically it's very bright & exciting, with some excellent sample choices that on one hand are breezy & fresh, but still interesting & varied enough to be quirky & compelling as well as being hyperactive & infectious. DJ Clark Kent & Larry Lar also helped them out. Lyrically it isn't all fluff, they are well educated & have a very creative sense of rhyme construction. Though they are at their best when they just having fun. There's also a bit of knowledge of self & some black pride content, so it shows more versatilty than many crews of the time. If you like that KMD, UMCs, Black Sheep & early De La Soul kind of vibe then i'm pretty sure you'll enjoy this. It was a damn shame they never had a follow up, for this was major talent at work.

They released 2 singles, The Bop Step & Lady/Whats a Bro to Do. Although it was a CD only release (those years were bad for vinyl versions), the label did press up some promo only copies of the LP. Dig hard for it.

Let me know what you think. Should I up the occasional album in it's entirity or just stick to one MP3 at a time?
I just want people to appreciate what I already have.

Oh & the executive producers were Damon & Darron Dash. In fact this & Original Flavor were their entry point into the industry..
..and bloody Ohword.com. Aaargh. They also reviewed it. Beaten to the punch again. Damn!

• MP3: FUTURE SOUND - The Whole Shabang Volume 1
The entire album. 192kbps. 72MBs