Del The Funky Homosapien - I Wish My Brother George Was Here 2xLP

Elektra (1991)

Something I am going to be doing for the foreseeable future is write about old school hip hop records every Wednesday.  Partly because I've spent the last few months stocking up on key records that I only had on CD and partly because I'm just in the mood to have something different to write about.  Wednesdays are the most appropriate day to do this as Wednesday was Ed Lover Dance Day back on Yo MTV Raps in the 90s.  I spent a lot of time watching that show in the early 90s.  It was responsible for exposing me to so many great records.  Today's record is one of those.

So, full disclosure, I didn't just get this record on vinyl recently.  I've had it for many years, but when starting up something new, I thought it was an appropriate album to begin with.  That will be the case over the next three weeks as well.  I'm going to writer about the three most important hip hop records to me before I start getting into recent acquisitions.  But before I get into the big three, I have to write about I Wish My Brother George Was Here as it really starts there.

I was in 8th grade when I saw the video for "Mistadobalina" on Yo MTV Raps.  I had been listening to hip hop for a couple of years at that point, scamming CDs from BMG Music Club and Columbia House in my quest to hear new things.  I was a huge Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions fan, but something about Del struck a different chord with me.  He was a little weird.  He wasn't all that serious and "Mistadobalina" was an incredibly catchy song.  I picked up the album and really liked the whole thing.  "Dr. Bombay," "The Wacky World Of Rapid Transit" and "Sunny Meadows" were some of the highlights and made many a mix tape played in my walkman in the back seat of the car to avoid talking to the rest of my family.

Now while I really do like this record, the reason it's so important to me is because it made me anxious for Del's second album, No Need For Alarm.  That is one of those records that changed the way I thought about music and is my all time favorite hip hop album.  We'll get to it in more detail next week, but who knows if I would have found it had it not been for I Wish My Brother George Was Here.

Del The Funky Homosapien - "Mistadobalina":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFieSQHmQT0

Del The Funky Homosapien - "Dr. Bombay":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUP4KLCW6s

Del The Funky Homosapien - "Sunny Meadowz":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoXaT00rKa4