Casual - Meanwhile... LP

Dope Folks (2016, Reissue)

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for 25+ years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

Fear Itself by Casual is one of the greatest hip hop records of all time.  Gun to my head and forced to rank my favorites, I'd probably put it at number two on my all time list.  I've listened to that album so many times over the years and it was a real staple of my junior/senior year of high school in 1994.  I didn't hear from Casual again until I was in college.  In 1997 the Hieroglyphics crew had all been dropped from their respective labels and regrouped on the internet to start self releasing their music.  I bought two cassettes from their website; Del The Funky Homosapien's Future Development and Casual's Meanwhile...

Honestly, both felt like a little bit of a let down at the time.  I had moved on from most hip hop by 1997 and even though I was really excited to finally have new music by two of my favorites, it was pretty obvious to me that hip hop's golden era was over.  Over the years I've come to appreciate these records more than I originally did.  Even though Meanwhile doesn't hit the same highs as Fear Itself, it is still a really strong record showcasing Casual's pretty unmatched battle rap prowess.

In 2016 Dope Folks freed this album from tape only purgatory and finally remastered and rereleased it on vinyl.  I was unaware that this had happened at the time and as a result missed out on the red vinyl version.  Still, I'm happy to finally have this album on vinyl and the remastering really helps out the production as it previously had sounded a little thin to me.  The bass is now fuller and the vocals a little crisper than they had been on the original version.

I hadn't listened to this album in a while before picking up this vinyl version.  I'm really glad it was reissued as I'm listening to it again with a bit more context and more of an open mind than I had in '97.  It's a good record, probably the third best one Casual put out (I also really love an early 2000's record of his called Truck Driver).  I'd still like to add the red vinyl version to the collection if I can find one at a decent price, so we'll see if one turns up.

Casual - Meanwhile:
https://casual1.bandcamp.com/album/meanwhile