Del The Funky Homosapien - Both Sides of the Brain 2xLP

Hiero Imperium (1999)

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 twenty-five plus 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.

I've spoken at length about how much Del The Funky Homosapien means to me, particularly his 2nd album, No Need for Alarm.  Even though by late 1994 I wasn't listening to much hip hop and had mostly transitioned to indie rock and punk, I still tried to keep tabs on Del and the rest of the Hiero crew. I picked up Del's tape, Future Development in 1997 but that wasn't a real high profile release.  The next time I saw Del in a record store was when this album came out.

I picked up the CD of Both Sides of the Brain the very moment it came out.  In 1999 I was still in college and had just started my internship at the company that ended up being my first job once I graduated.  I was in New Yersey and the company was in NYC.  So, I took the bus in from Willowbrook mall to the Port Authority.  I have extremely vivid memories of sitting in Port Authority with this album in my Discman trying to absorb everything that was happening.  I look back very fondly to a lot of my times in the 90s.  Sitting on the floor of the Port Authority waiting for the bus isn't particularly high on that list of memories.

I finally picked up the vinyl version of this recently on Discogs.  It hasn't been repressed since its initial 1999 pressing, so it tends to go for a decent amount these days. Luckily I found a deal.  The cover is a little rough around the edges, but for the most part it isn't anything I'm not able to deal with.

Both Sides of the Brain never totally connected with me the way other Del records did.  I'm not sure if it was just too long or the fact that I didn't really like the album opener "Time Ids Too Expensive" all that much.  Don't get me wrong, I do like it and there are some really killer tracks on here like 'Phony Phranchise,"Jaw Gymnastics" and "Fake as Fuck."  But when it really comes down to it, I'd rather listen to some of his other records that followed like Golden Era. I also think in part, this album got overshadowed by Deltron 3030, which came out just a little bit later.  That one blew my mind.

Del The Funky Homosapien - Both Sides of the Brain:
https://delthefunkyhomosapien.bandcamp.com/album/both-sides-of-the-brain