Czarface - Czarface 2xLP

Brick (2013)

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.

While buying and rebuying all of these golden era hip hop classics over the last couple of years, I've been desperate to find modern hip hop that has a similar feel.  Though I have found a few labels issuing unreleased 90s gems, finding modern acts putting out records I like has been a much harder quest.  Luckily I stumbled across Czarface earlier this year with their excellent Super What album earlier this year.  That made me start digging through their back catalog.

I've bought the entire Czarface full length discography at this point, but let's start with their debut from 2013.  Czarface is Esoteric and 7L along with Inspectah Deck from Wu Tang Clan.  Considering how I never really appreciated Wu Tang until very recently, it's no surprise that I wasn't paying attention when Czarface started up.  But this is pretty much the sort of hip hop I want to listen to.  The crack of the snare and the thump of the kick drum drives the production forward, it doesn't sound old, but certainly has that late 80s/early 90s boom bap vibe.  And that's what I want.

Lyrically Esoteric and Deck have flows that really compliment each other.  The subject matter tends to be comics, sci fi and a smattering of pro wrestling references sprinkled throughout.  And though I can't say I am a huge comics fan (it is one of the only nerdy things I never got into as a kid), the references still land with me and the record is just an upbeat, good time.  Maybe there are other records like this that I've missed over the years.  I hope there are and I hope I can find them as I've been really digging Czarface the last few months.

Czarface - Czarface:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mpL6KHi0c84r6HWNJJ-G2WZhW8jDNhk1E