Down South - Lost in Brooklyn 2xLP - White Vinyl

Big Beat (1994)

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 I have found a few examples of records that do buck this trend, I typically consider 1994 the last year that good hip hop records were released.  And while there are some really great records that came out this year, it's certainly a bit scattershot.  It's also the year that I really fell out of touch with hip hop as I was becoming much more interested in punk and indie rock.  As a result, I've discovered that quite a few albums from '94 flew under my radar.  Lost in Brooklyn is one of those.

Down South is from Virginia, if the world wide web is to believed and they are definitely bringing a southern style twang to golden era hip hop.  Luckily it's not in an annoying way like say Outkast or something like that.  While they do lean into so southern stereotypes when it comes to lyrical content, musically they have much more in common with a group like Alkaholiks or Beatnuts (which makes sense as Beatnuts were involved with a few tracks on this record).

While I can't say that Lost in Brooklyn is a surefire undiscovered classic, it is quite good.  I think I would have loved it if I heard it in 1994.  And if I then had almost thirty years of history with it instead only a year or two, it would probably be hitting the nostalgia vibes pretty hard.  But again, I really like this record a lot and I think it's one of the cooler discoveries that I've made digging around for albums I missed the first time around.

Down South - Lost in Brooklyn:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lEAInHTNMu2i6NoVHJZaRvke2_IzhlX-Q