Yaggfu Front – Action Packed Adventure! LP

 

Mercury (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.

I've mentioned more times than I can count that I have found a lot of really interesting hip hop records digging through lists on the internet.  My best friend for a while was the obligatory 'forgotten hip hop records of the 90s' type lists, of which there are no shortage of.  One of the very first groups I came across from those lists was Yaggfu Front.  But hot damn was it impossible to find a copy of this bad boy on vinyl.  I kept holding out hope that someone would reissue it, but it just never happened,

After passing on copies priced well over $200 and sometimes quite a bit more than that, I finally stumbled across a copy that was more reasonably price.  Note that I said 'more reasonably priced,' it really wasn't as reasonable as I would have liked.  I definitely overpaid for it, but I had been searching for so long I had to grab it.  Why was I willing to search for so long?  It's the production on this record, which is as strong as anything released in 1994.

Lyrically, no one in Yaggfu Front is an elite MC.  They're fine, there's nothing bad here but there's never a track that gets me thinking I'm in the presence of an amazing lyricist.  They are all mostly there to serve the beats, and they serve the beats just fine.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say the beats serve them, and truthfully pick the album up in a way that makes the record sound really great.  The beats, hooks and samples on this record are so good that the rapping on it is almost an afterthought.  Again, the rapping isn't bad at all, but the production hits that sweet spot of what I'm looking for in a hip hop record so perfectly that I'm really distracted from paying attention to much else.

I really recommend giving this record a listen.  It might not be worth hunting down a copy for everyone, but it's certainly worth finding it on youtube or whatever.  And if anyone does ever rerelease it at an affordable price, it's absolutely worth a pickup.

Yaggfu Front – Action Packed Adventure!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUxX2nNOhWs&ab_