Godfather Don - Hazardous 2xLP - Red Vinyl & Yellow Vinyl (/750)

90s Tapes (2022, 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 thirty 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.

My pile of records to write about is still pretty big and today I'm reaching back to a record I picked up two years ago:  Godfather Don's Hazardous.  I had first heard of Godfather Don due to his work the 1993 Ultramagnetic MC's masterpiece, The Four Horsemen.  Back when I first had that album, I don't think that I was aware that the Godfather was responsible for the production of several songs, I mostly knew him from his guest verse on "Raise It Up."  I never heard any more from Godfather Don at the time and was completely unaware that he had released his own LP two years earlier.

When I did discover the existence of Hazardous, it was long, long out of print and at the time was commanding crazy prices on Discogs and eBay in the multiple hundreds of dollars.  Luckily 90s Tapes came to the rescue with this, the definitive double LP version.  It looks amazing and sounds even better.  The odd part is it was reissued again a year later by Select Records.  That one's just a single LP, so I really recommend hunting down the 90s Tapes version, which is still surprisingly affordable on Discogs.

As far as the album goes, it's a pretty perfect slice of 1991.  It's heavy on breaks and samples, with the sort of full sounding production that was coming into vogue at the time.  It's sounds old, but it sounds classic more than it does dated.  And for 1991, it was pretty much on the cutting edge of hip hop production, while still hanging on to some of the 80s techniques.  It's a great album, that really bridges two schools of production style.

Lyrically, Don more than holds his own.  He's no Kool Keith or anything like that, but I'll put him up next to anyone putting out records in 1991 and Don is just as good as.  After many, many years of trying to find a copy of the record I could afford, I was thrilled to add this to the collection.  Sure, it took me a minute to finally write about it here, but I've certainly spent a good amount of time playing it these past two years.

Godfather Don - Hazardous:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k_B0nwoRM8Y2MH7yBy3wFx7r1qWftG99E