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.
I had this in my pile of records to review, but I wasn't planning on writing about it this year, let alone today. But yesterday it came out that Saafir passed away, so I wanted to listen to this album again and write a little bit about the reissue of his debut LP, which came out on Rarebreed this year.
Technically, the first album that I owned that had Saafir on it was the Digital Underground album The Body-Hat Syndrome. Even though I owned and listened to it, I wasn't really aware of his contributions at the time. I was mostly there for Shock G/Humpty antics. Looking back at that album over the years, after having a better idea of who Saafir was, I actually feel like his verses are one of that album's highlights.
My real introduction to Saafir came via his guest appearance on the track "That Bullshit" on the Casual album Fear Itself. It's a really unique guest shot, as Casual isn't on the track at all. It's basically just a short song that Saafir gets to own. When I got that album in 94, that track really stood out, and one of the lines that Saafir threw out - "The 'D' stands for 'Diesel'" - became a weird sort of slang phrase that got shared with a group of high school friends. That was the last I heard of Saafir for many years as 1994 was the year I started drifting away from hip hop.
What I didn't know at the time was that in 1994 Saafir released an album of his own, Boxcar Sessions. That was a great discovery many years later and and it's been an album in pretty frequent rotation ever since. A few years ago I did a very lackluster write up of the original promo double LP that came out in 94. I was just kind of rushing through it and didn't write about anything particularly interesting. For several decades that promo 2xLP was all that was available on vinyl, but this year, the album was finally rereleased with a picture sleeve. Was the picture sleeve a blown up CD graphic? Probably. Is there a bigger UPC barcode in the history of recorded music? Doubtful. Is it of the best resolution you've ever seen? Probably not. But It still beats having no artwork at all every day of the week.
There have been online missives that the sound quality of this reissue isn't up to the high standards that some other reissue labels have been doing. Maybe that's true, but I can't can't really hear a big difference between this and the original pressing that I have. It's not a super high fidelity recording to begin with, fitting in with the gritty aesthetic of the time.
The album itself is both a snapshot of golden era hip hop and a major outlier all at the same time. The brew of jazzy beats concocted for this album is exactly what I look for in hip hop production. Innovative and chock full of low end. Saafir's vocals are from another planet. And remember, this was the era when you had the Dels and Kool Keiths of the world experimenting pretty hard with unique flows and cadences, but neither of them were as 'out there' as Saafir was in 1994.
He rhymes in an meandering, syncopated manner, but always finds his groove in the pocket of the beat when it's needed. As Del famously said ,"If you co off beat and it's on purpose, you've got to come back on beat or the effort is worthless." Saafir always comes back on beat, no matter how far off the beaten path he strays. It's this lyrical dexterity that makes him stand out from the pack. His flow may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those that like to immerse themselves in lyrics and flows, he's top shelf.
Saafir was a unique and remarkable talent. Whether it's showing up in Menace II Society or battle rapping Casual on west coast radio (one of the more famous battles in hip hop history, and well worth checking out if you've never heard it) he made an impact. I can't do anything but recommend picking this album up. It's one of the most unique of the golden era and one that I feel slipped through the cracks for a lot of people over the years. Hopefully more people have the chance to listen to this album now that it's been reissued, I knew I had to spin it today.
Saafir - Boxcar Sessions:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nF_92fKa1mZnO-YO4kHnbOg0UeA8AZFGo
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nF_92fKa1mZnO-YO4kHnbOg0UeA8AZFGo
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