1994 was the year of Illmatic and Ready to Die. Two New York albums that announced a new generation of poets from the East Coast. The conversation around rap that year was mostly about what was happening above the Mason-Dixon line.
A thousand miles away in Houston, Scarface was in the studio with producer N.O. Joe and a young Mike Dean building something nobody was expecting. No samples. Live instrumentation. Southern blues, simmering organs, and twanging guitar at a tempo that felt closer to a front porch in the Texas heat than to anything coming out of New York.
The Diary dropped October 18, 1994. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, went platinum by December, and received a perfect score from both The Source and XXL. Dr. Dre reportedly kept a copy in his studio as a reference for how good a rap record could sound.
Thirty years later it still sounds like nothing else.
Read the full story at the link below.
From the Crate
"Scarface wrote and recorded I Seen a Man Die in a recording session he barely remembered afterward. What came out of that session was one of the most profound meditations on mortality in the history of rap music. No coast had written anything quite like it."
One More Thing
Rap-A-Lot Records is celebrating its 40th anniversary with the first major vinyl reissue of The Diary. The new pressing includes Ease Up Now, a previously unreleased track unearthed from the archives. The CD edition is also available. Both are in the shop now.
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— Diony C.