| Courtesy of Peanut Butter Wolf (Stones Throw Records) - Back in 1993, I was living in San Jose and part of a very small, yet dedicated hip hop scene that had to travel to San Francisco to be a part of any kind of organized event. The Wake Up Show with MC Sway was just starting to get it's rep on commercial KMEL, The Bomb was a magazine and not yet a record label, Gavin held yearly hip hop conventions attended by all, and I was in a group with a rapper Charizma that had just gotten signed to Hollywood Basics. It was a jazzy, smooth time for hip hop with artists like Gangstarr, Tribe, and Lord Finesse getting equal time in our tape decks. More so than signed groups though, Charizma and I continuously bumped our own shit and the "blue tape" by fellow San Jose group Homeliss Derilex in my Ford Escort. We called it the blue tape because the covers were made at Kinkos on fluorescent blue paper. We couldn't believe a group with that sound actually lived in San Jose, let alone the west coast. Both us and them got a little slack for sounding more like the east coast, but then again, most people who were in the game longer understood the Bronx's influence in the grand scheme.Ask anyone who really knew the "real" from the fake during that "Keep It Real" era. The HD's were on top of the stack. They didn't have any gimmick, and they lived in San Jose, which were two strikes against them getting signed. This is right before the indy label renaissance of '96-'97 where everybody was putting out their own records instead of waiting around to get discovered. When I started Stones Throw in '96, the Homeliss Derilex were the second group I put out on 12" single (after Charizma). The song "Cash Money" did well, getting major plug from the Beat Junkies and giving us our first press oversees at a time where they were just beginning to take note of the Bay Area scene. Fast forward to 2002 and well over 50 releases later. While working on a track listing for a new PB Wolf mix CD, I decided I wanted to put an unreleased HD's track on there. This gave me the idea of releasing a whole 6 song EP of their stuff on vinyl-only for the DJs and hip hop collectors. These songs were collected over a period of '93-'94. A lot of people talk about this period as the "golden era of hip hop" and wish new stuff still sounded like it. You have well respected artists like Edan, PUTS, Ugly Duckling, and J5 doing their thing with that classic sound of yesteryear, slightly updated. At the same time, why not expose people to the stuff that was recorded back then, but never heard? The HD's stand the test of time. |
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