17: First Down - World Service

This is one of the records I own - the time I bought it was an attempt to work through the list in a random order. Again unsuccessful but I gave this one a fair listen. It's another winner from the start, a real gem of a record.

It's a weird one, in that it's pretty long, but keeps things moving and remains fairly urgent throughout. Incredibly lo-fi, from a hip hop perspective, it kept me going almost till I reached West Oakland from Palo Alto. Plenty of samples and scratching to keep you interested. Fairly laid back rhyming but a shit ton of urgency.

It's starting to get surreal on this project - the world of british rap was pretty much closed to me, certainly I never read about this stuff outside of the always reliable Big Daddy mag and now it's starting to open up and become some of the best hip hop I've ever heard, and it's generally as good as the American stuff which I lauded over in the early 2000's. Amy and I went to see The World's End and they included Silver Bullet during one of the fight scenes - I guess it was a big hit at the time but it made me feel like my teenage years were spent with far too much Fall to appreciate the wider world of music.

"Then You Can joke" is the modal First Down track - crashing jump and a simple sample. The rapping is insistent and he leans back on the track and just lets loose. Heavy head nodding throughout - it all feels way too mature for a first album.

Seven Emcees near the end has just that, from all over the place. German included, rapping in German which sounds as strange as it reads - not the best language for lyrical dexterity. They save the best til last though: Jam Warfare Pt 4 starts with a warning, and then into heavy scratching and some top quality rapping - tears through your headphones leaving nothing behind.

When I was depressed, music was always there but it always felt like a motion - like it was a backdrop to my unhappiness but it was hard to engage. But now, in Oakland, music feels more exciting and I think paring down my collection has helped and I realise that it's good to keep a cap on the size of the stuff. I'm falling in love with music again, and like the other loves in my life it's a different kind of love but I love it.

Here's a First Down freestyle. My two take aways are that a) they're young b) they're really good