Nineteen motherflippin ninety three… What an incredible year for hip hop. The Clan gave us ‘Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’, ATCQ dropped 'Midnight Marauders’ (in fact those two were released on the exact same day), there was De La’s criminally underrated 'Buhloone Mind State’, Black Moon’s 'Enta Da Stage’, Lords Of The Underground’s 'Here Comes The Lords’, Tha Alkaholiks '21 & Over’, another underrated masterpiece in the shape of Justin Warfield’s 'My Field Trip To Planet 9’, Del Tha Funkee’s 'No Need For Alarm’, Funkdoobiest’s 'Which Doobie U B?’, Guru’s first installment of the 'Jazzmatazz’ series, Soul’s Of Mischief’s perfectly titled '93 'Til Infinity’ and the list goes on & on & on…
All of the albums above have celebrated their 20th birthdays this year which aside from blowing our minds due to the sheer amount of quality releases in a single calendar year has also left some of us from around these parts feeling really really old…
The latest classic album to blow out the candles and make this writer wish for younger days is Snoop Dogg’s 'Doggystyle’. I have extremely fond memories of listening to Snoop’s solo debut on a duped cassette tape in my older sisters bedroom at a volume that wouldn’t alert our parents but was loud enough for me to learn every single lyric to classics such as 'Gin and Juice’ & 'Ain’t No Fun (If The Homies Can’t Have None)’ from memory I served a two week grounding after being caught reciting the intro to 'Gz and Hustlas’ you know the bit… 'I wanna be a motherf***in hustla, you better ask somebody’
Anyway, nostalgia is calling so I’m going to see if my memory serves me well and I can remember all the rap parts plus DJ E Z Dick’s W-Balls radio skits…
While I’m off doing that I strongly recommend giving the mix below a spin which has been put together by Snoop (What’s my motherf***n name?! no seriously Snoop… what is it?) Dogg Lion Zilla? Whatever it is, the man himself has put together a mix of all the original sample source material in celebration of the whole 20 year thing and it’s pretty great.
Snoop offers exclusive commentary about each song and the behind-the-scenes stories that went on during the making of the historic record. The mixtape offers fans a once-in-a-lifetime experience to hear first-hand, the creative process behind the record.
PS the super rad image up top is taken from an equally rad t-shirt company called African Apparel checkout their online store HERE
