Current Tunage: Mars Ill – The Life And Times Of A Simple Man
Old Ironsides. Classic Mars Ill material circa 2007.

I know, I know. I’m waiting too! Lots coming down the pipelines as soon as it’s ready. How does this sound:

2 Papers (aka Essays), 1 Journal, 1 Presentation, 1 Assignment. 1 week.

This week, that is. Yeah, I thought you’d understand: I’ve been up to my neck and down on my knees.

Anyways, I was just chilling out to some traditional Mars Ill grooves, namely the 5 Year Anniversary Edition of their 2001 classic debut “Raw Material”. Essentially, it’s kind of like a best-of. See, “Raw Material” was released twice. First it was released by Sphere of Hip-Hop (back when they did a little cd-releasing, instead of just being the kings of online conscious hip hop distro and assimilation). It had a couple tracks on it, namely “Destined to Be” and “Under the Sun” (featuring Listener) that weren’t on the next (and much more common) release. Which was the Uprok Records release, which instead of the aforementioned tracks, had two new ones – “The Abolition of Manchild” and “Fade to Black” featuring Sintax the Terrific. Other than rearranging the track orders, the two releases were identical in their remaining 17 tracks, quite a few of which were instrumental.

On the 5 year anniversary, they have all four of the above tracks. They also removed the beloved “Sphere of Hip Hop, Part 2″, but added “Sphere of Hip Hop, Part 3″ to fill the void (you can only fit so much on a disc). Further adding to the fray, they’ve added two versions of a song that was lost in Dust’s basement closet, entitled “Flipside” – represented with two beats, one by Playdough, one by Dave Kelly.

The only interesting catch? Everything but the “new” tracks is instrumental. Which is fine, because freaks like me have all the other songs already anyways.

I’m reminiscing about the 20-01 folks, and the ‘niscin is good.