Freestyle Fellowship

Innercity Griots (Remastered Reissue 2022)

Be With
35.95 €
icon/play-white
Backorder
Tax included, Shipping not included
Innercity Griots, the second album from Freestyle Fellowship, is perhaps *the* essential West Coast left-field rap album of the early ’90s. Released in 1993 on 4th & Broadway, it’s a towering, progressive hip-hop masterpiece that expanded rap’s boundaries through lyrical elevation and production innovation. Their talent was ahead of everybody else by light years. This is pure b-boy jazz. The original single vinyl LP is now hideously scarce, and of course the sound suffers from not being officially released as a double. This Be With re-issue fixes both problems, and for completeness also includes “Pure Thought” from the CD version of the album. This incredible display of imaginative hip-hop sounds better than ever. Freestyle Fellowship were some of the earliest technically dazzling rappers to come out of California. Mikah 9, P.E.A.C.E., Aceyalone and Self Jupiter - along with DJ Kiilu - forged their famed lyrical dexterity in the ultra-competitive crucible of the Good Life Cafe. Founded in Leimert Park, South Central LA in December 1989, this earthy health-food store and cafe was where the city’s finest microphone fiends would gather to showcase their freestyle skills at the Thursday night open-mic. Innercity Griots has been described as the Rosetta Stone for rap styles. The group’s dense, vibrant wordplay and enviable interplay quickly earned the attention and respect of the city’s hip-hop underground. Frenetically trading acrobatic rhymes with agility and grace, the Fellowship used their voices as instruments like true virtuosos, spraying improvised raps like a Coltrane sax solo. With the bulk of the album’s production handled by The Earthquake Brothers, and Bambawar, Daddy-O, and Edman taking over for some of the tracks, Innercity Griots dances between organic and programmed music, largely forgoing sampling and instead built around live jazz jams. The likes of Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay” and Miles Davis’s “Black Comedy” were used more as templates for house band The Underground Railroad Band to spiral out from. As Pitchfork noted in their recent 9.0 review of this classic album, “Freestyle Fellowship embodied the style and spirit of jazz on a molecular level. They shared the effortless cool and tough countenance of the great bebop players from the ’50s without verging into jazz-rap parody. Their innate jazziness felt tangible and hard-earned”. The unusual approach to the music was matched by the Fellowship’s lyrics. Eschewing the tired rap tropes of the time, this multifaceted album instead explores their ruminations on greed and homelessness, weed, sex, survival, insecurity and tribalism. Remastered by Simon Francis for double vinyl and cut by Pete Norman, we hope this long-overdue re-issue of Innercity Griots satisfies the legions of fans that have since been bewitched by the majesty of this record. It should also introduce some new listeners to yet another overlooked classic.

Share Article

Details

Genre

HipHop

Release Date

28.01.2022

Cat No

BEWITH101LP

Tracklist

Track 1
icon/play-white
Track 2
icon/play-white
Track 3
icon/play-white
Track 4
icon/play-white
Track 5
icon/play-white
Track 6
icon/play-white
Track 7
icon/play-white
Track 8
icon/play-white
Track 9
icon/play-white
HipHop
icon/play-white
2-LP
Freestyle Fellowship
34.95 €
Innercity Griots (2021) Be With
Add To Cart
HipHop / Rap
2-LP
icon/play-white
Freestyle Fellowship
34.95 €
Innercity Griots (2021) Be With
HipHop
2-LP
Freestyle Fellowship
10.00 €
To Whom It May Concern...Version 2.0 Beats And Rhymes Records
Add To Cart
2-LP
Freestyle Fellowship
10.00 €
To Whom It May Concern...Version 2.0 Beats And Rhymes Records
HipHop
12"
Freestyle Fellowship
5.00 €
Temptations / Ghetto Youth Ground Control
Backorder
12"
Freestyle Fellowship
5.00 €
Temptations / Ghetto Youth Ground Control
HipHop
2-LP
Freestyle Fellowship
13.00 €
Temptations Ground Control
Backorder
2-LP
Freestyle Fellowship
13.00 €
Temptations Ground Control
tba
LP
Geoff Bastow
29.95 €
Music To Varnish Owls By Be With
Preorder
LP
Geoff Bastow
29.95 €
Music To Varnish Owls By Be With
tba
LP
Parsley Sound
29.95 €
Parsley Sounds Be With
Preorder
LP
Parsley Sound
29.95 €
Parsley Sounds Be With
Soul
icon/play-white
LP + Book
Various
64.95 €
Be With 10 Years : Joyride + Labour Of Love Be With
Preorder
Funk/Soul
LP + Book
icon/play-white
Various
64.95 €
Be With 10 Years : Joyride + Labour Of Love Be With
Soul
icon/play-white
LP
Steve Leach with The Crystal Grass Orchestra
29.95 €
Ocean Potion Be With
Add To Cart
Funk/Soul
LP
icon/play-white
Steve Leach with The Crystal Grass Orchestra
29.95 €
Ocean Potion Be With
Boogie
icon/play-white
12"
Surface
24.95 €
Falling In Love / Happy (Love Mix) Be With
Add To Cart
Disco
12"
icon/play-white
Surface
24.95 €
Falling In Love / Happy (Love Mix) Be With
Soul
icon/play-white
7"
Edric Connor
18.95 €
Manchester United Calypso Be With
Add To Cart
Funk/Soul
7"
icon/play-white
Edric Connor
18.95 €
Manchester United Calypso Be With