If anyone deserves to be on that infamous hip-hop milk box "Missing" alert on the side of the carton - it's those two brothers seemingly time-frozen in the 90's New York rap scene, Camp Lo. The duo - Geechi Suede and Sonny Chiba, respectively, are well-known through-out the rap underground for their debut album 'Uptown Saturday Night', which released towards the beginning of the second-half of the 1990's in 9-7. 1997 was a weird year for rap music. 2Pac had actually fulfilled his lyrical claims of a sudden death at a young age - and everyone was still in complete shock. The Notorious B.I.G. was still alive at the year's beginning - but he wouldn't survive to see is end with the ball-drop at Times Square in December. Puffy Combs and Suge Knight were both grasping for power straws on each's individual coast - with mixed results. Puff went with shiny suits, glitz, and well-known 80's samples while Suge went 100% rough-and-rugged - both with his label's choices in music as well as his personal gulliness. Basically, hip-hop was lost and in desperate need of a guiding light (which Jay-Z and Dre/Snoop would eventually provide) and Camp Lo's excellent debut was lost in all the chaos, glitz, and glamour. Which is a shame. Because 'Uptown Saturday Night' is banger-for-banger able to compete with any other hip-hop album that released in that 90's timeframe. The 'Lo never followed-up Uptown Saturday Night, for reasons that are never quite explained. No matter. Fast-forward to 2016 (it actually started a few years ago) and the 90's rap-revival is in full-swing, 100%. Rap musicians new-and-old are starting to benefit from the additional exposure, especially after newcomer Joey BadA$$ and his Pro Era crew came on the scene back in 2012. 90's producers are in-demand once again, and newer producers are following old-school ques and techniques. One of the "holiest of holy" of these 90's-era beat-makers is Pete Rock, aka Soul Brother #1. Pete Rock was never a slouch (or disappeared like Camp Lo) on the boards in terms of frequent work - and his instrumental series, Petestrumentals; as well as his Soul Survivor series and so forth; have gave him enough work to stay busy. But this 90's-rap trend has given Pete Rock much more attention than usual, and he's decided to share the wealth. The stars aligned however they did, and so New York's Mount Vernon & the South Bronx came together to collaborate on a quasi-album-slash-mixtape, 80 Blocks To Tiffanys. The 80 Blocks... tape is a blend of new Camp Lo vocals and old Pete Rock productions - several of the tracks are well-known tracks Pete did in his 90's group with CL Smooth such as 'On Ice (freestyle)', 'Ha', 'Lumdi', and 'Searching'. It works, amazingly well. In-between the classic Pete Rock cuts, there's some original production as well. There original tracks complement the old-school vibes present for the tape's entirety. It's Pete Rock - expect lots of horns, low baseline grooves, and extremely hard-hitting drum patterns. Geechi Suede, and especially Sonny Chiba's vocal delivery and just the sound of their individual voices works superbly over 80 Blocks...'s production. So well, in fact, that I constantly found myself wondering why the two guys never pushed their efforts' further back when Camp Lo first started. I guess we'll have to save the answer to that particular question for next time. As for right now, the answer to the question of wether 80 Blocks From Tiffany's fulfills all of this 90's music fanatic's desires is a resounding HELL yes.
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