There really are too many positive things to say about music in general and hip hop specifically. What that music does for and to people is pretty remarkable – and it’s been around for less than forty years.

Everyone has specific tastes and peculiar loves in terms of what they seek in a rap track – beats or flow. And my one qualm with producers are the vocal hooks that end up making the toughest tracks sound a little bit more than wimpy. You do obviously need some chorus to make radio-listeners take that repeated phrase and carry it around in their head.

But apart from that, I’m not too picky.

And that production faux-pas is really the only complaint to be levied on Gumbo Roots, the 1995 DJ Battlecat disc.

In the interwebs there are innumerable lost classics in every genre and from every period in time. And this disc sits firmly between the gangsterisms of the Snoop/Dre contingent as well as the some of Nor Cal’s more colorful story tellers.

But right off the bat, listeners get a taste of some soul singing over a pretty rugged beat that instantaneously brings to mind dudes with canes and purple Cadillacs. Of course part of the charm of this fourteen year old release is that it very amply and colorfully paints a picture of where Battlecat lived.

While in the middle of listening to Gumbo Roots, it’s pretty easy to forget that not only is this work not horribly famous, but also basically forgotten outside of the West Coast scene. That’s really too bad. A quick visit to Battlecat’s blog – which is in severe need of an update – you can find a pretty comprehensive list of the production work that he’s put in. You’ll be impressed.

All of this though begs the question – why isn’t he famous?

Gumbo Roots, being released at the time that it was, didn’t prefigure any of the g-funk fair from the west coast, was after the first Nas disc and released at about the same time as the second Mobb Deep album. That’s a huge amount of talent to gain notoriety amongst – not to mention Pac and Bigg.

Because of all of that though, Gumbo Roots has been dismissed to a certain extent – otherwise it might not be available for free. Cop it.