The cycle of any musician’s career is dependent on a number of uncontrollable out side sources. There’s no way by which to completely regulate the media (even if you have a good publicist) or combat a press that’s lackadaisical, uncaring or negative. You gotta deal with what you get and hope that if there’s no press or some of the negative variety that your music can combat that. No I.D. might not now – or ever – be the biggest name in hip hop, but his persistence since the ‘90s should point to a dogged determination to do what he loves. And since he does it so well, rap fans should get to hear a bit more.

Beginning as a behind the boards guy in and around Chicago, No I.D. eventually found himself working the boards on the first two releases from Common (Sense). And on one of those discs, the producer helmed the beat for “I Used to Love H.E.R.” – which might be one of the more clever rap tracks to come out of the decade. It’s a classic due to Common’s lyrical ability, but that beat doesn’t hurt too much either.

Using the renown granted by those early production dates No I.D. wound up being one of the better respected figures in Chicago rap circles. With his prowess forever elevated (in the area at least) No I.D. eventually helped out a young Kanye West. And luckily for the elder producer, West never forgot that early assistance linking No I.D. up with work on The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse as well The Blueprint 3 where the Chicago stalwart put in work on “D.O.A.” amongst others. But before the higher profile workouts with Jay-Z and his brethren, the Chicago native assembled a full length disc back in ’97. And while it didn’t make anyone a star, based on the success of No I.D.’s latest work, Accept Your Own & Be Yourself (The Black Album) has been flying around the internets for the last few weeks.

Fickle as the new media is, the resurgence of a disc that’s about twelve years old is a telling piece of the culture – one that’s now able to shuffle through time’s calendar and cherry pick the efforts that seemingly slipped by in the past. Accept Your Own & Be Yourself (The Black Album) isn’t the lost grail of ‘90s rap, but it’s a step and a half beyond a great deal of whatever else is floating around in the tubes of the WWW. The fact that Common shows up on a track doesn’t serve to diminish any of this, though.

While the mic skills of No I.D. aren’t sub-par, it’s the inclusion of Dug Infinite that makes each one of these tracks come off as well as they do. Showing up on a full third of the album should explicate to fans the talent of that rapper. And even if he isn’t a name now, maybe Dug Infinite will find some sort of bounce in popularity based upon the reintroduction of this solid, mid ‘90s rap disc.