Large Professor Vs. WWF

For anybody who bothered to pick up the Main Source Breaks The Atom 2LP reissue (gotta love a loud pressing of "Snake Eyes"), the inclusion of an unreleased cut (from the aborted sessions for their never-completed album The Science) was an exciting prospect. However, "Hellavision (Large Professor Vocal)" is not exactly what I was hoping for. While it’s a lot better than Mikey D‘s version (on that dissapointing "Fuck What You Think" album), the vocals finish halfway through the second verse, and the first verse displays the slightly corny, self-righteous side of Xtra P that many people seem to forget about. If you thought "Watch Roger Do His Thing" was cheesy, just wait until you hear "the live guy with glasses" try to blame television for kids getting hurt in the playground! Possibly penned after watching an episode of Hardcopy, Large insists that shorties are out in the street trying to kill each other after checking out Wrestlemania on the box:

"kids start to go home bruised, damn! That’s a long way from catch….until finally he goes too far, now he drops a kid on a field made of tar/ head first, tryin’ to make his head burst, but luckily the kid didn’t have to see a hearse/he missed death by a smidgen, brought to you by hellavision!".

Wow. Really makes you think, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a good thing they never finished the album.

Note: While there’s no denying that Large Professor is a musical legend, for those of you who can’t understand why The LP never came out, would YOU have released an album in 1995 with song titles like "Have Fun","Dancing Girl" and "Funky 2 Listen 2"?

While on the subject of double vinyl represses, all the classic Elektra catalogue has come out, two LP style, thanks to Traffic Entertainment. KMD‘s Mr Hood, Leaders of the New School‘s A Future Without A Past and BrandNubian‘s All For One can now give your well-worn originals a break with fat new pressings, although they neglected to correct the spelling of Derek X and Lord Jamar‘s names on the back cover. The Word…Life repress is also worth grabbing, since it’s remastered and has the original cover instead of that cheap looking version that Wild Pitch did a few years back. Now all I need is Willie D‘s Controversy on double vinyl, and I can die a happy man.

I also liked the Resurrection instrumentals record, which I prefer to the vocal version in a lot of ways, since Common Sense still hadn’t totally abandoned that annoying squeaky voice style that ruined some great beats on his first record. For some reason, "Maintaining" is included twice, which gives it that true bootleg appeal. At least they didn’t just loop the intros like those DJ Premier Instrumentals boots.