Here’s the problem – Barry already owns several pressing’s of Illmatic. As a record company marketer – how can we convince Barry to pony up for yet another copy of Nas’ debut?
The common answer is one of three options – a 7″ box set, a cassette tape, or some kind of limited edition coloured vinyl that’s only offered as fifteen versons each.
While I can understand that offering obsessive collectors the chance to cop a limited-edition purple vinyl pressing for a premium price might be appealing, I strongly believe that there should should always be an option to buy a rap album on regular old black vinyl.
Perhaps the most offensive gimmick of recent times is the misguided push to get rap fans to start collecting 7″ rap records. By no stretch of the imagination is there any actual value to buying tiny rap singles, outside of not wanting to carry a large crate of records to your next show. Full disclosure: I once stashed a stack of rap 45’s in my jacket because I wanted to go to the pub before playing a gig. Other than the convenience of not having to carry a crate of records around all night, there is not a single discernible advantage to adapting to tiny rap records. It’s bad enough that you have to flip the record once you get to the end of side a, but if you cop a 45 box set, you can potentially change the record after every song!
Elsewhere, the options to waste your hard-earned include copping limited edition tapes, coloured vinyl, tapes or 7″ box sets of entire albums. I mean I can get behind the first wave of this shit, which involved releasing 2LP versions of albums designed for CD’s, but recommending that anybody buy a 7″ box set of Ready To Die is complete fuckery.
What do you think is the biggest rip-off for classic rap fans in 2019?
The biggest waste is the limited editions with some kind of extra expensive gimmickry — I’m not paying $150 or whatever for Slick Rick’s eyepatch, or a box that looks like an SP1200. The Illmatic set will probably come with some silly fold-out pop-up diorama of the QB projects.
I would pay good money for a boxset of a classic album where each song is a 12″ with an instrumental, acapella, and any remixes. Give me something that I can actually use to cut up.
This is insane, I used to buy Reggae 7″ for 3€, now they sell that shit for 10or 15€ each !
When you look at Discogs there’s tons of repress of LP’s/12″ of différent labels that cost much than the OG version still available for who search a little bit.
It’s cool to have on 45 anything that was actually released in that format.
But Ready To Die ? Or Instinctive Travels ? Especially when a track is split into part 1 & part 2 over two 7″ because it’s too long…
The only good Rap 7″s are the Spoonie Gee ones on Tuff City and the shortened edits of early Sugar Hill Records tracks.
New Rap vinyl should be banned entirely so insufferable cunts like Wicked22 will fuck off to collecting craft beers instead.
45’s are not quite the worst format (that would be streaming) but i only want them if it’s a funk/soul artist from before the soul album era the artist that didn’t get to release an entire album.
I picked up Breaking atoms reissue CD 2 years ago the sound was loud and crisp there were bonus 12″ remixes and best of all it cost me $10. These are the only reissues I’ll accept
Biggest rip offs are poor shows from established artists. Too much erratic behaviour; lacking energy and preparation, showing contempt for the audience. Oh, and the cliches of shouting out dead rappers and having a twenty minute break in a 45 minute set of a DJ tearing up Peter Piper for the billionth time.
Bonus DVDs containing “documentaries” about the making of an album. You went into the studio and recorded it. End of “documentary.”
Novelty packaging/”presentation” cases (e.g. Fat Boys’ Pizza Box, The Gza’s chess set).
Cassette-only new releases and coloured cassette re-issues. I want my fave acts to keep releasing hard copies of their music but I don’t understand the cassette fetish. Surely cassettes cost more to manufacture/mail than CDs?
Is it asking too much just for albums to be remastered and for their related singles/demos/outtakes to be included as the bonus?
OBI Strips! The fuck u need that for…Also coloured wax is pointless if u trying to spin that in a club…u can’t see shit!
@Andrew: I stopped going to live hip hop shows because artists who should know better put no effort into them.
I agree, all the stuff mentioned is some fake-ass hipster shit … from fake obi strips, colored vinyl or even picture discs to 7 inch boxes … plus, I have to co-sign Lee Pearce, that “breaking atoms” cd reissue sounds great (the vinyl version that was released simultaneously not as much…).
the only thing that really makes sense are double vinyl pressings of classics that initially have been released on single vinyl, at least if it’s done properly … including vinyl mastering and all that shit … the current rerelease of “step in the arena” is nice , it also includes 2 bonus cuts … hope “daily operation” is next in line…
Rashid and Lee Pearce nailed it for me. I thought we already were doing reissues, like, 16 years ago, reissues that added to the classic experience, not reissues that make things fucking convoluted.
I can’t imagine listening to ANY lp on 7 inches. Are they fuckin 45s as well?
DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist had that brain freeze set, as I’m sure many of you will remember, and it was all 45s from smack dab in the era Lee mentioned, and not only was it awesome as a conventional DJ set, the recorded speed on 45s made the scratches, uhhhh let’s see, 45/33.33 times faster, which sounded awesome. I doubt they give a shot about playing ready to die ‘out’ (I sure wouldn’t want the embarrassment), but I guess that’s one singular point to em.
I hadn’t even heard of this shit at all at all. I am so CRC, ahem C-OG-C, that i don’t use social media, I don’t go on worldstar or listen to do envy or whatever, I don’t check my favorite rappers twitter, anything like that. So this is kind of a shock to me.
Only reissue I can even foresee happening that I would even care to read a description of would be Doomsday. But of course it would probably be some replica of the replica mask and it comes in a miniature subroc coffin and it smells of special herbs. I just want to hear the raps (which doom apparently no longer can create on anywhere near the same level). In my pointless, long-worded fantasy, it would have demos and scrapped shot from when he first put on the mask but before it was the mask from, apparently, gladiator. I was up on doom at that time, somehow graff mag Life Sucks Die put me up on him extra extra early, but the album cover and the context I heard about it and Bobbito and the ppl I knew who were amped on it all conspired to have me think it was on some boring boom bap 2003 hip hop shit, a la anything from talib kweli besides a certain few verses on blackstar. Then one day my friend and I were leaving my crib for an alkaholiks show, and he put that shot on, and it was so beautiful and relatable I almost cried. Shit, I probably did cry. I cry tears of joy very easily the ten or so times in my life I hear a perfect rap song/album. Plus, after an intro the very first melody you hear is a sade sample, and you got some bitch singing the Sade part not-perfect, AND THEN its got the BDP drums, thats like a perfect recipe to tug at my heartstrings.
So we just sat in my driveway and listened to the whole shit straight. Oh man, I’ll never forget hearing red and gold for the first time, with fuckin ShootEmUp Movies. And we drank all the liquor we had for the prefunk. So when it was time to get our late asses to the show…I was…dead bent…get it? And, also, I felt super dummmm for being the sleepingest sleeper who ever slept.
So, for any modern A&Rs (LOL) reading this, if you can give me even one song’s worth of that feeling, I’ll buy anything, for any price. I could make a tasteless joke like I’d buy a replica of Prince Be’s paisley purple butt plug, but I wont.
Same story with the Devin album with doObie ashtray
Let’s keep it 100 tho….the reissue game is for thirstbuckets who are looking for something material to bolster their fandom/clout…the guy who just bought jordan 1s in that red/blue colorway doesn’t have the same convo as the guy who found autographed jordan 1s in the basement…the merch is useless if it wasn’t during that time or autographed so why bother….you can’t buy memories….if you wasn’t there you wasn’t there yo plain and simple…
Colored vinyl. It sounds worse than black vinyl. And always way more expensive.
Have heard some of the re-releases and the sound quality is hit or miss. More often than not it sounds like they used a cd as a master. Why buy a record at that point? $25 for something that sounds worse than the cd? Fuck you.
LOL at TM randomly mentioning me. Wtf?! smh
But yes, this Ready To Die 7″ Box Set is stupid. Like others said, the only reissues worth pickin up are the ones that are Double Vinyl when the original LP was Single Vinyl and the LP’s that ADD to the listening experience where they add unreleased material from the same sessions and/or time frame. *shrugs*
Record Store Day
I hate 7″ box sets. Every song on one side, a cute little box, 80-120 bucks? Go fuck yourself.
Colored vinyl, new cover designs, one or two extra tracks that were on 12″ b-sides. Go fuck yourself.
These re-issues sometimes lower the prices of the OG vinyl, so for serious collectors you can watch your collection devalue with all this cute shit.
And these EPs from Europe with mid-90’s independent artists, with unreleased demos. 100 copies pressed starting at 40 or 50 each. Mastering songs from a 20 year old cassette onto a vinyl, and it sounds like piss. Go fuck yourself.
Given that the 80’s and 90’s were full of remixes, b-sides, non-album sides, etc., etc., I think the biggest rip-off when it comes to any reissue is NOT including these as a bonus. All those Traffic Cold Chillin’/Juice Crew double-CD’s, those deluxe Pete Rock & CL CD boxes, shit, even the double-disc Illmatic XX are how you do it RIGHT (even though the Illmatic reissue in question would’ve been PERFECT had they kept the original art AND included the “Nas Will Prevail” demo alongside “I’m A Villain”).
That Tribe People’s Instinctive Travels reissue with J. Cole and Pharrell throwing on some modern remixes is one of the biggest cases of shitting-the-bed in the world of reissues. No b-sides, no remixes, no demos…a fucking waste. Even all those reissues of Breaking Atoms are not nearly comprehensive enough…can we just get a big set with the album plus ALL the remixes, the Science demos, the “Think/Atom” 12″? Is it too much to ask?
As bad as novelty packaging can be though, gotta say, that Fat Boys pizza box was inspired.
who cares. all it does is upset purists as we can clearly see from the comments above
I’m tempted by the vinyl me please version of doggystyle because it’s on 2lps and at 45 rpm. It gets good comments for the sound quality.
But its pressed on zany splattered coloured vinyl and costs £35…
There’s loads of great albums being redone in good and bad ways, but there’s also loads of great 12″ singles that could be redone too. Singles sound so much phatter. I’d buy them.