1993 saw the release of the Geto Boys’ album Till Death Do Us Part and his own The World Is Yours – it was during this time that his music sounded the darkest of his career. First rising to prominence as a member of the second-incarnation of the Geto Boys, who achieved a crossover hit in 1991 with “Mind Playing Tricks On Me,” his output both in a group and solo setting perpetually kept him in rap’s public eye. The Diary is nothing short of an all time hip-hop masterpiece.Īt the time, Scarface had already spent a half-decade being one of the rap’s most reliable artists. While it was initially awarded four (out of five) mics in The Source (a publication then considered “the hip-hop Bible”) and debuted at the number two spot on the Billboard charts eventually going platinum, the most many remember it for is being “the third best rap album of 1994.” Respectful as that statement may be, it’s a sentiment whose oversimplification damns the album with faint praise. But apart from these releases there is an album whose sheer greatness in this time span has gone woefully under-acknowledged, and that’s Scarface’s The Diary. Even the sleeper hits whose cult followings blossomed into retroactive acclaim, like O.C.’s Word…Life, Organized Konfusion’s Stress: The Extinction Agenda and Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik have since been rightly championed for being some of the most creative and endearing works that rap has ever produced. Even for those who weren’t listening at the time, the releases of Nas’ Illmatic, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, Common Sense’s Resurrection and Redman’s Dare Iz a Darkside over a 12-month span make for quite the argument. Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.Īmong most rap listeners, there’s something of a consensus that 1994 was the genre’s greatest year.
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