Tru Soul US 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: There are few beatmakers as essential and pioneering as Pete Rock. His albums often take the form of collections of his beat-strumentals and they make for compelling listening that covers a wide variety of hip-hop joints. This Record Store Day Black Friday 2022 special is another cat in port that finds the American talent gaming out on his trusty SP1200, an iconic drum machine and sampler combo that very much defined early rap and hip hop. He gets the very best out of it once more here over classic boom bap sounds, more edgy late-night beats and plenty of steamy rollers.

Review: Remarkably, Pete Rock's second full-length collaboration with veteran Bronx rap duo Camp Lo has never previously been released on any physical formats. It's therefore rather exciting that it has finally landed on wax some seven years after the album originally hit digital download stores. Constructed like a mixtape with intros, outros, spoken word snippets and interludes aplenty, the set sees Camp Lo add conscious, laidback rhymes to a plethroa of typically tight, groovy, jazzy and sample-heavy Pete Rock beats. Of course, the latter can pretty much do no wrong, so his backing tracks were always going to be fire; happily, Camp Lo's vocals are every bit as good.