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Word...Life is the debut studio album by O.C., released on October 18, 1994, through Wild Pitch Records. O.C. (Omar Credle), a member of the Diggin' in the Crates Crew (D.I.T.C.), was highly regarded for his thoughtful and intricate lyricism. Word...Life is considered a classic East Coast hip-hop album, reflecting the 90s boom-bap sound with its jazzy, soul-infused beats and introspective lyrics.

The production on Word...Life was handled by prominent figures in the New York hip-hop scene, including Buckwild and Lord Finesse, both members of the D.I.T.C. collective. The beats feature a mix of jazz samples, soulful loops, and hard-hitting drums, typical of the 90s East Coast sound.
O.C.’s delivery on the album is laid-back yet razor-sharp, and his rhymes are filled with vivid imagery, social commentary, and personal reflections. The album is celebrated for its lyrical depth, with O.C. blending storytelling and wordplay seamlessly throughout.

"Time's Up" – This is O.C.’s most famous track and a standout from the album. The song addresses the fakeness in the rap industry, calling out rappers who portray false images of success and street life. The production, courtesy of Buckwild, is minimal yet powerful, with its heavy bassline and sparse drums giving space for O.C.’s sharp lyrics.
"Born 2 Live" – A reflective and nostalgic track where O.C. looks back on his youth, reminiscing about childhood experiences and the loss of friends. The beat, produced by Buckwild, is soulful and smooth, underscoring the bittersweet tone of the lyrics.
"Word...Life" – The title track is a declaration of O.C.’s philosophy and approach to hip-hop. His rhymes are thoughtful and reflective, addressing real-life struggles, growth, and staying true to one’s self. The beat features a jazzy piano loop, characteristic of the album’s overall production style.
"O-Zone" – A track that showcases O.C.’s lyrical prowess, where he delivers intricate wordplay and multisyllabic rhymes. The beat is more aggressive, with a harder bassline and sharp drum patterns, complementing the confident tone of O.C.’s verses.
"Ga Head" – This track has a more laid-back vibe, with O.C. discussing the realities of life in the streets, success, and staying grounded. The production is smooth, and the track has a reflective quality similar to “Born 2 Live.”

Authenticity in Hip-Hop: A major theme on the album, especially on tracks like "Time's Up", where O.C. critiques rappers who fabricate stories about their street credibility or success.
Reflection and Growth: O.C. often reflects on his life, past experiences, and the journey of growing up in a tough environment. "Born 2 Live" is one of the best examples of this theme, where he revisits childhood memories and the impact of losing friends.
Intellectual and Philosophical Insights: O.C.’s lyrics often touch on deeper, more philosophical ideas about life, the challenges of success, and the importance of staying true to oneself.

Buckwild, Lord Finesse, and O.C. himself contributed to the production on Word...Life. The beats are built around soulful and jazz-infused samples, and the production maintains a gritty, underground feel. The album’s production fits well within the aesthetic of 90s boom-bap hip-hop but is elevated by the thoughtfulness and precision of the samples and drum programming.

Word...Life was praised for its lyrical depth and intellectual approach to hip-hop, standing out in a year when many classic albums were released. Critics and fans alike admired O.C.’s smooth flow and ability to tackle both personal and broader social issues in his rhymes.
The album did not achieve massive commercial success upon release, but it has since been recognized as a cult classic and a staple of 90s underground hip-hop.
"Time’s Up" in particular became a defining moment in O.C.’s career and has been used in various hip-hop compilations and media over the years.

Word...Life has influenced many artists, particularly in the underground and conscious hip-hop scenes, where lyricism and authenticity are highly valued.
O.C. has continued to be an important figure in hip-hop, and his work on Word...Life is seen as a critical contribution to the legacy of East Coast rap, alongside artists like Nas, Big L, and other members of the D.I.T.C. collective.

Word...Life is a cornerstone of 90s underground hip-hop, showcasing O.C.’s lyrical prowess and commitment to authenticity. The album's introspective themes, sophisticated wordplay, and soulful production make it a classic that continues to resonate with fans of conscious and lyrical rap.

Why you'll love it...
*400 Degreez* went over 5x Platinum. Cash Money was an Army (and Navy) and Juvenile became the first breakout star.

The Ramones’ Too Tough To Die is often positioned as a return to form for the band, but today, forty years since its release, their eighth studio album seems worthy of a far more radical categorization. In the musical landscape of the mid-1980s, the album was incoherent — not in a pejorative sense, but in how it reflected the paradoxes of its time. Made without a steady compass, the album’s incongruity became its center, and it holds. As Joey Ramone said in a 1988 interview: “Around ’84, the world was changing drastically with Iran and Gadaffi and all this stuff. Things were getting scary. So, our songs started changing.”

Echoing the surrounding instability, the Ramones created an album so layered, complex, and challenging that it can still be hard to pin down, even after four decades to ponder its songs. Too Tough To Die’s legacy lives in its chameleon-like textures, moods, and vocal styles — from the lofty to the sneering, from the cynical to the sentimental. Too Tough to Die was a reminder that it was the Ramones who initially inspired and influenced the Sex Pistols, not the other way around. If the word could be claimed by anyone, punk belonged to them.

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"“Released on September 30, 1982, Bruce Springsteen’s sixth studio album, Nebraska, came in a stark sleeve, dominated by David Michael Kennedy’s black-and-white photograph of a perfectly flat highway stretching down a barren wintertime plain. It sold enough copies to earn a Gold Record award, and if some listeners were mystified, or even disappointed, by the gloomy music, critics doubled down on their praise for Springsteen’s writerly skill and artistic daring. Other artists were inspired by the work; generations of subsequent musicians, ranging from Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello to pop country singer Kelly Clarkson, cited Nebraska as a crucial influence on their careers. Forty years later, the power of Nebraska is undiminished.”

Presenting the 25th Anniversary Standard Edition of Mariah Carey’s sixth studio album, Butterfly, and the album Mariah considers her magnum opus.

The VMP exclusive version of Mariah Carey's Butterfly (Standard Edition) is pressed on Champagne Wave vinyl at Independent Record Pressing (irp). The 2 LPs will arrive in a double gatefold, direct-to-board, foil-stamped jacket. It was mastered by Barry Grint at Alchemy Mastering at AIR.

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The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef, the multifaceted 1960 album from multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef, is the VMP Classics Record of the Month for December 2022. It's here on 180g black audiophile vinyl pressed at RTI, with AAA lacquers...

Why you'll love it...
To be the backbone of Cash Money is to be an oft-underappreciated figure like Mannie Fresh, who manned nearly an entire era of production singlehandedly while *still* finding the gall to grow and reinvent himself. Though his solo album came on the back end of Cash Money’s descent into peril, 'The Mind of Mannie Fresh' is far more fun than anticipated, chock full of outrageous punchlines and overindulgent skit work. The beats still do the maximum, and Mannie as an MC isn’t afraid of his creations in the slightest, rising to his own occasion even as the results find him stumbling over with a grin on his chin. In canon, this album’s one of the more forgotten; to delve further into building the Cash Money folklore, spin it for a peek into the source code behind your favorites.

Remi Wolf's studio debut album, Juno, named after her dog she adopted, was written and recorded in the midst of the pandemic. On her website, she shared, "Every song on this record is a vivid snapshot into what was going on in my life and mindset the day I wrote each one." The album is an explosion of genres, showcasing Wolf's Gen Z pop and experimental sensibilities.

Limited to 2,000 copies, the VMP exclusive edition of Remi Wolf's Juno is pressed on 1LP Yellow vinyl at Furnace Record Pressing. The album will arrive in a single direct-to-board, foil stamped and numbered jacket.

Blue Vinyl. For all the name Black Moses conjures, for all that it confers, it was not a name Isaac Hayes gave himself; that title was bestowed by a radio DJ sermonizing an intro to one of his songs. It was not a name Isaac Hayes - raised by his god-fearing grandparents in a former sharecropper's shed after his parents died before he turned two years old - thought was even appropriate. It seemed sacrilegious to him. But that name, it meant something that even Hayes had to acknowledge. He had ascended to a plane that no Black performer before him had ever reached before. He topped the R&B charts and, eventually, the pop charts without ever having to compromise who Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. Was. He had shown his people that James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud" edict was possible. He dripped in gold chains inside his album gatefolds and drove cars literally trimmed in it. Unapologetically. Black Moses towers as Hayes' crowning solo achievement. It's 14 songs stand as a 90-plus-minute testament to Hayes' nonpareil greatness, songwriting ability, singing, and arranging. A monument to authenticity, Black Moses projects a self-confidence so mammoth it feels like receiving the stone tablets of swagger down from the mountain of cool.

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With the ’60s coming to an end, the revolutionary spirit of the times was so ubiquitous that it simply demanded more from its artists. We started to see this shift in rock ’n’ roll (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones) and in jazz (Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock); it was time that pop and soul music followed suit. Marvin Gaye would release the seminal What’s Going On in May 1971, and while What’s Going On was pivotal in allowing Black artists to deliver popular music with a message that spoke to the times, There’s a Riot Goin’ On followed Gaye’s lead, but pushed the boundaries further. Sly Stone challenged what was possible for a Black artist in popular music, both lyrically and sonically.

Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On was synonymous with the anxiety felt by all alive at that time — how to navigate this new decade, after all the turmoil experienced in the last one. It’s a bit of a “purple haze,” really. Artistically, Sly managed to harness the confusion that not only he felt, but that most people were feeling then.

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Straight Ahead, featuring saxophonists Oliver Nelson and Eric Dolphy, is the VMP Classics Record of the Month for April 2024. It's pressed on 180g black vinyl, with lacquers cut from master tapes (AAA) by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.

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Blackman came from the jazz world, but spent time in the fusion-funk hybrid that hovered around the edges of the chart in that transitional period of the early ’80s. Although it slipped between the cracks at the time, Don Blackman is a minor funk masterpiece that deserves shelf space next to Fuzzy Haskins’s A Whole Nother Thang, Bernie Worrell’s Blacktronic Science, Trey Lewd’s Drop the Line and others. Though those albums turn up on most P-Funk expanded discographies, Blackman’s record often doesn’t because there’s no playing or production from Clinton, Collins or Worrell. It might make more sense to think of it at the center of a Venn diagram whose circles include P-Funk, the jazz-funk practiced by artists like George Duke and Roy Ayers and the soul-funk of Fonzi Thornton and Garfield Fleming. Right in the middle, shining brightly, Don Blackman.

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If there is a single album nexus point between what Waylon’s early career was like, and what his Imperial King of Country era was like, it’s The Taker/Tulsa: The one album from his pre-outlaw period that stands above the rest, a record that would help break an outsider songwriter to the Nashville mainstream, prove Waylon had instincts that couldn’t be taught and was maybe onto something that would
flower into all his commercial success later on.

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Nina was singular in both her ability and the music she made. She will always be one of the best to ever do it. "Nina Simone Sings the Blues' comes on 180 gram blue vinyl.

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"‘I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You’ runs the stylistic gambit without feeling Franklin is doing things just for show. The album isn’t trying to function as a resumé of her skills. Genre shifts feel organic and natural. “Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream” is built on a bossa nova groove, while “Do Right Woman Do Right Man” has a little country ballad flavor. “Dr Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)”—one of four songs penned by Franklin herself—is a bluesy belter. She might have been Queen of the genre, but pigeonholing Franklin in soul is like calling Sugar Ray Leonard just a welterweight. She could shuffle through styles as smooth as velvet. Everything is stamped with her own distinct character."

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Released in December 2007, The Big Doe Rehab was a technical commercial success at the time, but it endures spiritually as an essential title in [Ghostface Killah's] own expansive, 13-album discography, let alone his larger body of work with other artists. While every Wu member’s solo project inevitably serves as a stage for the Clan, with The Big Doe Rehab, the spotlight never leaves Ghostface Killah in the dark, even with so many other big-name players entering and exiting — a level of artistry that could only be achieved by one of hip-hop’s top dart spitters.

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The War Report, the 1997 brilliantly militant debut from Capone-N-Noreaga, is the VMP Hip-Hop Record of the Month in December 2022. Celebrating the record's 25th anniversary, our edition is pressed on 2LP Yellow vinyl, with lacquers cut by Cicely Balston...

The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as a significant decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months. Sex workers, drug dealers, boosters — anyone who traffics in illicit behavior — they don’t need official word from the government to see what’s happening. They know that when money gets tight, vices are the first to be abandoned. So it’s not surprising that Young Jeezy, one of the defining gangsta rappers of the 21st century, released his third major-label album, The Recession, on September 2nd, 2008, about three months before the Nber would declare one of the largest economic crises in U.S. history.

Revival is a folk EP showcasing Annahstasia’s uncompromising vision, recorded live by the artist and her band over a one-week period in a Joshua Tree Airbnb. She sought a DIY recording experience in order to center the ‘’human aspect'' of her music, something she was missing in her previous work — like the less stripped-back collaborative album Sacred Bull she made with Jay Cooper (which led to her opening for Lenny Kravitz throughout Europe in 2019).

‘’Folk as a genre is rooted around the essentials, there’s no fluff, there’s just the expression of your life experience in your standing and the world and your cultural viewpoint,'' Annahstasia said in an interview with VMP. ‘’I’m borrowing aspects from places that I might not even know that are just subconsciously in my space that to me elicit power, strength, this feeling of capability and warmth. All of those things symbolize power to me, so when I’m making my music as a folk artist, my folk music is directionally guided, inspired and motivated by making people and myself feel empowered.''

Each song on Revival, recorded in a single take, is driven by that self-determination and goal of empowerment. As the title implies, it’s a sort of rebirth for the artist, whose name even translates to ‘’resurrection'' in Greek. The result is a stunning and serendipitous project built to stand the test of time.

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Baltimore, an album originally made for the jazz label CTI, is a deep cut in Nina Simone's catalog. It's truly a lost sound found and we're proud to feature it here in celebration of her 90th birthday.

Limited to 2000 copies, the VMP exclusive version of Nina Simone's Baltimore is pressed on (AAA) 180g Red Marble vinyl at GZ Vinyl. The 1LP will arrive in a gatefold, tip-on, foil-stamped and numbered jacket. The (AAA) lacquers were cut from tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound.

Why you'll love it...
With 1975’s Trident, McCoy Tynerfinally achieved his true vision for the piano trio. In an era that finally — and firmly — established Tyner in the upper echelon of jazz masters, adored by critics, set at the top of festival bills and heartily supported by the record-buying public, Trident stands at the pinnacle of his brilliant album run from that decade.

Trident might not seem as ambitious as Tyner’s other ’70s outings, but don’t let its near-monochromatic gray and silver cover of McCoy by the ocean fool you; just beneath its surface is the heaviest, most vivid and deep music of his career. Trident finds him coming full circle, realizing his — and just about any fantasy jazz fan’s — dream piano trio. Call it Money Jungle for the new decade, only one featuring cogent and telepathic alignment rather than clashing intergenerational conflict. Three titans, three defining masters of their instrument, with thousands of recording dates between them.

180G Brown Marbled Vinyl. 'Nuff Said is Nina Simone's mostly live album recorded a few days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.. Powerful, beautiful, and one of her best albums we're proud to showcase it here in celebration of her 90th birthday.

Why you'll love it...
‘’In spite of systemic challenges, there is some glory in Nappy Roots’ humble lot—at least, as they depict it. Anthems like ‘’Country Boyz,'' the down and dirty ‘’Slums,'' and ‘’Kentucky Mud'' show a kind of refreshing solidarity with people who might not have ever heard themselves in hip-hop before. That was the Nappy movement, as its creators saw it: finding the joy and beauty, where one could, in an unfair system instead of trying to cover it up. Taking qualities and status perceived as undesirable—''nappiness,'' rural living, being part of the working poor—and finding within them a sense of community and appeal without masking all the things that make them so awful.

As a new recession hit and the U.S. slid into yet another war, ‘’Po’ Folks'' reached #21 on the Hot 100; their message of humble resilience rang out everywhere. A new dimension of hip-hop had cut into the mainstream, one that was neither preachy nor apocalyptic but simply made in solidarity. As Deville put it, by way of explaining the album’s title, it’s ‘’the refreshment, the soul food—the shit that’s going to stick to you.''''