Jamma-Dee – Perceptions

An underground hip-hop masterpiece from the ’00s, The Cold Vein is the debut album from Harlem-based duo Cannibal Ox, produced by Company Flow’s El-P (later Run the Jewels). Released just four months before 9-11, the album was perfectly timed for a post-apocalyptic New York and has been described as sounding “as if it were the soundtrack for an unmade film, much as the work Eno made in the 1970s.” Abstract and futuristic, El-P’s production features familiar (Ramsey Lewis, Giorgio Moroder, Jaco Pastorius, Dexter Wansel, Philip Glass, Beaver & Krause), but totally tripped-out samples often stretched and pitched down to create an evocatively unsettling feeling. Not to mention, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega’s rhymes cut deep as well, with the characters and stories in their bars serving up autobiographical snapshots of the duo’s life in the New York ghettos. “Where I come from, it’s technically war every day. You could die getting a candy bar,” Vast Aire shares in the behind-the-scenes video.
Recommended – Full Listen
A1 Iron Galaxy
A2 Ox Out The Cage
A3 Atom
B4 A B-Boy’s Alpha
B5 Raspberry Fields
B6 Straight Off The D.I.C.
B7 Vein
C8 The F Word
C9 Stress Rap
C10 Battle For Asgard
C11 Real Earth
D12 Ridiculoid
D13 Painkillers
D14 Pigeon
Art Direction, Design – Dan Ezra Lang
Illustration [Cover Illustrations] – Tyson Jones
Lacquer Cut By – Tippy*
Mastered By – Emily Lazar
Mixed By – El-P, Matt Quinn (2) (tracks: A3, B4, D13), NASA (3) (tracks: A2 to B5, B4 to D2), Phil Painson (tracks: B5, B7, C8, C10), Vassos (tracks: A1, B6, D14)
Producer, Music By – El-P
Recorded By – El-P (tracks: A2 to B5, B7 to D13), NASA (3), Vassos (tracks: A1, B6, D14)
Scratches – DJ Cip One (tracks: A3, C9, C11)