If the history of hip-hop is littered with unreleased classics from the mid-nineties, as it often seems to be, why do we need so many hip-hop nostalgia acts and why do we persist in following the declining careers of the ever more awful likes of Mobb Deep? When you find that albums like the two 'lost classics' here exist in the vaults of record companies too ruthlessly commercial to have ever bothered releasing them - it's something to ponder.
From the back catalogue of the ultimate backpacker G-O-D, Pete Rock, INI's 'Center Of Attention' was apparently finished after Pete came out of his prolific relationship with CL Smooth. One which spawned two of the mid-nineties' greatest hip-hop albums. Even if the second of those albums was marred somewhat by the excesses of CL 'Mr Loverman' Smooth. Ini was composed of Pete, his little brother Grap Luva, Rob-O, Marco Polo and Ras G. No CL Smooth.
Essentially, it's an outing for that beautifully laid-back, smoked out and polished up production style that Pete had perfected by '94. With relative unknowns, he concentrates on purely street sentiments as he sculpts effortlessly graceful, bass-heavy grooves shimmering with keyboard fills and muted horns. Somehow, Pete Rock's best music seems to transcend the possibilities of hip-hop and the SP1200 and drift on a setiva cloud closer to the soundscapes of dub reggae, filtered through a nostalgia wave of black American musical history.
Highlights come from the Mobb Deep-sampling 'Fake N' Jax', the Spaghetti Western dub of 'The Life I Live' and the Q-Tip and Large Professor-featuring 'To Each His Own'. And that's without even mentioning the other album that makes up this compilation, Deda's 'The Original Baby Pa', another project that Pete helmed only to be shelved by his label. Even less is known about this one but it's generally closer to what Pete was doing with CL Smooth on 'Main Ingredient'. Fascinating stuff for connoisseurs, nonetheless.
And to top it all, this is a mere taster, a whetting of the appetite for the 'Soul Survivor 2' album that Pete is planning to release next year as a follow-up to, arguably, one of the greatest 'producer albums' ever made. So, no need for that new Jurassic 5 album, if it seems like you've been through every rack in search of more hits of that elusive classic sound, BBE have gone that little bit further to rescue a dose from the cutting room floor. Who knows, they may even turn up that missing Large Professor solo project one day.
