Steve 'Flash' JuonSome people might say you’d have to be around long enough to HAVE some classics before you can release an album of one. Nonetheless the GangStarr Foundation, and Guru’s imprint Ill Kid Records, have decided to put out an album showcasing Krumb’s work via Big Daddy Music. Some may remember the Bostonite from last year’s “Respect All Fear None” album, which got pretty respectable reviews in most of the hip-hop press but probably went double lead anyway. Krumb’s best promotion has for better or worse always been his music itself, often produced by DJ Premier. Songs like “Gettin’ Closer to God” from his “Snatcha Season Pt. 1” EP, “W.O.L.V.E.S.” with M.O.P. from the Training Day Soundtrack and “Incredible” featuring Guru from his solo album all got buzz via mixtapes and mix shows. Krumb can at least say he’s got a small and loyal following, but his lack of visibility forces him to convert fans one at a time.
“Krumb Snatcha Classics” may be recycling a lot of old material, but it does give the Snatcha a little more chance to shine on a national stage. Even if you copped his full length debut, there’s still odds you may not have heard all of these cuts. One excellent example is “Ask Ya Self” featuring Teflon, another rapper who has had a hard time converting street cred into mainstream sales. This one hails originally from “Snatcha Season Pt. 2” but including it here is welcome and refreshing, since it’s a boombastic track that has both Tef and Krumb flipping energetically over cripsly punctuated beats:
Tef: “I’m one of the five Horsemen, gimme 24 hours to live
and I’ll smuggle the baked beans outta Boston
Proceed with caution, I’m about to wig out
Did a skit, on the +D&D Project+, blew the shit out
by accident, we do some shit on the mic
that’ll get us convicted of itnterstate, traffickin”
Krumb: “No mercy, we God, and bang hard with any squad or mobb
Comin forty niggaz like a jailyard
Blood on my silk shirt, chcke niggaz out
Scuffed up my Timbs, we banged ’em in the mouth
You niggaz want a concrete rumble
Pullin out bustin like war in the +Jungle+”
Speaking of “Jungle” from the “Snatcha Season Pt. 2” project, it too is included here. A lot of the material here is from that little heard release on M.I.A. Records – “Evil Streets,” “Can’t Get None” featuring Lord Tariq, “Killer in Me,” et cetera. The bottom line is that if you’re a die hard Krumb Snatcha fan, you probably have all of these 95% of these tracks in your collection already, and (we know y’all do it) downloaded the other 5% via MP3 just because you couldn’t find it any other way. That makes “Krumb Snatcha Classics” a valuable album for some, and regardless of anything else the content is certainly good. Those discovering him for the first time will like the flavor, but many fans will just consider it something marginally worth the purchase price since nobody likes to buy the same shit twice.