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This is a project you may've already seen me tweeting excitedly about. Mytee is a Newark, NJ MC who put out a couple hot 12" singles in the 1990s. One of the rare ones who doesn't seem to be connected with Nick Wiz. haha All his production duties seem to be shared by himself and a bunch of pretty obscure cats: Mixture, Kool Ass Pat, Na'fis Majid, Brand X, Rashad Muhammad, Kasim, Noise System and Maddox. The only name there I even recognize is Rashad, who did some stuff with The Fugees before they blew up. But that's not a mark against any of them, because the production here is hot. And consistent.
But let me back up a second and explain what we've got here. This is a full length album of Mytee's tracks from '94-'96, plus one bonus track recorded in 1998. It includes all six songs from his previous 12"s, including both versions of "Com'n Wit Nuff Ruffness," so if you missed any of them, don't worry, you're getting his whole discography here. And so that means we're also getting nine more never before heard songs, including two versions of one called "Poetically Incline." And the goodness is that the unreleased material is just as good, in some cases maybe even better, than the 12" material.
Mytee is one of those rare rappers with a hard, take no prisoners delivery and a versatility with the wordplay to fit in just as well in a backpacker's cypher or hardcore thug rap posse cut without changing up his style a bit, like Big L or someone like that. And the production, despite having so many people involved, is consistent and satisfying, probably due to Mytee keeping a hand in all of it. There's also no guest rappers or anything on here. It's all Mytee, and yet this whole album never starts to feel redundant or boring even after repeated listens. It's basically hard boom bap tracks with some choice jazzy samples, with one or two tracks occasionally smoothing (like "Listen To the Lyrics," "Part Of the Game," and to a lesser extent, "Ghetto Journalism") it out to add a little variety. Only that last 1998 track stands out as a little bit of a mismatch, but it's still a really tight track, so I'm glad for its inclusion. As he laid it out in his first single, "what is it gonna be? Some bitch nigga singin' R&B, or a rugged rap show starrin' me?"
So, as with the Sons of Light, this is being released in limited quantities across all three physical formats. But this time it's less complicated because all 15 tracks are on all three versions. So there's the vinyl, which is a double LP in a full color picture cover, which is limited to 300 copies, the CD with a distinctly different cover image, which is limited to 150, and the cassette, which again is limited to only 50 copies, and is a cool dark blue tape. A great piece of Jersey Hip-Hop history, or for anybody who was into the indie 90s scene.
