Bama just keeps creating it! Man, we thought ’08 was a big year for Huntsville, but ’09 has gone to a whole new level with the releases that we’re being treated to right now. Only a week after the classic ‘Hunstville International’, the unstoppable DJ Burn One has gone and released another undoubted gem in the form of G-Mane’s ‘Sunday On Tha Porch’. Produced entirely by Burn One himself, under his alias Mick Vegas, it will be hard to find a more coherent, classy and most importantly, country rap release this year. The album (as it’s so much more than a mixtape) plays from front to back like something you’ve been listening to for years, alongside your UGKs and 8Ball and MJGs. All the beats have a timeless feel, and G-Mane blesses them with an authority and command that recalls some of hip-hop’s greatest emcees. The guest spots too, are a showcase of the incredible new talent out of Alabama like SH favourites ST and Bentley and scene-stealing performances from the likes of Pocahontas and PT. It’s difficult to pick a track out of this, as they all flow together with such a natural ease, and it’s seriously one long highlight – with the nice inclusion of the Quik’s Groove homage, the aptly titled ‘Mick’s Groove’ – but ‘Boyz in da Hood’ and ‘Down 4 Mine’ are seriously doing it for me right now.

Download

There’s nothing more I can say, other than you should be hitting download already, however, I’m a leave the final words and a little history lesson to Mr. Huntsville himself, Codie G:

“It had to be about 96 or 97 when I was up on the yard going to Alabama A&M University. There was an urban clothing store that sat off in the cut over by G’s Country Kitchen, behind the old Top Line tires where CVS is now located. I was going to cop some new DADA Supreme shirts and some Delinquents shirts. I think the guy that was running the store was from Jersey. You could get all the good reading material like Niggas to Gods, the Willie Lynch Speech, and Soul on Ice by Eldredge Cleaver. I’m talking about a black man’s heaven here. I go to the counter to purchase my vintage North side survival kit of aforementioned items when the Slave Kamp cd jumped out at me. It read “Alabama’s Most controversial Rap Group”. So it too was added to my group of purchases. I heard tales of the southern backwoods that didn’t seem like the normal rap coming out at that time. It was more country, more basement than a wine cellar, but all the time it was Alabama Hip Hop. My potna G-Mane was part of that group. To see him still putting it down for the Flo is remarkable. Florence is somewhat of a ghost town from what it was a decade ago. You had police operations like “Copy Cat” that took almost 100 people from a neighborhood to state pens; helicopters and special ops repelling into the neighborhood, and national guard troops patrolling the streets. Crack was a commodity and the hustlers weren’t scared to move it. You had the murder of Chris Stanback that went unsolved and tore a community apart. The West Side and East Side lost businesses, so now a drive down Mobile Street is accompanied by the sounds of the souls which once made the street vibrant and the heart of the culture. I have sat in on some of the sessions for this project and I’m proud to have the access I have acquired to see this project come together. Sunday on Da Porch is from some one who has survived the Shoal’s decadent 90’s to school the younger generations on a time when hustlers chilled out… for a Sunday on the Porch.”

Tags: Bama, Bentley, Burn One, G-Mane, Huntsville, Mick Vegas, PT, ST 2 Lettaz

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 09:08 and is filed under Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.