Boombox 2 review: When hip-hop moved out of the Bronx

It's all back to the era of fat laces and heavyweight ghettoblasters again. What you'll find on the second instalment in the Boombox series are more out-takes from the early days of hip-hop culture.

Culled from various independent releases from 1979 to 1983, when savvy black businessmen started to put rap on wax for the first time, it’s the story of what happened when hip-hop’s sound and culture moved beyond its roots in the Bronx and began to take off all over the Big Apple.

You can see the blurring of lines between this new-school and old-school disco, soul and r'n'b grooves on cuts like Harlem World Crew's Let's Rock, Little Starsky's Dancin' Party People and Busy Bee's School Days. Aside from the music, Boombox 2 comes with fantastic back-in-the-day photos by Jamel Shabazz and others, a range of scene-setting flyers, comprehensive sleeve notes and interviews with players such as Peter Brown, Keeling Beckford and Taharqa Aleem.

[ souljazzrecords.co.uk ]