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PURPLE CITY ALBUM REVIEW: ROAD TO THE RICHES

“In the streets you ain’t promised &^%&, you gotta take what you want…[we’re] Purple City, we gonna keep it street for y’all..” - Shiest Bub, “It Ain’t Easy”.

What the hell is a Purple City? Good question. It’s the same question I asked when I saw the CD in the stores. Then I read the song titles on the album and recognized one of the titles from the Music Choice Rap channel. Then I read more of the credits and saw they were Dipset affiliated as I recognized the names from other Dipset mix tapes and saw enough to take a risk on purchasing it. And man am I glad I did. Purple City otherwise known as Purple City Productions or PCP is a group started by president and CEO Shiest Bub “The Emperor”. It also features Un Kasa and soon to be Super producer, Agallah “The Don Bishop”. The three are Dipset (Cam’Ron, Juelz Santana, Jim Jones, J.R. Writer, etc) affiliated and owe their roots to Cam’Ron and co. After Shiest Bub came home from doing a one year bid at Riker’s Island he was fortunate enough to eventually hook up with Cam’Ron in 2001. See Shiest use to sell purple “piff” aka weed to dudes around Harlem and the NY area and Cam’Ron’s crew just happened to be customers. They got cool with each other thanks also in part to Shiest’s roots with Jim Jones and Juelz Santana and eventually Cam let Shiest tour with him on the “Come Home With Me" tour. During that tour is when Shiest got the business idea to turn his own street knowledge and experience into rap lyrics and become legitimate. He soon hooked up with Agallah who was shopping his CD of beats and rapper Un Kasa and they quickly started releasing mix-tapes that would go on to sell 80,000 underground. They actually released 8 mix tapes -a couple winning Source Mix-tape of the month awards - and finally came out with this nationally released CD called ROAD TO THE RICHES - The best of the Purple City Mixtapes. The rest as they say is history as this conglomeration of underground street hits should slowly creep up into the stereo system of any serious hiphop fan worldwide.

Every album needs a theme song and this album has one. “Purple City Byrdgang” serves as their theme song and it was a good choice for them to release this song nationally first. This song is the reason I’m even writing about these guys as I was instantly hooked to the song upon my first encounter with it (Though Jim Jones needs to get rid of that purple umbrella in the video). It of course is produced by Agallah who after this project should rapidly climb the list of most wanted rap producers. The beats he comes up with on this project are unbelievable. Agallah also masterfully produces two other great songs in “Winning” and “It Ain’t Easy”. Both have subtle rock guitar rift tones that turn them into a pair of powerful street ballads. But it’s not just him producing the gems. Fred Bear produces “Come 2 Get Ya” which uses an uncanny chorus of bells to really elevate this song into “great” status. Rich Shelton then chips in with “A Part of History” featuring Baltimore rapper D.K. who honestly steals the show from EVERYONE on the album. The song is flawless as D.K. uses metaphor after metaphor to paint his life picture for us. If you haven’t heard of D.K. you will soon if he puts forth more efforts like this. Out of all the songs his song moves me the most each and every time. All I can say is Purple City needs to make him the official 4th member of the group.

But I’ve only scratched the surface as Agallah just starts showing off on the songs “Piff is the Answer”, “Me & U”, and “Real Nxxxxx”. “Me & U” as its title suggests is kind of like a remake to that Outkast song and comes off lovely as it features a cameo from J.R. Writer. But “Real Nxxxx” is where it’s at as the symphony like song drives you to hardcore nirvana as the tough guy talk really gets you juiced! Not to be overlooked is an Un Kasa solo song called “Will Not Lose” that is right up there with the other great songs on the album and produced by Amadeus.

It’s no surprise Purple City is Dipset affiliated as the whole crew (and as it stands now even their “affiliates”) have the BEST BEATS IN HIPHOP today as a crew. Dr. Dre, Kanye and Pharell might still be considered the best individual producers, but no CREW has the total assortment of beats that Purple City/Dipset has. Look, I got in this journalism game strictly for the love of hiphop. I don’t get paid ONE SINGLE CENT for my reviews. In fact I have to personally pay for every album I review. My main thrill is to be able to tell the world about musically inspiring albums such as this album Purple City just dropped that deserves more hype and press than is currently being given. Thus I’m thrilled to spread the word on this group. Besides the obligatory (borderline sickening) “girl you’re my best friend” song in “A Star” and the obligatory R&B club song “Late Night” this album is as solid as it gets. This album is a MUST HAVE. If y’all don’t like this album I give y’all permission to find me and slap me in my face. Realize you’ll get PUNCHED back but I’m trying to make a point. Cop this album man! It’s worth your $13.99. You won’t get mind blowing lyrics with this purchase but the lyrics are sufficient and pleasingly street with the beats way above average on most songs.

Benz0
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