i am highly confident that you haven’t heard the track “emcees smoke crack” from edan. and that’s alright… while you were all studying at night and partying on the weekends, i was solo dolo at local record stores in tempe, az and nearby towns like mesa, phoenix, scottsdale, etc. i was at the wherehouse… i was at tower records… i was at this record store… that record store… diggin… talking to the business owners… finding out what had just come out… what was coming out… reading the magazines to see what was coming out… who was dope… what cool record labels were.. but then there was the world wide web that was starting to pop… and now i could go to message boards and learn about new music… go to online record stores that had underground hip hop i couldn’t find… that is how i found out about edan.
i didn’t know what he looked like… where he was from… didn’t know how many people liked him or didn’t liked him… i just saw that artwork and was like, that looks cool… i like that artwork… and it’s an underground rap album, i might like it. i saw that mr. lif was featured on a track and then again… that album artwork… i took a chance and i bought an album from edan called primitive plus.
i bought it on cd because while i had a record player and a couple of crates of fire, cd’s were always my thing… i think the edan cd was around thirteen bucks and i probably bought it from sandbox automatic or hiphopsite or giantpeach or i don’t know… i was on all of those sites trying to use all of the cash and credit i had to get new music in my life… i’ve always loved that chase to find something really dope… that edan cd arrives and i opened it with the quickness… mail days back then after you bought a few cd’s and cassettes was magical… i would get something in my hand that nobody else had around me… it was my piece of art to enjoy… to hold… to cherish… i just loved finding a track like this from a new rapper i didn’t know anything about.
i ripped that plastic off of the cd and pulled the cd booklet out of the case. that robot walking a dog caught my eye… the album name primitive plus struck a chord with me. inside the booklet were pics of jimi, rakim, krs… why were they in there? i don’t know… there were people i knew… people i didn’t know… but that handwriting up above was really fresh… by reading the liner notes, i learned that edan did the rhymes, cuts, production, and everything else with exception of a few tracks where his homies chipped in with production or a feature… tracks like this were just cool to me… that cd was in my headphones while i slowly tried to understand the artwork… catch a vibe… here is mic manipulator…
#1 record hit my eardrums and i felt like i was listening to some trippy warped version of beastie boys and dr octagon…. the music was fun… the music was hard… the timing on the production was amazing… the way the sounds flipped up, came in, came out, and dropped in kept me on my audio toes.
after hearing a few tracks, i looked through my collection of cd’s to find ones i was cool with selling to get some cash to buy another edan cd. i needed any edan i could get my hands on and fam… i had no idea what he looked like because… well… IT DOESN’T MATTER. i kept listening to my new edan cd and now ordered sprain your tape deck on cd so had around 1 - 2 weeks before i grew my edan collection.
when i finally did find out he was a white dude from maryland but does that even matter… no, it doesn’t… go listen to some edan and you’ll realize he’s simply from another planet. that’s going way back to 2002 but also anytime he pops up with a new song or feature or project or…
i think edan is one of the coolest artists to do this thing called hip hop… and i’ll never forget my journey in getting one of his cd’s in 2002 when i was in college, worked part time, and didn’t have a ton of disposable income to buy music… but that artwork… THAT ARTWORK! that robot walking a dog was really cool… and so was the music… so is the music. so i’m just saying this… get outside of your audio boundaries and throw some edan on this morning… you won’t lose.