Various - Anticon Label Sampler 1999-2004

  by Mark Rowland

published: 11 / 6 / 2004

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Review

For the past five years, the Anticon label has been releasing the best, freshest and most intelligent hip-hop around. With a willingness to experiment without losing the dusty rhythms that make good hip-hop good, rappers like the brilliant Doseone, Sole and Why? create clever, funny, abstract rhymes that make Eminem sound like John Barnes. In celebration of their years of making great music, cheap as chips compilation 'Anticon Label Sampler 1999 – 2004' has been released, featuring, funnily enough, the best bits of Anticon albums released since 1999. With 33 tracks and 80 minutes worth of music, '…1999 – 2004' certainly is value for money and is a great introduction to the sound of current underground hip-hop. Spanning from the more out-there instrumental electronica of Odd Nosdam and Dosh and the folk-hop of Why? to the more straightforward beat-driven rap of Doseone and Jel’s Themselves, Anticon artists take the roots of hip-hop and grow it out in as many different directions as they can. For established Anticon fans, the album is mixed by Odd Nosdam, Why? and Jel, so better known tracks such as Sole’s Salt on Everything and Themselves’ It’s Them are worked into others that you may not have heard before. Plus, you get an idea of what an Anticon DJ set would be like, which is no bad thing.

Track Listing:-

1 Unknown Artist- Hello
2 Why?- Cold Lunch (Albert Brown Mortuary Dumpster Dive Remix)
3 Themselves- Dark Sky Demo
4 Alias- Watching Water
5 Sole- Shoot The Messenger
6 Passage- The Unstrung Harp
7 Pedestrian- The Toss & Turn
8 Deep Puddle Dynamics- D. Mothers Of Invention
9 Controller 7- Bunny Slippers
10 Odd Nosdam- Wig 21
11 Themselves- Poison Pit
12 Why?- Hahaha / On My 19th
13 Sole- Bottle Of Humans
14 Alias- Divine Disappointment
15 Themselves- It's Them
16 Unknown Artist- Pity Party People Interlude
17 Odd Nosdam Eat: Chew
18 Passage- Poem To The Hospital
19 Pedestrian- Jane 2: Electric Boogaloo
20 Alias- Pill Hiding
21 Sole- Salt On Everything
22 Why?- Bad Entropy
23 Odd Nosdam- Wig 12
24 Sage Francis- Crack Pipes
25 Alias- Sixes Last
26 Alias- Dec. 26th, 2002
27 Themselves- Good People Check (Hrvatski Remix)
28 Restiform Bodies- Sippy Cup
29 Why?- Darla
30 Dosh- Steve The Cat
31 Alias- Unseen Sights
32 Sole- Dumb This Down
33 Jel- Nice Last (Demo Version)