I love Word…Life. That album really is one of the better breakthrough albums of the 90’s. Straight boom bap. I don’t think he gets enough credit for Jewelz & his pure ability to expand his sound because it’s one thing to try and make a mainstream album & selling out vs. branching out and creating really dope Hip-Hop that is more versatile & shows growth. It’s not like his first album didn’t already have a track like Ma Dukes. Truth be told, Far From Yours has more replay value than a decent number of tracks on Word…Life.
I liked
Jewelz when it dropped, but I honestly only revisit a few tracks on there. Definitely a dope album, but it never held my attention the way
Word...Life does. I remember Stretch and Bobbito had the advance copy of the album summer '94, and Stretch would throw on some of the tracks, but only play half of them, and we would lose our minds! Every single track on that was crazy, and when the album dropped, I could listen to it straight from start to finish. It's still the same today. And that's why Buckwild always talks about it and how locked in O was for it.
That's just him at his best. I appreciate
Jewelz, and I get what he wanted to do with it, but the first album is just on a whole other level. That was made when so many other classics were dropping left and right, and you didn't even care about radio. So he was creating at a mad organic and raw level on that one. All of the DITC cats and Organized Konfusion spend a lot of time talking about the making of
Word...Life. You don’t really see them going on about
Jewelz, lol. I'm just saying.
