Edo is Grimy

Richmond got slammed with a ton of snow yesterday, so naturally I've been listening to a lot of Cold Weather Rapps recently. The XO tape has been in constant rotation, along with Ed O.G.'s album with Pete Rock from 2004, My Own Worst Enemy. I honestly don't know a whole lot about Edo or his place in rap history, as I don't really check for much East Coast/boom-bap rap anymore, but it seems to me that Ed has been a severely overlooked part of that history. He's been around since the early 90s and has quietly been doing his thing since then. I don't really know why he's not part of the Great Canon of East Coast rap, probably because he's from Boston and has more of a bruising delivery style. He sounds a lot like Redman if Redman was less wordy and a member of M.O.P. Still, dude does what he does really well, and has an excellent ear for beats. My Own Worst Enemy is a really overlooked album from last decade, in my opinion. Very solid.

The above video, "Ei8ht Is Enough", is from a few months ago and is apparently from a forthcoming collaboration album between Ed O.G. and Masta Ace entitled Arts and Entertainment. This video is so great in its simplicity, two dudes staring straight at the camera and rapping hard for three and a half minutes in one take. No frills, no gimmicks. Probably what hip-hop purists really think rap should be. I don't give a shit about that one way or the other, but it's cool to see these two rap veterans going at it so hard 20 years after they came into the game.