Description

2LP Vinyl – BEWITH101LP

Produced primarily by the Earthquake Brothers with additional beats by Bambawar, Daddy-O, and Edman, the Fellowship’s new tracks tiptoed between organic and programmed music, largely forgoing sampling for live instrumentation. Innercity Griots was a pioneering example of this hybrid production style, helping to set the stage for later albums by groups like UGK and OutKast. Several songs used jazz tunes like Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay” and Miles Davis’s “Black Comedy” as templates but spiraled off into different directions as the house band, the Underground Railroad, jammed together. Though turntablist DJ Kiilu made sure the production didn’t stray too far from hip-hop, the tracks feature a cornucopia of instruments rarely present on a rap album in 1993: saxophone, trumpet, timpani, flute, trombone, vibraphone, upright bass. Compared to the muddy, traditional beats of their first album, the sound was substantially richer and more detailed.