Ruthless Rap Assassins - Killer Album FLAC album

As the previous reviewer says, it's easily one of the best UK Hip-Hop albums ever made. Sampling a wide range of sources including Cymande's "The Message", Jimi Hendrix's Monterey Pop performance, Roxanne Shante, Almighty 3's "To The Other MC's" and even Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild", combined with proper old-skool scratching and conscious and socially aware lyrics, it made for a great album from beginning to end.Though I originally bought two turntables and a mixer to learn how to mix and scratch electro and hip-hop, by 1989 it was becoming obvious that house and techno was going to have a longer-term effect on me. But there was still plenty of good hip-hop around in the early '90s, and I didn't really stop buying hip-hop records until after the first Wu-Tang album - though most of what I bought after '89 was UKHH (mostly from London though :( ). Although I live in Manchester now, I lived in West Yorkshire at the time of this LP's release, so I never got to see them live here in Manc, but I did manage to catch them at a hip-hop night at the Leeds Warehouse way back in 1990, and enjoyed every minute of it. But it was too late - I was already firmly entrenched in "rave" culture and felt a bit out-of-place at a hip-hop night, even though hip-hop was influencing the developing breakbeat hardcore scene (which I definitely grew to love!). Most of the popular Manc bands of the time (Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, etc) never really did it for me - sure, I bought the "Fools Gold 9:53" 12" and a few albums by more "indie" bands, but for me, the real Manchester scene of the late 80s and early '90s was all about house, techno and the Ruthless Rap Assassins.It's criminal that they never made it big - it's probably right to blame the London-centric media for ignoring them, at a time when southern journos were falling over themselves to cover the Manchester scene, but they did seem to mostly ignore the RRA. Then again, I don't think it was too easy for UK Hip-Hop wherever you came from - a lot of people still thought that only America did hip-hop properly - but a listen to this album, or records by others like Hijack, Hardnoise, Blade, London Posse etc. would have totally disproved that theory! And just listen to "Here Today...Here Tomorrow" - in addition to having a rhythm which sounds somewhat like mid-80s 2 Live Crew, the rapping sounds like it's managed to predate Grime MC'ing by over 10 years - and it's not even from London!Though I don't imagine that anyone makes hip-hop like this these days, for me at least, it's stood the test of time. Hard beats and streetwise lyrics, but devoid of any "I'll pop a cap in yo ass" wannabe gangsta crap - in fact, the only occasion on which guns are mentioned is when they say that they don't need one! Great stuff.