DJ Rod Lee - Operation: Start-Up (Club Kingz/Morphius Urban)

After the success of Vol. 5: The Official and it kind of being at the center of the national press explosion around Baltimore club music this year, Morphius is now reissuing Rod's old CDs, starting with 2001's Operation: Start-Up, which was his first mix CD after a few years of issuing tracks little by little on 12"s. Matter fact I don't really know if club music really existed on CDs until the late 90's/early 00's, that's when my oldest mixes are from and when I was just starting to get into it. Morphius actually manufactured the original release of this, but they weren't distributing and promoting the Club Kingz stuff too until last year with the Lil Jay CD. New artwork, same photo cropped with different font and no more 92Q Jams logo in the corner. I personally think Operation: Not Done Yet is a hotter CD and I hope they reissue that one too soon, but this one is full of classic tracks and DMX samples and the Lynn Collins break. And it's almost entirely Rod Lee, plus a few tracks by DJ Technics and one by Booman (the free mp3 on the Morphius site, "Ding-A-Ling," is actually one of the Technics ones) and a lot of RL tracks with vocals by Keisha Diggs and Urban Legend and other people, from back when Rod didn't always do the vocals on his own productions.

Rod Lee - "Timz" (mp3)
I wish I had more than 26 seconds of this glorious track to share with you.

Booman and Jimmy Jones - "Shout" (mp3)
Produced by Booman with vocals by Jimmy Jones of "Watch Out For The Big Girl" fame.

Labels: Baltimore club, DJ Booman, mixtape/album review, mp3, Rod Lee