Skarr Akbar featuring various artists - The Understanding 2 Soundtrack/DVD (Akbar Enterprize)

Skarr Akbar has been one of my favorite MCs in Baltimore for a long time (peep the City Paper article from '05), so it's been really gratifying to see him really start to get his due lately. A few months ago, 92Q finally started showing him some love and gave some spins to tracks like "Bang" and "I Am," and in December he got Downtown Locker Room to distribute his DVD/CD. From what Skarr told me, this is just a little limited edition deal, and when it's sold out it'll be gone, so I don't know how available it is now, but when I asked about it last weekend, they still had some under the counter at the DTLR on Calvert Street. The DVD is his second autobiographical documentary, which I wrote about last fall, but it's now packaged with a soundtrack. The format of the CD is about half tracks by Skarr and his crew, the Arabz (including a full version of the awesome track "Alright" that I posted last year), and the other half by other Bmore artists, including Los and D.R.O.P. from Da Bloc Inc. camp, as well as Comp, Mullyman, Ogun, Golden Seal, Backland and Heavy Gold. It's really just to show love to other artists, and to get people warmed up for Skarr's official album, Passion, Pain & Progress. There's a cover story on Skarr in the February issue of Music Monthly, too.

Heavy Gold - "Charm City" (mp3)
As you may know, Heavy Gold is a former member of N.E.K. who left the group before Bossman's solo career jumped off, and he's still doing his thing, working with Stay Gettin'. I haven't heard a lot of his solo material before but this track is pretty great.

Labels: Backland, Comp, Golden Seal, Los, magazines/newspapers, mixtape/album review, mp3, Mullyman, Ogun, Skarr Akbar