D.O.G. - G Pack Music (7 Entertainment/Invisible Set Entertainment)

Two and a half years ago, D.O.G. remixed Blaq Starr's "Ryda Gyrl," and while it wasn't the first hip hop version of a Baltimore club song, it was by far one of the biggest, and in a way its popularity was the main catalyst for my City Paper article Best of Both Worlds about the crossover between rap and club music. One of the things mentioned in that article is that D.O.G.'s main in-house producer, Sean "Mocca" Banks, was teaming up with Booman, who's also D.O.G.'s tour DJ, as the Baltimore Boys to do more club-type beats, the first of which was the mixtape track "Look In My Eyes." It was all pretty exciting, but then D.O.G. got signed (I guess he's still with Universal?), and his whole camp seemed to go quiet for a year or two, which was a bummer, and I figured that idea was dead.

Then, last December around the time I posted about D.O.G.'s last mixtape, The Feeling - Bring It Back, I saw a flyer for this G Pack Music album he was releasing, which turned out to be the club music-themed project he'd been working on. Supposedly it was out in Downtown Locker Room, but I looked for it a couple times and never found it. So I didn't get a chance to finally hear it til D.O.G. hit me up about the new video and free download of The Feeling and I asked him for a copy, and it's pretty damn good. Booman isn't credited on it, but Mo Banks is, so I guess he did the beats, and if so, he's pretty good at club tracks. It's just 9 songs and a half hour long, so it's kind of an EP or a street album, but it's 9 dope tracks, all pretty much club tracks with D.O.G. rapping on them. Ironically, the only one that's at a slower tempo is "Automatic Lover," a remix of Blaq Starr's club track of the same name with pretty much a completely different beat. This album should've been a monster local hit, but I never really heard even "Automatic Lover" on the radio more than once or twice, I hope it ain't just that they missed the right moment to drop it. Between this and the 410 Pharaohs album there's some exciting stuff going on with club/rap fusion right now.

D.O.G. f/ Paula Campbell - "Back In The Club" (mp3)
Oh man, speaking of people who disappeared as soon as they got a record deal, good to hear something from Paula again, here's hoping she gets to release another album in this lifetime.

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, D.O.G., mixtape/album review, mp3, Paula Campbell