We don’t always review every anniversary re-release at Scratched Vinyl, but sometimes those re-releases highlight some albums that really got overlooked at their initial release. One such case is Karneige and Uncommon Nasa’s From The Left.

Uncommon Records was launched in 2004, but unless a record label has some serious startup funds, it usually takes a couple of years for a label to find its footing. This is true of most eras, but as anyone who worked in the music industry can tell you, 2005-2010 was an especially tough era to navigate, as the industry shifted into the digital age. This is all to say that when From The Left came out in 2008, the tools were not yet in place to maximize the exposure for this album. Now that we are here in 2018, the tools people use to find music are a bit more settled into, so hopefully this album can finally find the audience it deserves. The seeds for the album were planted back in 2004, when Nasa was working as an engineer at Def Jux, and Karniege was an emcee who had worked on several Def Jux projects. Nasa gave him a beat CD, Karniege was into it, and soon they started working together. They got one song, “Make News” onto Def Jux Presents 3, but they kept at it and eventually got a full length completed in 2008, From The Left. That brings us to the album itself. Uncommon Nasa is delivering a lot of beats in the style that you’re accustomed to - that dense, dark, prog-sampling funky production that now feels familiar. Karniege is an emcee that never really got his dues, and a large part of that has to do with timing. He was poised to be one of Def Jux’s all stars, but the timing and shift in the industry didn’t line up for him. Now that this album is getting another chance to shine, so is Karniege. He’s a great emcee, with a lot of charisma on the mic, a great ear for hooks, and a great resonance and confidence that make his words land with a lot of weight. He’s also got a sense of humor that he deploys at just the right times, cutting the tension just enough over the course of the album so that it doesn’t get too serious. It all comes together to make an album that finds just the balance between weird and accessible.

Who knows what might have happened to From The Left if it had come out a few years earlier or later. What matters is that this re-release is giving the album a chance to find the audience that likes that aggressive, weird underground New York hip hop sound. We’re all getting a late pass on this one.