Remember back in ’92 when you first heard the opening sample to “T.R.O.Y.” and you instantly thought, “This is one of the greatest beats I’ve ever heard!” Then you bought Mecca and the Soul Brother and thought, “Is it possible for Pete Rock to make a bad beat?”

It’s an understatement to say that the landscape has changed ten years later. That sentence is a different essay altogether but sufficed to say, some of the best hip-hop you’ll hear this year comes from two Pete Rock-produced, mid-90s gems recently released by BBE/Rapster. To kick off their Lost and Found series, BBE Records, the UK label responsible for such seminal series as Funk Spectrum and Soul Spectrum, has released INI’s Center of Attention and Deda’s The Original Baby Pa. While neither album was officially released by the label, the former has been bubbling around the underground since its completion in 1995. The latter, completed in 1996, was permanently shelved and only now are we being given the chance to hear it.

For the past three or four years now, my senile grandpa has been asking me random questions such as, “What was Pete Rock up to right after he broke up with CL Smooth?” and “If he produced albums around that time, what do you think it would sound like?” Up until now, I could only make up answers until he fell asleep behind the wheel. Now, the truth is revealed.

I know this will come as a shock, but after listening to both albums, it turns out he was doing jazzy, mellow beats focusing on piano, horn and xylophone samples with above average, yet not stellar, MCs. Not much of a change from his CL Smooth days, true, but with Pete Rock’s production being what it was at the time, you’d forgive him for following the “If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it” formula. Like the best Pete Rock & CL Smooth cuts, many of the beats immediately hit you, as Rock still clearly knows the difference between “relaxing” and “boring.”

Rock’s beats have always served as the strongest part of Pete Rock tracks. Yeah, no one can knock CL Smooth for his consciousness upraising, but let’s be honest; will he ever make anyone’s Top 10 MCs list? INI, made up of Rock’s brother Grap Luva, Rob-O and Marco Polo, are certainly competent enough MCs to lace smooth flows that match Rock’s beats, but there isn’t a single verse one would call mind-blowing. Ditto for Deda, a MC whose harsh delivery can be best compared to early Fat Joe.

With the consistent quality of Rock’s beats on the two albums being what they are, though, all you really need is an average MC to make the overall sound better than almost anything else released (put a great MC over these beats and you have “near classic” status). The major difference between the two albums is the faster tempo on Baby Pa, presumably to match Deda’s quicker rhyming style.

Lost and Found is required listening for any fan of Pete Rock or 90s classic albums such as Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory, Digable Planets’ Reachin’, or Gang Starr’s Daily Operation. It may not hit the levels Pete Rock’s albums with CL Smooth did, but it’s not too far off.

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