Deep Cut: Young Lox "Legion of Doom"

Melancholy, Sade-sampling gangster rap.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Album:Illest
Producer: unknown

Deep Cuts returns to the subject of The Jacka-inspired melancholy mob music with this new track by east Oakland's Young Lox. Jacka's own output has seen a marked decline in quality and quantity these past 4 or 5 years, but his Artist Records imprint continues to crank out a steady drip of Jacka-surrogates like Young Lox, Joe Blow, and Dubb 20who are more than capable of replicating his trademark style of pained, melodic street-rap for those of us who still fiend for this type of shit.

Judging from his latest album Illest, a collection of old and unreleased songs, Young Lox—Loxycotin to his friends and customers—seems to do his best work when rapping over Sade samples. "Couldn't Tell You" with Stevie Joe reconfigures "Sweetest Taboo" into the album's bounciest track and a celebratory treatise on the ‘can't tell me nothin'’ maxim. Meanwhile, album highlight and today's Deep Cut "Legion Of Doom" reshapes the most sensual parts of "I Never Thought I'd See The Day" into a moody barbiturates-ballad that's worthy of Jacka's own 2005-2008 zenith.

Wonderful stuff, just don't let Sade find out out that her music has become a constant backdrop for criminal argot by regional gangsta rappers who probably don't bother to concern themselves with clearing samples.

RELATED: Deep Cuts: Under-the-Radar Jams You Need To Hear [Last Week]

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