Del Tha Funky Homosapien: I Wish My Brother George Was Here [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

This Music On Vinyl edition is pressed on 180g vinyl in the EU. Produced by Del, the Boogiemen and Ice Cube, it reached No. 24 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and No. 48 on the R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Music On Vinyl audiophile edition
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Plenty of people assume the title is a nod to George Clinton, given all the P-Funk in the grooves. It's actually a line from a Looney Tunes cartoon, itself a joke on Liberace, who used to say it on his TV show whenever his brother George didn't turn up. That sideways sense of humour is all over Del's debut.

Del Tha Funky Homosapien was a teenager from Oakland when Elektra put this out in 1991, and he produced it with the Boogiemen and his cousin Ice Cube. The beats are fat and funky, the rhymes are loose, abstract and full of everyday observation, and "Mistadobalina" became a cult favourite with its tongue-twisting hook. The Washington Post praised his mix of free-style abstraction and street-smart rhymes, and Newsday noted the beats hit a little harder than the daisy-age records of the day.

AllMusic called it the first and some of the best evidence of Del writing his own rules, and he went on to Hieroglyphics, Deltron 3030 and Gorillaz. It remains the most cheerful record ever produced with Ice Cube's help, by some distance.

Also at Kops: more Del Tha Funky Homosapien on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Listen

On Elektra / Music On Vinyl, a reissue of the 1991 album.