J-Zone – Music For Tu Madre

When I was the store manager at A1 Record Shop in New York Jay Mumford came in one day and gave me a cassette to listen to hoping I would take some on consignment. After listening to it I of course bought some and begged him to press it on vinyl to which he said he didn't think he could afford to at the time. I then offered to cover the initial cost in the form of a loan and said I'd buy the first 200 outright.

He didn't take me up on the offer of the loan but I like to think that such a serious offer may have helped convince him to get it pressed on vinyl. When he did bring in the first batch in the 12" die cut sleeves with just the sticker for artwork I sold 50 or a 100 (I forget) to Mr. Bongo's record shop in London.

Later he dropped in a ton of picture sleeves and I transferred most of the stock I had over into those covers.

He told me he wrote his version of events in a book but I still haven't seen or read that yet.

- Robert Thomas Corrigan of:

Tower Records Bayswater
Tower Records Piccadilly
Pinnacle Distribution
Panther Distribution
Downstroke Records Camden Town
Hustlers Convention Camden Town / New York City
Bleeker Bob's Records New York City
A1 Record Shop New York City
Higher Learning Records Inc. New York City
The Sound Library Inc. New York City
The Sound Library Ireland

I have a feeling this record is gonna get more expensive eventually, glad to cop it when I did. Zone is an underrated genius, in my humble opinion, I've been a fan of him for years, and its dope to see that he managed to reinvent himself and have success still doing music.
This was Zone's senior project for college. The story goes that he could barely get enough people to show up and rap on the project so he ended up doing the whole thing himself, minus Al-Shid, Huggy, Kobayashi and Trip of course. Sonically the album is a bit rough around the edges, but not to its detriment, it has a very DIY sound that a lot of the indie records at the time had. The beats sound like they came straight off of old 78s and 50s cartoons, really brilliant production, can't think of anyone with a similar production style to Zone. You could say that its dating itself with the jokes clearly poking fun at the shiny suit era and the beat jackery that Puff and company were up to back then, but the same things could be said about the over-saturation of trap and auto-tune drenched triplet flows today.
If you're a fan of that mid 90s to early 00s indie boom, or even if you're just looking for something new to try, don't hesitate to pick this one up. Its definitely worth more than some of the prices on here and I think that will be reflected as people buy the last copies up.