Gumbo

I had never even heard of this album until a week or so ago when I was browsing on Speech's Facebook page and someone asked Speech what happened to the group. I didn't think too much of it, but then when I was looking at the Down South Produckshuns album this was listed as one of Speech's projects along with the title: Droppin' Soulful H2O On The Fiber. So I looked it up on amazon and found it very cheap, so I picked it up. The curiosity got to me.

Now I haven't really had a chance to listen to it so I'll withhold from too many comments, but I did read through the liner notes and there are quite a few items of interest for us Speech fans. Number one, he produced the entire album. I didn't expect that, especially as it arrived in 1993, right at the height of AD's popularity. Number two, he appears to be featured on a few songs. In fact, he is credited under four different names on this release: Speech, the producer, DJ Peechy, the turntable instrumentalist, Todd Thomas, background vocals, and "Music" by Brother Speech. A man of many hats. This also appears to be the first use of "Vagabond Productions," which of course is still going to this day. So this is a project that Speech was very, very involved with.

As far as the title, it appears to be referring to dropping tears on paper- I wondered where that came from! Now if I can just figure out what "Impregnated Tidbits of Dope Hits", a song from Speech's first album, means....

So I will give it a listen and post my thoughts at some point- I look forward to it. For those who would also like to listen, here is a link to the entire album: Gumbo. I did not post this download so I can't vouch for it, but I'm sure it's fine.

Here's a look at one of the songs via youtube, with Speech on the chorus. This song was also on the Since the Last Time mixtape discussed earlier. We will have much more on this album later....