Houston's history is dotted with albums that, fairly or un, have been swept aside. We'll examine them here. Have an album that you think nobody knows about but should? Email [email protected].
J.D.G. Fatherless Child (Black Majic Entertainment/Wicked Wizard Records., 2008)
This album ended up in our inbox several weeks ago with the subject line "Unknown Houston Rapper." It couldn't have been any more accurate.
J.D.G. is a Louisiana native, but he's been in Houston for about ten years or so. Apparently in 2000, he "hit the Houston underground scene hard with a vengeance," which is news to us. Beyond a bio at CD Baby's site, an Internet-wide super-search (typing his name into Google a couple times) turned up no other information about him.
Y'allmustaforgotability: 99 percent
Why 99 percent? Because prior to reading about him in the aforementioned email, we had never even heard of this guy. And we get paid to know about these types of guys.
Read what Y'allmustaforgotability means.
Best Verse on the Album: We'll go with the second verse from "Abandoned," a track about being fatherless but wanting to do better by his own seed, because we're suckers for tracks where a rapper raps about being fatherless but wanting to do better by his own seed.
Best Song on the Album: "The Broke Song"
J. D.G. is most effective when he's talking about things he's familiar with. And here, when playfully hyperbolizing not having any money over an equally light, bouncy beat, he shines. There's a part where he mentions how his roaches told him that he was "out of line" for being so broke, and that they were leaving because they were "tired of the struggle." Roach jokes are kind of cliché, but roach jokes that employ some sort of capitalist narrative are never not entertaining.
Most Expository Line on the Album: Via the soulful "Demons," "Lost everything I had except these motherfucking demons."
Obscure Fact (s) You Can Pawn Off As Your Own To Make Yourself Sound Smart:
There's a rapper named J.D.G. with an album called Fatherless Child. That's pretty obscure.
You can download the entire album for $1 here. Fatherless Child is also available on iTunes.
