3/23/16

The UN - As We Know It
(Bootleg Containing 4+ Otherwise Unreleased Tracks)

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a real treat, dug up from the bowels of CD Baby and purchased by yours truly so that I can share it freely with you today. Released in 2009 by a label called Mash Entertainment, As We Know It is a bootleg compilation of UN tracks, some of which appeared on their album UN Or U Out (Fat Beats), some of which appeared on one of their mixtapes, World Domination or Strength and Honor, one of which appeared on Pete Rock's Petestrumentals (BBE), and some of which haven't appeared anywhere else as far as we can tell.

The wholly unreleased songs are "Final Cut," "The UN," "Reefer" and "In The Pocket." [There's also an "Interlude" track that sounds exclusive to this comp, and several songs that appeared elsewhere with different titles: "Win Or Lose" is "For the Love" off UN Or U Out; "Hardcore" is "Hardcore (Revisited)" off World Domination; and "Junkyard" is "Funkyard" off Strength and Honor.]

One song, the Pete Rock-produced "Dope on a Rope," though not on any of the aforementioned releases, was posted to Soundcloud by The UN Manager Jazz in 2015, so it's been floating around. It was also Jazz who confirmed for Long Island Rap Blog that As We Know It is a bootleg and that The UN team is not receiving any money from its online sales, which gave me all the justification I needed to post it, so thank him for that. (Of course, make sure you support The UN by purchasing UN Or U Out on mp3CD or 2xLP if you haven't already done so.)
And then there's "Pop." You might recognize the title of this compilation's last track as a song from Roc Marciano's classic solo debut, Marcberg (Fat Beats). However, as you'll hear, this track is much quieter and dustier than the album version, leading us to believe it's either unmixed or an early demo mix. Either way, this compilation came out in 2009, so it pre-dates the album.

Streaming below for your listening pleasure is the entire As We Know It compilation. If you'd like to download any of the unreleased tracks, you can get them from our Audiomack. If you want to own the rest, purchase UN Or U Out using one of the links above, get "Cake" from iTunes, download Strength and Honor via Long Island Rap Blog and download World Domination via The Lost Tapes.


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