Darc Mind is my favorite MC-DJ duo. There is nothing else in hip-hop quite like the combination of Web D's beats and Kevroc's rhymes. How curious then that one of their best known songs, indeed their only single ever pressed, wasn't produced by Web D, but by New Jersey's Nick Wiz. When I spoke with the duo about this record, Web said, "Originally on Loud, we had a single deal. They was afraid of us. They didn’t know what to do with us ... They did think our sound was a little rough around the edges, so they sent us to Nick Wiz, and we did the single for them, which was 'Outside Looking In.' They put it out there for radio release. It was almost like a promo. They never released it in the stores or nothing like that. It was mad copies pressed up and they promo’ed the shit out of it."
As so many copies were pressed, the single isn't too hard to find, and in addition to radio and album versions of the song, it contains the instrumental and acapella tracks. Any Kevroc acapella is a thing to behold. Recently, however, it was revealed that these aren't the only versions. In 2025, Nick Wiz included an alternate mix of "Outside Looking In" on his Cellar Selections Volume 11 compilation. When I first heard this, I immediately lost my shit, getting so excited I somehow convinced myself there were actually different lyrics on this version. There aren't, but it's still very dope. Anyway, I'd resolved to do a post about it sometime, and when that time came a few days ago, I went looking for the song again only to find that it's actually not the only Nick Wiz-produced Darc Mind track available.
In fact, the very first installment of Wiz's Cellar Sounds compilation series, released back in 2008, includes an otherwise unreleased Darc Mind song called "We In This." Additionally, Cellar Sounds Volume 5, released in 2017, has another unreleased track called "Femme Fatale," and Cellar Extras Part 3, from 2019, has an alternate take of that song. While there isn't any information available on these recordings beyond the compilations' limited credits, all of them are dated to 1996, the same year that "Outside Looking In" dropped. So, while Nick Wiz did not immediately respond to a request for comment, we can likely infer that the songs were recorded in or around the same time as one another, perhaps during the same session(s). Could it be that all of these songs were tracked as potential singles, and that a version of "Outside Looking In" was eventually chosen for release?
If this was the case, I think everyone can agree that out of the three songs, the choice most faithfully represents what we've come to appreciate as the Darc Mind sound. It might not be the darkest of the bunch, but it is the most Darc. As for the others, "We In This" seems to recall the '80s basement parties Kev rocked in his youth, with one of its verses later appearing on "U Da One" off Symptomatic of a Greater Ill, while "Femme Fatale" offers an early example of the kind of noirish liaisons he'd detail on "Cherry Wine" off What Happened to the Art? What did Nick Wiz's producorial role entail? How did it align with Web and Kev's vision? We may never know. Regardless, Darc Mind was here.
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