Song: “Six Million Ways to Die”
Artists: Corey Red, Real, R.A.I.N., Da Meek One, Precise and Miz
Album: Mark of the East
Label: Severe Entertainment
Year: 1999
While the first half of the ’90s was dominated by Christian hip-hop coming out of Southern California, the latter half saw an array of talent picking up steam on the East Coast.
This week, we’re jumping ahead a few years from our last Flashback Friday and settling on 1999, the year forever cemented in our heads by Prince.
Back then, there were basically two ways to find out what was going on in our scene.
The first was what we’ll call distribution. You physically searched the shelf at your local Christian bookstore while avoiding an employee who was either the opposite of helpful or watching you like you were about to steal something because you came in looking for “rap music.”
The second was the internet.
That means plenty may have been happening in local scenes around the country, or even the world, that most of us never heard. Without distribution or connectivity, some of that history simply disappeared.
Single tear.
Finding Christian Hip-Hop Before Everything Was Online
In 1999, only about four in 10 Americans were going online. Even if you were one of them, most home connections still involved dial-up and enough patience to qualify as a spiritual discipline.
Streaming music on a personal computer was not exactly frictionless. You practically needed to be a Novell-certified network engineer to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Providentially for the Mark of the East compilation, somebody had both the foresight and technical ability to put music on the internet.
If memory serves me correctly, that was the first time I heard Corey Red and Precise.
And I was glad I did.
In fact, I was glad enough that I later invited both of them to participate in the Fashion Expo.
Mark of the East Put the Coast on Display
Severe Entertainment released Mark of the East in 1999. The compilation gathered a collection of East Coast voices at a time when geography still shaped hip-hop scenes in a very real way.
“Six Million Ways to Die” brought together Corey Red, Real, R.A.I.N., Da Meek One, Precise and Miz.
The record sounds exactly like the era it came from, and I mean that as a compliment. This is an unapologetically East Coast banger from a period when discovering a song like this required more effort than opening an app and letting an algorithm decide what you should hear next.
So rewind your mind to 1999.
Then sit in your cozy chair and enjoy high-quality music on demand through affordable computer speakers that probably sound better than the $4,000 car stereo somebody installed when this record came out.
Worse yet, try not to feel entitled to any of it.