Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
Though he's best known these days as the older brother of Willie the Kid -- or as the dude from Wu-Tang who almost did a collaboration album with Vanilla Ice -- La the Darkman once managed to sell 300,000 copies of his debut album independently. Think about that for a minute. These days, even someone like Nas has trouble moving that many units, and that's with the full promotional efforts of a major label behind him. Some of that can be attributed to the plunge in album sales during the ten years since La dropped Heist Of The Century, but I was still impressed when I saw that figure on his Wikipedia page.
Thinking back on it, that was around the end of the period when any CD with a Wu logo on it was guaranteed to sell out its first week on the shelves. GP Wu, Killarmy and La were just a few of the Wu-Tang satellite members who benefited by association. Yet its hard to dismiss La's talent, which played as much a part in his popularity as his affiliation with the Shaolin crew. So its surprising that, in 2007, we still have yet to see a follow up album from the man. There had been talk of an album produced by Think Differently Music, but that rumor has been going around since at least 2004.
La's MySpace page is now plastered with logos from DJ Drama's Aphilliates label. I'm not sure when he switched labels, but it says he's now the President of Aphilliates Music Group. In any event, he's just released a new mixtape, Darkman 2, hosted by DJ Kruger. The fact that he's putting out some new music is a good sign for those of you who have been waiting for the follow-up album.
A few tracks off of the mixtape:
Tony Touch Freestyle
Can I Have It Like That Freestyle featuring Willie the Kid
Donnie Brasco
You can find links to download the mixtape over at DJ Kruger's MySpace page. For more of La the Darkman, hit up his own MySpace page.
4/19/2007 6:28:29 PM posted by Fresh