Deda Baby Pa - "Everyman For Himself"

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01. "Every Man For Himself" (Ft. Pete Rock)
02. "Baby Pa"
03. "How I'm Livin" (Ft. Vinija Monica)
04. "Blah Uno"
05. "Can't Wait"
06. "I Originate"
07. "Nasty Scene"
08. "Nothing More"
09. "Press Rewind" (Ft. Pete Rock)
10. "Escape From New York" (Ft. Sadat X)
11. "Rhyme Writer"
12. "Too Close"
13. "Do You Understand"

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Between 1994 and 1995 Pete Rock split up with CL Smooth and started working with two acts who's debut albums he produced. One was InI's "Center Of Attention" and the other was Deda Baby Pa's "Everyman For Himself", both was supposed to be released on Pete's fresh imprint Soul Brother Records which would be distributed by Elektra. Both albums was finnished and (at least Deda's LP) already had an Elektra catalouge number but eventually got shelved.

English label BBE got ahold of the reels from the sessions and put out the albums in a 2xCD package (that Pete Rock himself didn't even know about). it was great to finally get these albums and they are both brilliant LP's, but BBE made some mistakes here and there. there was alot of instrumental interludes supposed to be on both (together with spoken intros, intermissions, etc for at least the InI LP). the InI missing parts was later leaked to the net but the one's from this album has never surfaced as far as i know. Also the song "Markd4Death" was not supposed to be on this album, and doesn't even feature Deda at all (probably was on the same reel so BBE thought it was from the LP), BUT the song "Escape From New York" was from the Deda LP originally so therefore you should delete 'Markd4Death' and add this one instead on your tracklist. BBE also changed the name of the album to "Original Baby Pa" when they released their bootleg.

now to the music: while Deda is not a superior MC in any way he got a few nice verses splattered over the album and his voice and rhyme schemes is pretty stiff but he got a certain ruggedness to his shit that i can appreciate. the One thing that holds this album up is of course the '94-95 production from the #1 Soul Brother himself. Altho his signature sound is in full effect you will notice that he gave one unique sound for each of InI, CL Smooth and Deda Baby Pa. The zone he created for Deda is based around a little darker, heavier and more atmospheric sound with a whole lot of jazz influences. It's a nice mixture of soul and jazz to the samples and the drums is always knocking (hey, it's Pete Rock right). More or less all the songs features cut-n-scratch hooks, kinda like DJ Premier steez, alot more than he did on any other album and it really works well - we all know Pete is a monster when his hands touch a turntable.

While incredible beats like "Blah Uno", "Baby Pa", "Escape From New York", "Understand", "Press Rewind", etc. holds up with Pete's finest mid-90s productions, Deda just doesn't cut it for a whole album. He becomes very monotone and neither his delivery or content is interesting in the long run. It's a shame there's not more guest MC's on here, Sadat X and Pete Rock is really the only ones. Still he's not horrible and the production is so good the whole album is very enjoyable either way. I can only imagine how dope this would've been with the original sequencing, the missing instrumental interludes and whatever else songs might be missing as well as an original '95 packaging with cover and all that.

Lyrics: 2.5/5
Music: 5/5
Overall: 7.5/10 = (4/5)