Oliver: Katch 22 - Mind Field (Peel Session) (2 November 1991)

The first example of hip hop on this blog comes from a Peel Session that Katch 22, a UK based hip hop posse, recorded for Peel on 17 September 1991. On the day of recording, their ranks were swelled by a dancer called Cavey, who as Peel commented, "Won't come across terribly effectively on the radio."

The Peel session is not available for sharing, so the recording comes from their 1992 album, Diary of a Blackman Living in the Land of the Lost.  (Reflections on the album can be found here.).  The Peel recording differed from this clip as it factored in contributions from all of the Katch 22 crew and snippets of other tracks from their forthcoming album.

I have a slightly ambivalent attitude to hip hop.  I loathe the misogyny and violence of it.  I find the celebration of material wealth equally queasy.  But I love the humour that can be found there, the social awareness which no other form of popular music is able to pull off.  But most of all, I love the poetry.  In many respects, hip hop is the logical direction that folk music had to go in.  And I truly believe that many of the great hip hop artists deserve to be spoken of as poets in the same breath as Dylan and Cohen.

Video courtesy of LordInfamousYattaro.