Jedi Mind Tricks + Vinnie Paz Discography [FLAC]

Jedi Mind Tricks + Vinnie Paz - Discography [FLAC]

Genre: Hip Hop
Style: Underground Rap
Source: CD
Codec: FLAC
Bits Per Sample: 16
Sample Rate: 44,100 Hz

Jedi Mind Tricks:

1997 The Psycho-Social (Reissue 2002)
2000 Violent By Design
2000 Violent By Design (Deluxe)
2004 Visions of Gandhi
2004 Legacy of Blood
2006 Animal Rap
2006 Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell
2006 Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell (Deluxe)
2006 Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell (Remixes)
2008 History of Violence
2009 Greatest Features
2011 Violence Begets Violence

Vinnie Paz:

2010 Season of the Assassin
2012 God of the Serengeti

The underground hip-hop duo Jedi Mind Tricks started out in the streets of Philadelphia in early 1996. Friends since high school, producer Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind and MCs Vinnie Paz (aka Ikon the Verbal Hologram) released the Amber Probe EP in 1996 and, one year later, gained a cult following with the full-length Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro Magnetic Manipulation (which was reissued in 2003 courtesy of the Babygrande label). Released in 2000, the sophomore effort Violent by Design marked the group's last album before signing to Babygrande, as well as the first to feature Jus Allah (aka Megatron). Jus Allah's tenure in the group proved to be short-lived, however, as he left soon after the album's release.

Under the labelship of Babygrande, Jedi Mind Tricks issued 2003's Visions of Gandhi -- which included the song "Animal Rap," featuring Paz's idol Kool G Rap -- and 2004's Legacy of Blood, not to mention a compilation of early 12" records titled Outerspace). The duo also began featuring an army of rappers on their albums, with regular guests including 7L, Esoteric, Apathy, Tragedy Khadafi, and Louis Logic. In 2006, Vinnie Paz's hip-hop supergroup made its full-length debut with Army of the Pharaohs: The Torture Papers, while the release of Jedi Mind Tricks' Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell proved that the MC's primary group was still functioning. Jus Allah then made his return to the JMT lineup, which issued A History of Violence in 2008. 2011 found the release of Violence Begets Violence, the collective's first release without the production help of Stoupe the Enemy of Mankind.

Vinnie Paz doesn't waste too many syllables. His lyrics come rapid-fire with an unwavering cadence and tightly wound delivery that owes a lot to Kool G Rap and Big Pun -- a rap style that he's been honing since the mid-'90s as a part of the Philadelphia trio Jedi Mind Tricks and the underground collective Army of the Pharaohs. Now on his long-awaited solo debut, Paz breaks away from his Jedi Mind partners but is wise not to try to do it alone, collaborating with a variety of producers (both veteran and up-and-coming) and guest MCs (including underground rap mainstays like Ill Bill and R.A. the Rugged Man, fellow Philly rappers Beanie Sigel and the Clipse brothers, as well as H-Town rapper Paul Wall) in order to keep the track list from getting too repetitive. One unexpected surprise of Season of the Assassin is that even Paz's brand of brutal, hardcore hip-hop can't resist the lure of compressed vocal harmonizing and, unlike his Jedi Mind Tricks and Army of the Pharaohs albums, this record has a fair share of R&B-tinged choruses (courtesy of Lawrence Arnell, Shara Worden, Liz Fullerton, and Brooklyn Academy's Block McCloud, who appears on three cuts). Still, this does little to soften the hard-edged tone that pervades Season of the Assassin. Anger, violence, conspiracy theories, and a fetish for firearms dominate virtually every track, and Paz shows an almost tender reverence for the tools he works with, professing "I stare at my guns like a pair of voluptuous breasts" over a soothing Electric Light Orchestra sample on the Madlib-produced "Aristotle's Dilemma."