Used CD Shopping Trip Week One

One of the finer things in life is going to some second hand store, or even better yet, some mainstream coporate store, and find some buried treasure. It's a great thing pulling out a copy of Nice & Smooth's self titled debut (Even better would be an orginal copy released on Sleeping Bag) out of the used CD/Wax bin for $4.99 or less. You giggle to yourself as you take it the register, thinking you are basically committing Grand Theft Larceny.

Sure, this doesn't happen a lot. Most of the time I just pick up something I've lost over the years or some corny ass shit that they are basically giving away. For us older cats though (and maybe even some of the younger ones), digging through so much used/old stuff that your fingers end up black at some store is something that we cherish.

Here in Denver, I have four stores I hit up on a fairly regular basis. With the amount of cats from Denver just here in blog land, I'm guessing these stores get picked over pretty good, so you kind of have to stay on top of things. I stick strictly to CD's these days, so I'm not much of a threat to the wax stores in town, but I've lost a few things on CD around thinking an album would be there the next time I came back. Still, I've had some trips to stores here where I drop $50 bucks on 10-15 CD's with no problem.

Times are hard, especially for us students that try to live on an interns wage. We need to find deals. We need to spend our money wisely while still trying to repair/increase our hip hop collection. For this reason, I'll be covering my weekly used shopping trips to the stores around here in Denver, or even better yet, if I head out of town and hit some stores on my travels as well. I plan on making this a weekly column of sorts, so feel free to drop comments, criticisms, bitches, or whatever else you might want to include. As usual, I'll up some of my goodies I get and share with the rest of the visitors.

Record Exchange; Boise, Idaho & Hastings; Boise Idaho 12-27-06 $10.11
Boise is still lacking in the independent stores. The Record Exchange has long been a staple for any true music fan in the town. I've been frequenting the store since I was a snot nosed kid. For the amount of money I've spent in that place, I could probably own it. There used to be two stores in town that moved around from time, but they are now only down to one, which is a shame. It means less digging for me. The owner, John, knows who I am whenever I walk into the store and even around town he always acknowledges me. And he should as much money as i spent in his stores. Their prices on both new and used albums are usually a little more expensive, but that's to be expected with the independent shops

Hastings is a regional chain as far as I know. They had stores in Montana and Utah when I went through those states. They used to have the cheapest used CD's in town. My friends and I used to go in there a lot and spend hours digging through stuff trying to find that special stuff.

Everytime I go home, I have to go through my old haunts. I jetted over to my man's house who was off work for the week for the holidays and we spent the next four hours going through everything in the two stores. I was kind of broke after the holidays, so I left somethings I normally would have bought. I usually won't spend over $7-$8 on a used CD unless it's something very hard to find.

Red Hot Lover Tone - #1 Player (5.99)
I think my man Polarity for getting me on the Tone kick. His self-titled opus was our the subject of our very first post, so getting any album by him has been high on my list since. I don't see them around much on my journey's, so picking this up for six bucks was a good thing to me.

Schoolly D - Welcome To America (3.99)
This was the last decent Schoolly D album, but out of his LP's I've heard this is still my least favorite. But being the hardcore Schoolly fan that I am and only being $3.99, I had to add it to my collection. It's probably more of me being unhappy with the present state of the music, this sounds better to than it did then. It's your typical Schoolly production: 808 kick drums and sparse drum beats and basslines with some guitars thrown in from time to time.

Second Spin; Denver, Colorado ($20 something) 1-1-07
Second Spin usually has a pretty good selection of used material along with good sales such as buy three, get one free or all CD's under 3.99 are half priced. That couple with the fact it's fairly close to my apartment makes this place one of my favorites. I had just got back into town the night before and wanted to get out of the apartment, so out I went in search of baragins. Second Spin was one of the places open and I was in luck, both sales were going.

Aloe Blacc - The Aloe Blacc EP (4.99) ***LINK*****
I've been on an Emanon/Aloe Blacc/DJ Exile kick since first really checking them out on last years the "Waiting Room". Since then I've checked out the "Anon & On" but I wasn't aware of this joint from 03' and still can't find much on it. It's cool, need a few more listens on it, but I had to check it out.

Edan - Beauty & The Beat (4.99)
Yes, I probably should already own this 05' release but I always found other things to buy when I had it in my hand. This album has been recieved critical acclaim since it's release, but while I think it's good, I've never seen it as the "Save All" that some Hipster-Nerd Hop blogs claim it as. But for $4.99, hell yeah, I'll take that, thank you!

Double X - Ruff, Rugged, & Raw (4.99) ***LINK****
I've had my eye on this CD for awhile there and finally figured I'd better grab it while I can (although I'm sure it's been there for at least three months, if not longer). You don't see this one around all that much anymore. It's not as good as their debut as Double X Posse as they try to fit into the hardcore element that was running rampant during this time, but there is sitll some good tracks. A nice pick up for the price.

Lench Mob - Guerillas In The Mist (Free after buying the first three)
This is one of those CD's that I have replaced 4-5 times by now. It's one of my favorite produced albums of all-times with lots of noise and slamming drum tracks. It's supposedly produced by Ice Cube, but I'd bet this is a classic example of ghost production. I'd buy this for $8 if had to, but I can't argue getting it for free. Classic Cube, when he still had an attitude.

The next three where in the bargain bin and were under 3.99, so they were half off

QD III Soundlab ($1.00)
I've never been a huge fan of this album, but for a buck, I'll add it to the collection. It has it's moments (Season Of The Vic), but for the most part it's just lack luster, but I was already in a buying frenzy by this point in time.

Chilly Tee - Get Off Mine ($1.00)
Yes, this is proof that money can't buy you a classic Hip Hop album. The son of the Nike mogul at the time wanted to rhyme, so he went out and got the Bomb Squad (my favorite all-time producers) and I'm sure he had some dudes write the lyrics for him and it still sucks. The last two songs are good enough to fork out a buck for though. That's about it though.

Nonchalant - Until The Day ($1.00)
Impulse buy, what can I say. It's not that bad of an album. It's a buck, what can you get for a buck?

2 In A Room - S/t (.50) LINK
This is more of a inside joke between me and Polarity (don't worry man, I'll send you a copy of it) than an actual buy. Hip House at it's best, it pumped out "Wiggle It" and "She Drives Me Crazy" that took the nation by storm...okay, maybe not the nation, but it was during the height of Hammer and Vanilla Ice, otherwise it would have. The three non hip house tracks are actually not all that bad.