In my two-plus years of writing this blog, I don’t think I’ve ever made a wholesale rerun of a block of tracks from a previous post. And I usually keep mp3s up for about a month (or more if I’m lazy). That means I get some requests to repost tracks. More than any post(s) I’ve done, my digital conversion of a dubbed cassette of Atban Klann’s shelved Grass Roots album has, no doubt, been requested for repost the most. (I split it into four parts: Here, here, here and here.)

Quick summary: Atban Klann was Black Eyed Peas before they were Black Eyed Peas. Here’s what I wrote in that first post back in September 2005:

“Formed in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Atban (A Tribe Beyond A Nation) brought current BEPs Apl.de.ap and Will.I.Am together to produce some cuts that might surprise you. It might surprise you also to know that Atban Klann was signed to Ruthless Records, run by none other than Eazy-E. Unfortunately, the album, Grass Roots, was shelved and never found its way to the public. Story has it that Ruthless was unsure how to market a group whose positive vibes ran contrary to Ruthless’ gangsta image.”

One of my more prized (if not slightly warped) pieces of my vinyl collection is a 12-inch single for Puddles of H2O (b/w Let Me Get Down), which, I’m presuming, would have been the lead single.

Anyway, as I also said in that original post, my copy of the album (on a Maxell UR cassette) is probably a copy of a copy. Still, you get the idea. One note: The order I’m posting the tracks is the order I have them on my copy, so I’m not sure if that would have been the official sequence on the final product.

• Atban Klann | Open Your Mind
• Atban Klann | Going for a Ride
• Atban Klann | Adidas
• Atban Klann | Lord of the Flies
• Atban Klann | Quid Pro Quo
• Atban Klann | Jugglin’ My Nuts (interlude … not sure if that’s the title.)
• Atban Klann | Mountain Top
• Atban Klann | World’s Gone Mad

Part II coming in the next day or so.