Cassette Review: Bernard's Nile "ONE LOVE."

[SOLD OUT // https://hefelrubio.bandcamp.com/album/one-love]

Now this cassette is easy enough for me to identify because it does say "ONE LOVE" on it.    This makes it the easiest of the three to identify from Fine Rhymes Vinyl Records but it can still be said that what it lacks in artwork it more than makes up for in music content.  

All this Bandcamp wants us to know about "ONE LOVE." is that it is dedicated to Nas, which is funny because when I was in my teenage years I listened to rap and hip hop on cassette.   I have quite the extensive collection still, some cassettes I even forgot I ever owned.     When I stopped buying rap cassettes, I did get some CDs but then my interest generally turned to other styles of music and wouldn't return until I bought two rap CDs: one by Fabolous and the other by Nas.    So for this to be dedicated to Nas kind of takes me past my cassette days of 2Pac, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre but still I can appreciate most any good hip hop on cassette.

(Side Note:  When Eminem's first full length dropped I bought it on CD and was all about it.  I'm not sure if I would have felt the same about it on cassette though.   One of the last rap albums I remember getting on CD that really changed me was Sage Francis "A Healthy Distrust" and I could totally see that working on cassette.  I'd even take The Uncluded on cassette really.)

So this is beats, rhymes and everything you love about hip hop.   You know what it really kind of reminds me of though, with the Nas reference and my earlier writing on cassettes and CDs?   It reminds me of when CDs came out and you couldn't burn them yet but you could at least put them onto a cassette to share with your friend.     It seems like as long as there were cassettes there was a way to record from cassette to cassette (which isn't probably true, but it just feels that way) and now we burn CDs so I feel like that CD to cassette time span has been lost perhaps more than any other.