Fourteen years after its intended release on Flavor Unit/Epic Records, Freddie Foxxx‘s Crazy Like A Foxxx album is being released on July 29th by Fat Beats Records.
The 1994 sophomore release was promoted behind the single of “So Tough” which was remixed by Notorious B.I.G. mentor Easy Mo Bee and also by Pete Rock [click to read], the single was backed by “Crazy Like A Foxxx.” After promotional cassettes were sent to radio and press, the album was mysteriously shelved by the label.
“It was important for me to [release] Crazy Like A Foxxx because I took it back in, and I remastered it. I just wanted to give them the whole entire album,” Freddie Foxxx told HipHopDX last evening. The album was largely made for the emcee’s comrades in prison at the time, and initially featured darker music and aggressive subject matter.
The initial 1993 demo version of Crazy Like A Foxxx features production exclusively from D.I.T.C.‘s Showbiz, Lord Finesse and Buckwild. As an added treat for listeners, Fat Beats and Foxxx have included these unheard versions on the bonus disc of the two CD set, also available digitally. The emcee, who released his debut album in 1989, added, “The D.I.T.C. version got turned down by Flavor Unit. I actually liked it better, but I had to go and produce [the album] myself, and that was the [version] they accepted. A lot of emails and MySpace blogs were comin’ in about how people liked the Crazy Like A Foxxx album. I was [thinking] I don’t know how they like it if it was never put out. Somebody leaked it on a cassette, and people were just listening to the raggedy old, nasty-soundin’ cassette version. I said, ‘You know what? Let me just put it out.’ It’s really about the fans all day.”
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Among those original tracks, producer Showbiz had initially submitted the beat that would later become KRS-One‘s “Sound Of Da Police,” which can be heard in its original form through this release. The Freddie Foxxx version is called “8 Bars To Catch A Body.”
Another point of interest from this relic is the largely unpublicized competitive rap battle with the Ultramagnetic MC’s. “It wasn’t a physical thing, it was a rap competition/battle, whatever you want to call it,” reveals the artist who also goes by Bumpy Knuckles a decade and a half later. “I decided to switch up the title song ‘Crazy Like A Foxxx.’ There’s two versions on there that people are gonna hear. I gave them the original version, which was more of me doin’ my lyrical skill thing, and then I switched up and put my whole battle verses on there and dedicated the whole track to them.I was trying to feed the audience what they wanted from me.”
Asked what the album makes him think about today, Foxxx says, “At first I think, ‘Damn, I’ve been rapping a long time. [Laughs] I think about, and hopefully people understand, it’s just classic material. It’s catalogue. I’m actually going to start releasing a lot more catalogue.”
The album also features appearances by Kool G Rap [click to read], Chuck D and 2Pac.
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Freddie Foxxx is also releasing Motorcycle Music volumes 1 through 3 for Krupt Mob, as well as working on his anticipated next studio album Amerikkkan Black Man and the Stop The Violence movement.
