For some fanatics, MP3
collections of entire discographies have been lovingly passed from hand to hand
for years. Record labels probably should have caught on earlier, but the past
year and a half has seen a trio of MP3 box sets: legally dubious boxes dedicated
to the compilation series Ultimate Breaks & Beats and Streetsounds Electro, and now this completely legit set. B-Boy Records:
The Masterworks stuffs four CDs with
everything the short-lived mid-'80s Bronx rap label ever put out, from obscure
12-inches to J.V.C. Force's classic "Strong Island" and Boogie Down
Productions' classic debut, Criminal Minded, which in 1987 helped jump-start gangsta rap. That
album should be required listening; the rest of The Masterworks is a lot iffier—though in their rough-and-ready
way, a lot of these tracks offer nearly as illuminating a portrait of the
genre's ungainly growing pains as it prepared to occupy the driver's seat of
the next decade's pop.