or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

I rediscovered Ahmad’s “Back in the Day” recently. I hadn’t heard the song since I was about 10 or 11, when I listened to my radio under the covers in bed, pretending to be asleep. It’s a track with a funky, loping bass sample that Ahmad uses to reminisce about his childhood, and even though the irony never struck me that he was talking about when he was my age, I knew exactly how he felt. O.C.’s debut album Word…Life is like Ahmad’s biggest single in one album—it taps into nostalgia for a time when I was barely conscious, yet O.C.’s memories become my own.

The album wasn’t properly released until well after it was recorded, and promptly disappeared—although it easily ranks with the best hip-hop albums from the same period, including legendary releases like Illmatic and Ready to Die. Individually, the songs touch common themes in hip-hop – “Constables” ranks with Main Source’s “Friendly Game of Baseball” and UGK’s “Protect & Serve” as sharp critiques of institutionalized racism on the police force, and “Time’s Up,” perhaps the most well-known and beloved track from Word…Life, is a ferocious evisceration of the hated strawman of hip-hop, the fronting MC. But just as Nas and Biggie transcend similar thematic devices through the pure power of personality and lyrical invention, O.C.’s debut was much, much more than the sum of its parts.

Listening to Word…Life is like looking at old photographs washed in the brown of age, bittersweet memories that are simultaneously joyous and heartrending. Particularly poignant is “Born 2 Live,” a track that epitomizes the album’s mood as a whole. O.C. speaks eloquently about his childhood, recalling pick-up games of football, karate flicks and Saturday morning cartoons. Particularly resonant is the death of his friend; “a Spanish kid we were close with was hit by a car.” The pain he feels is echoed by the mournful chorus: “We’re born to live, a life then die / Life’s so damn short man I wonder why.” This sense of existentialism mixed with a deep-seated longing for a more innocent past comes up again and again throughout the album; O.C.’s mic presence keeps it from being overbearing.

The production—mostly handled by fellow D.I.T.C. member Bucwild with assists from Lord Finesse and Organized Konfusion—displays the depth of the early 90s production aesthetic. Full, murky bass samples and sharp, rattling snares meet mournful piano riffs, giving the album a melancholy feel, like listening to music that you know you haven’t heard before but sounds as familiar as the music you would hear as a child. The beats are very much of the time, in a good way—the minimalist sampling allows for a lyrical focus, accenting the importance of the rapper. And O.C. makes the best use of his spotlight imaginable.

He easily transcends the intensity of “Time’s Up,” which (as great as it is) does not reflect the whole of his lyrical abilities. His voice has a magnetic quality to it, a skill that allows him to reflect both inner pain and external strength. It was this pathos that lends his music such beautiful quality—a reflection of everything that made him who he was and where he was coming from, a love letter to his childhood and a reminder that like a fading photograph, memories vanish over time. He would never be able to follow up his debut with anything that could remotely compare to it—its non-release seemed to drain him of the hunger and fire that he had during the recording of this album. But thanks to its recent re-release, now Word…Life’s memories can become yours, too.