It must have been nearly 15 years since I’ve spun The Pick, The Sickle and the Shovel by Long Island’s Gravediggaz. Just having (temporarily) exited my hip hop phase (one that had ignited back in Jr. High thanks to Columbia House and BMG… that seems like an eternity ago… man, I’m old), my days and evenings in late 1997 / early 1998 were instead given to The Clash and Ministry, among various pop-punk comps acquired at summer Warped Tours, but when a 19-year-old collector of, well, things, finds a pristine copy of some badass hip hop at a thrift store for about the cost of a basket of beer battered cheese curds, the hip hop torch begins to flicker again.