24‐Carat Black

Dale Warren was basically Stax royalty because his uncle was Estelle Axton, but he didn't want to write radio hits. He took a group of teenagers from Cincinnati called The Dapps, renamed them, and dragged them into the studio to record a soul opera about the systematic crushing of the Black working class. The label didn't know what the fuck to do with a record that had more in common with a bleak stage play than a dance floor. It’s a heavy, nihilistic piece of work that makes most 'conscious' soul from '73 look like a Hallmark card. They tracked Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth with massive orchestral arrangements that Warren wrote himself, leaning on his experience arranging for Isaac Hayes. The band was tight as a vice, but the record bombed because it was too honest and too cinematic for the charts. After the collapse of Stax, the master tapes for the follow-up sat in a basement for decades while the band evaporated into the humid Ohio air. It took thirty years for the crate-diggers and producers to realize Warren had mapped out the entire blueprint for cinematic hip-hop before the genre even had a name.

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