O.C.: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

April 18, 2018 | Abby O’Neill -- As a member of Brooklyn rap collective Diggin’ In The Crates, Omar Credle, aka O.C., helped shape what was known as the golden age of 1990s rap. Marked by loops sourced from jazz recordings and lyrics rooted in one-upmanship, O.C’s two ’90s albums, and Jewelz established him as a rapper’s rapper, an underground star. O.C. was joined at his Tiny Desk by Soul’D U Out, a jazz ensemble led by Grammy-winning trumpeter Maurice “Mobetta“ Brown. The live instrumentation replicated the sample-heavy original recordings perfectly. The crew kicked off the concert with “New Day,“ from O.C.’s 2017 album Same Moon Same Sun, which features young R&B singer Tay Bell on the hook. The rest of the set was vintage cuts from O.C.’s heyday. “Day One,“ a . posse cut, featured emcee and producer Lord Finesse, and the joy that poured forth during his verse belied its level of difficulty. (It reminded me that it’d been too long since I enjoyed a Lord Finesse album.) Then O.C. treate