Today, as MHz Legacy continues to celebrate the release of their self-titled debut album, they’re taking part in the tradition of Throwback Thursday with one of the rarest songs from their vaults, “The Only Weathermen Song.” The song, accompanied here by new, exclusive artwork, stands apart as a classic from the early 2000s era of hip-hop and marks one of the only times that Copywrite, El-P, Camu Tao, Tage Future, Cannibal Ox, Jakki Da Motamouth, and Yak Ballz (otherwise known as The Weathermen) were all in one studio at the same time.

Reminiscing on the song, Copywrite says:

“Back in 2001, 2002, Camu and I where living in Middletown, New York. Cage lived there too, which is why I moved out there. We where supposed to go on a tour with all of the Eastern Conference Records artists, but Mad Skillz pulled out to vacation, so the tour fell through. Cage wasn’t too fond of Camu back then but ‘Mu expressed to me how bad he wanted to go to pursue music with me and I told him to come along. In those days, we would always drive my Ford Explorer from Middletown to Manhattan to record at DJ Mighty Mi’s spot on Lexington, and then we’d go visit El-P in Brooklyn and crash for several nights at a time. Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, of Cannibal Ox, had their own room downstairs and El’s studio was right next door, so there was always music going on.”

“This song was recorded around the time I was working on my debut album, The High Exhaulted, and Cannibal Ox was working on their album, The Cold Vein. It was a rare occasion to have Tage Future, Camu Tao, Jakki Da Motamouth, Cage, Cannibal Ox, El-P, and myself all in the same room at once, so I told them we needed to seize the moment and record something. El started pulling up beats and we all instantly agreed on this one. The beat played and we wrote – whoever had their verse first hit the mic booth, which, at that time, was El-P’s closet, and the rest is history. Camu was probably smokin’ a blunt with Vordul, so neither of them is on the song; I don’t know why El didn’t drop a verse. Back then we titled it “The Only Weathermen Song,” since it was so tough to get all of us together at the same time.”

    First and foremost, this isn’t The Weathermen album – so anyone looking for a full album of posse cuts from Cage, El-P, Copywrite, Camu Tao, Y@k Ballz, Jakki Tha MotaMouth, Breezly Brewin, Tame-One, and Vast Aire will not find it here, as you’ll have to look to The New Left later this year. What this is instead, is their answer to the 50 Cent street bootleg, a collection of freestyles over today’s hottest beats (all samples cleared? You can ask Biz…), as well as a few never-heard before cuts from the crew. 

    The disc is set off with “Made You Shit Your Pants”, where Nas “Made You Look” gets rained on by the Weathermen, with a show-stealing Cage who takes it home with “Most of all your favorite artists made ya’ll slaves to garbage / the instrumental dropped, they raped the carcass / then it’s off to the living for cannibalism, no kidding / cuz rap is dying and they didn’t make no ribbon!” Moving right into “Missy Done Justice” over Missy Elliott’s throwback joint of the year “Gossip Folks”, as El does his best Missy impression (funny), while Camu-Tao adopts Ludacris’ flow and almost outshines it.  However, while rhymes from Copywrite, Tame, Jakki, and Cage over their renditions of Erick Sermon’s “React” and Baby’s “What Happened To That Boy” are dope, their forced interpolations of the hooks could have been left alone. 

     But the true heat on this album isn’t among the freestyles, as they just sew it all together as something accessible for the average listener. The real heat on this album lies in the original tracks, such as Copywrite’s post High Exhaulted graduation joint, “10 Times” – an obnoxious Przm produced banger that further defines his style as nasty emcee. Peep the excellent “Chris Lighty”, where Vast Aire shares an incredible track with producer Camu Tao, or the ridiculous RJD2 produced “5 Left In The Clip (Remix)”, where the core Weathermen let loose, and save the best for last with Brewin’s Breezily approach.  

      While the Weathermen may catch a little flack for playing Ice Cube and jacking a bunch of popular beats to get your attention, on the other hand, it’s safe to say that it’s better to see these guys over these beats instead of wasting them on people like Trina and Baby. But again, the real meat is within the original selections included here. If these tracks are any indication of what The Weathermen have planned for their album, there’s gonna be a storm mo’fuckas.