Remember That?: Mood "Karma"

Written by Jay

Mood "Karma" from the album Doom, produced by DJ Hi-Tek.

Back in 96-97 I used to watch Rap City religiously.  This was back when BET actually played "real hip hop".  I was in high school at the time, and every day after School I would watch at least a good portion of music videos before doing anything else and during one of those days after school I was introduced to this song "Karma" from the group Mood.  I was loving the grittiness and simplistically of the video.  It was raw and straight to the point.... "just two dudes spitting", and the beat really grabbed me.  

I don't remember seeing a follow up video or any type of promotion for the group or for their album... and you know the saying "out of sight out of mind"... I really didn't think anything of them after I had stopped seeing the video in rotation (and I sure as heck didn't hear the song on my local radio station, but then again commercial radio ALWAYS seem to only play just commercial hip hop).  

A little bit after the time I stopped seeing the video on Rap City I copped an issue of The Source Magazine, saw the group's album in the Mic Check section and went "hey, I remember those guys!!!"  I think the album only got a 3 or 3 and a half mics or something.  The Source didn't really say too much about it, and the review along with the lack of advertising for the album didn't persuade me to want to purchase the LP but I do remember the write up introducing me to two names that I would remember later, Talib Kweli and DJ Hi-Tek.  When Hi-Tek started getting a lot of production work around the late 90s, and when Reflection Eternal's album came out, I remembered him being the guy that produced "Karma" for Mood.  Later on, when having "hey what happened to those guys" conversations with people concerning hip hop, I would often mention Mood and their video "Karma" and people would go ".....what??", or "I don't know, I don't remember those guys".... and well... that's my story, but here it is, I found it on Youtube and you can check it out below.