Today – we take you back 10 years. A decade. To a time when it was all so simple. This week’s Forgotten Fire comes courtesy of The Jigmastas, a group made up of rapper Kriminul and one of my personal favourite producers, DJ Spinna. Having first dropped in the mid 90′s, the duo really found their niche during the rise of the indies, and this song, in my humble opinion, was the group’s shining moment. Lyrical Fluctuation was a meeting of minds. Some of ‘underground’ hip-hop’s most eloquent wordsmiths got together to bless this slice of sonic loveliness by DJ Joc Max. Pharoahe Monch, Talib Kweli, Shabaam Sahdeeq, Mr. Complex (Mos Def would later pop up on the DJ Spinna produced remix) all repped on this posse cut from The Jigmastas album, Grass Roots: Lyrical Fluctuation.

This song reminds me of the end of the Rawkus era; The moment where the label really stopped looking like they were planning what was coming out and just let the money talk – around the time of the joint venture deal with MCA. They made some good decisions (releasing Big L’s posthumous The Big Picture) and some bad ones (not signing either Kanye West or Eminem when they had the chance), but as a figurehead for the indy movement of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, the Razor Blade reigned supreme for a moment in time.

After hearing this joint on a mixtape – I want to say one of DJ MK’s – I picked up the Beyond Real Experience album (a compilation from Spinna and Kriminul’s label) while I was home from university for Christmas break, and ended up adding it to the playlist on the radio show that I would turn up and host if I didn’t have anything else to do. Good times.