Living Large

Heavy D & The Boyz may be enshrined in the collective pop cultural consciousness as the author of light-weight crossover hits like “Now That We Found Love” and “Black Coffee”, but his best work, which can be found on his classic 1987 debut, Livin’ Large, stays close to the street corner bred, New York sound that would be perfected by contemporaries like The Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, and Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Livin’ Large was an important step towards mainstream commercial acceptance for the New York Hip-Hop community and, listening to it today, one can still delight in Heavy D’s effortless, Caribbean inflected flow and the dusty soul derived beats that form the backbone of tracks like “Money Earnin’ Mount Vernon” and “I’m Getting’ Paid”. Heavy D brought classic New York boom-bap to the masses, and though his legacy may have been slightly diluted by his subsequent forays into the pop mainstream, Livin’ Large remains a relentlessly compelling snapshot of the verve and creativity of Hip-Hop’s golden age.