Who knew one existed? I caught wind of this via this website. Apparently it was a bonus track only available on the tape version of “It was Written”.
I’m not sure if the fluidity of the regular tracklisting would be maintained if this “Silent Murder” track was inserted somewhere, but I definitely think it would have closed out the cd version of the album quite nicely.
4 Comments
April 6, 2008 at 10:21 pm
i don’t remember it being on the tape version but i ran across this song when they first dropped the “if i ruled the world” single as it was included in the sampler. nonetheless this track is dope. i wish it would have made its’ way onto the album. as you say, it would have closed out the cd quite nicely. “it’s sorta like the conclusion of color purple…”
April 6, 2008 at 11:10 pm
So it was on the sampler huh? I know I would have played the hell out of it and then been mad as hell it wasn’t on the album..lol.
I love samplers though because they’re usually free. Or remember when back in the day the cassette singles had snippets from the album on the b-side? I remember buying the D’Angelo “Brown sugar” cassette single and they had a little 30 second snippet of “Me and those dreamin eyes” on there. Man, I played it over, and over and over again until I was finally able to buy the album.
Nowadays though it’s pretty common for there to be a gem on the sampler that never makes it on the album due to sample clearance reasons or some other circumstance. And if you never got the sampler you would never even know it existed….which is what happened in my case with this song.
Thanks for clearing that up Rodney
May 24, 2008 at 10:11 am
been a nas diehard since live at the BBQ…silent murder was only on the tape version, which i has first, then noticed it was on the CD and never release as a single or b-side. not sold on itunes, hard to find online but it’s out there.
silent murder and understanding remain two of nas’ greatest, yet most elusive tracks ever.
June 18, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Xerographic
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