Large Professor 1st Class Review

"Queens represent, buy the album when I drop it." I'm sure when Large Professor ended his guest verse on A Tribe Called Quest's "Keep It Rollin'" with this line, he didn't anticipate how long we would have to wait before having a chance to cop his album. Nine years is a hell of a long time, even for a cat like Extra P who is as skilled on the boards as he is on the mic. So can an official Large Professor album still fit into the ever changing landscape of Hiphop today? Many would think so - the clamour on Ebay everytime someone decides to auction their copy of his bootleg album on Geffen, or the classic Main Source "Breakin' Atoms" LP certainly suggests that people still wanna hear his words. His production work on past Nas, Akinyele and ATCQ albums still gets regular rotation by heads worldwide, while his latest outing on the boards on the old-track-on-new-album "You're Da Man" for Nas' "Stillmatic" longplayer suggests that he hasn't lost the magic touch. With many people fiending for Rakim's Dre-fuelled reappearance on wax, is it possible that another true Hiphop great could surpass the R with his own "back from the dead" act?