Living Large

Heavy D & the Boyz' debut album, Living Large, finds the group still in a formative stage, but they're already engaging enough to make the record entertaining, if nothing earth-shattering. This being 1987, the production is spare and heavy on the beatbox, with some samples of James Brown and other well-known vintage soul records. As an MC, Heavy D. strongly favors swingbeat rhythms at this stage (even saying so at the start of "Here We Go"), and he hasn't yet developed the smooth, resonant delivery that would make his most complex rhymes sound deceptively easy.