HIP-HOP AT 50: CERTIFIABLY RAISED BY RAP

Sony Music Entertainment's Certified, the digital destination platform celebrating SME’s hip-hop catalogs, has announced the 7/28 arrival of a commemorative double-LP vinyl set entitled Raised by Rap: 50 Years of Hip Hop. Featuring 25 of rap’s most definitive anthems, it’ll be available in an array of colors at Target and Urban Outfitters. Pre-orders can be had here.

Tracks include Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky,” DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime,” Fugees’ “Ready or Not,” Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson” and Future’s “Mask Off.”

The release continues Certified’s celebration of Hip-Hop 50. Additional vinyl exclusives are expected in the coming months, among them Project Pat’s Mista Don’t Play Everythangs Workin’, produced by Three 6 Mafia’s DJ Paul and Juicy J.

Sony has also teamed up with the subscription service Get on Down for a 25th anniversary vinyl release of Big Pun’s debut, Capital Punishment. In honor of its own 30th anniversary, Get on Down will release a limited-edition, double-colored vinyl iteration of Run-DMC’s sixth studio album, Down With the King, bundled with a colored 7-inch single of “Down With the King” f/Pete Rock and CL Smooth b/w “Come on Everybody” f/Q-Tip.

Vinyl Me Please, another popular sub service, is reissuing several titles on vinyl as part of its “Fifty Years of Hip-Hop” campaign, including TLC’s CrazySexyCool and FanMail, Q-Tip’s Kamaal The Abstract, Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather, Boogie Down Productions’ By All Means Necessary and Wu-Tang Clan’s The W.

Certified and Vinyl Me Please will be on deck at LL COOL J's Rock the Bells Festival, 8/5 at Queens' Forest Hills Stadium, via a pop-up, at which showgoers will be able to shop for exclusive vinyl and sign up for special offers. For more information, click here. As for the full track list for Certified's Raised by Rap compilation, that can be found here. Meanwhile, we can be found wishing we could spit a 16-bar verse without running out of breath.