Before slow to speak’s Francis Englehardt & Paul Nickerson were full fledged adherents of deep house’s cultish following, the two teenage accomplices thirsted for a different musical elixir. “CORE–1992” is a tour-de-force of raw, unadulterated hip-hop from the glorious second wave of early 1990’s rap. This was an era when the music spoke for itself and the added amenities of flashy music videos and exorbitant major label contracts were nowhere to be found, when hip-hop was systematically revisiting the past, borrowing its most effective musical elements and creating a new funk that was capable of uttering pure truth through the dialogue of MC’ing & DJ’ing. From the innumerable contributions of the east coast underground to Dr. Dre’s collective of hardcore urban realism, slow to speak’s latest retrospective pays tribute to the unrepeatable brilliance of hip-hop’s peak, before gangster rap flooded the market with exaggerated posturing and the mainstream watered down the power of America’s other dance music with middle-class-friendly accessibility. “CORE–1992” is a reminder that deep house was by no means the exclusive champion of disco music’s fallout, and reaffirms that “fakin' the funk” will never be a substitute for the pure ingenuity of that special decade we call the 90’s.