Lone Catalysts - Lone Catalysts 1998
Lone Catalysts - Politix 2000
J. Rawls f/ J-Live - The Great Live Caper (Part 1) 2001

We used to play this game while standing in line at shows called six degrees of rap. Easy premise: name two artists and connect them using collabs. (It also got some burn on RMHH). The game always broke down to trying to link artists from entirely different scenes and eras. Fun shit like “PRINCE WHIPPER WHIP TO CAP-ONE” or “MC EIHT TO ALL NATURAL! WHAT!” And J. Rawls was this secret weapon because dude did a bunch of work for Dose One, as well as all his tracks with assorted east coast underground heroes.

Anyways, I always liked Lone Catalysts, not just because they were Pittsburgh homeys like myself, but because J. Rawls was so much better than so many producers churning out loops and beats. And what did it was his ability to flip jazz loops (or jazzy sounding loops) in some kind of interesting way long after the art was dead. By the time Rawls hit his stride, underground rap beats tended to either be straight-ahead Primo bites or “my crates are deeper than yours” super-rare shit. The former beats were just boring, the latter beats expanded the sonic pallete quite a bit, for better or worse. Where many producers moved on to psych guitars and classical string stabs, Rawls kept it simple with piano soundscapes, sax hits and faint swishy ride cymbals.