”Escape From The City Of Angels”, underground hip hop classic

05 Apr ”Escape From The City Of Angels”, underground hip hop classic

 
ESCAPE FROM THE CITY OF ANGELS_single Cover

”Escape From The City Of Angels” is a hip hop song recorded in 1995 by Californian-born lyricist and vocalist, Ithaka (featuring Marta Dias) which, in 1997, appeared in Columbia Pictures’ feature film release The Replacement Killers starring Mira Sorvino, Chow Yun-fat, Clifton Collins Jr. and was directed by Antoine Fuqua, recipient of the Black Reel Award for Outstanding Director. The song has also appeared in the television series Good Girls Don’t (which was shown on Oprah Winfrey’s Oxygen Channel) during its June 18, 2004 episode entitled, ”Addicted to Love”.

The song was first included on Ithaka’s debut album, Flowers And The Color Of Paint in 1995.
Although Ithaka is from Southern California, the track and entire album were recorded at Namouche Studios in Lisbon, Portugal where the artist had lived from 1992 until 1998 and both song and album are often included in a genre of music known as Hip hop tuga, or Portuguese hip hop.

Most of the self-reflective lyrics for Escape From the City Of Angels were written by Ithaka Darin Pappas over the flight required to arrive from Los Angeles to Lisbon. A destination where, it is said, he arrived with a one-way ticket and less than a hundred dollars to his name, yet remained over six years.

Produced by Joe Fossard (engineer) and DJ Grizzly, the song included backing vocals by São Tomean Portuguese singer Marta Dias – and also featured bass guitar by Francisco Rebelo, tenor saxophone by Paulo Muiños and trumpet by Nuno Reis (all members of the Portuguese band, Cool Hipnoise.

The original pressing of Flowers And The Color Of Paint was fifteen-hundred copies and although Escape from The City Of Angels appeared in a main stream Hollywood movie scene with three Oscar-nominated actors, (resulting in upwards of 600,000 downloads in China alone) there was never an official soundtrack released other than the classical score by Gregory Harrison which excluded Escape From The City Of Angels and also other film tracks by The Crystal Method, Talvin Singh, Tricky,
Death In Vegas, Hed PE and Brad.

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