Having risen through the ranks of Wu-Tang Clan affiliates with guest spots on Gravediggaz’ 6 Feet Deep, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version and GZA’s Liquid Swords, Killah Priest made a deep impression with 1998’s sprawling, metaphysical 74-minute debut Heavy Mental. Backed by dark beats, lush strings and well-chosen soul samples from 4th Disciple (the RZA’s most able understudy), the spiritually-minded Priest proved himself a hypnotic swordsman, his agreeable low gruff flow smuggling in acute lyrical reference to all manner of religious and historical myths with a side order of pre-millennium tension. Someone who never rhymed for the sake of riddlin’ and rapped as if he was reciting doctrines, the prolific Priest still had two powerful album offcuts put aside to grace the flip of his second solo single ‘One Step’ (a laidback takedown of wack emcees that starts with a reference to Lakim Shabazz B-side ‘Your Arm’s Too Short To Box With God’). With its upfront flip of the horn break from Mary Wells’ ‘It Had to Be You’, ‘Moanin’’ was commercial enough to be an A-side as Priest traded rhymes with Shanghai the Messenger and Killa Sin. A universal anthem of pain, it found him he admonishing the “blasphemers, adulterers and drug schemers” as he stood “strong like a black pope” against the crack addiction ravaging his community