Jewelz
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Album Summary
O.C., the Brooklyn lyricist born Omar Credle and a proud member of the Diggin' In The Crates Crew, dropped 'Jewelz' in 1997 on Payday Records, a label that had a real ear for that underground New York sound. Produced largely within the D.I.T.C. family, the album carried the fingerprints of that tight-knit collective of beatmakers and MCs who were holding down the art form with a seriousness and integrity that the mainstream wasn't always ready to honor. Recorded during a period when hip-hop was splitting hard between commercial gloss and raw, uncompromising lyricism, O.C. stepped into the booth and laid down something that felt like a mission statement — sixteen tracks deep, from the 'Intro' all the way through the title track 'Jewelz,' every bar measured and deliberate, the kind of album you had to sit with and let breathe.
Reception
- Critics in the underground hip-hop community received 'Jewelz' with genuine respect, recognizing O.C. as one of the most technically gifted lyricists operating in New York at the time.
- The album did not achieve significant mainstream chart success, as Payday Records lacked the major-label muscle to push it into wide commercial circulation, leaving it to find its audience organically through word of mouth and dedicated hip-hop heads.
- 'Jewelz' has grown considerably in critical estimation over the years, often cited in retrospective discussions about the most lyrically dense and consistent New York underground albums of the late 1990s.
Significance
- O.C. used 'Jewelz' as a platform to articulate a philosophy of authenticity and craft at a moment when the culture was being pulled in every direction, and the album stands as one of the purest expressions of the D.I.T.C. crew's values — skill, substance, and borough pride above all else.
- The album represents a significant document of late-1990s New York underground hip-hop, capturing the aesthetic and moral code of a generation of MCs who believed the pen was everything, and that the integrity of the rhyme was not negotiable.
- Tracks like 'The Chosen One' and 'Hypocrite' reinforced O.C.'s reputation as a philosopher-MC, someone who used the album format not just to entertain but to interrogate the culture from the inside — a tradition that traces back to the very roots of conscious hip-hop in New York City.
Tracklist
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A1 Intro 87
0:36
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A2 My World 178
4:16
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A3 War Games 177
3:30
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A4 Can't Go Wrong 170
3:46
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B1 The Chosen One 86
4:35
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B2 Dangerous 95
4:15
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B3 Win The G 86
5:45
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C1 Far From Yours 172
4:58
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C2 Stronjay 90
5:06
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C3 M.U.G. 180
3:21
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C4 The Crow 89
4:27
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D1 You And Yours 93
4:22
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D2 Hypocrite 127
2:31
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D3 It's Only Right 94
3:54
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D4 Jewelz 76
5:56
Artist Details
Strap in, baby, because Omar Credle — known to the world as O.C. — was one of Brooklyn's most gifted lyrical architects, a Brownsville-bred wordsmith whose razor-sharp pen game and philosophical depth set him apart from the pack in the golden era of New York hip-hop. Riding alongside the legendary Diggin' in the Crates Crew, he blessed the culture with his 1994 debut *Word...Life*, a deeply introspective masterwork that showcased his ability to weave gritty street reality with soulful self-examination. Though the commercial spotlight never shined on him the way his talent deserved, true believers and crate diggers have always known that O.C. was — and remains — one of the purest emcees to ever pick up a microphone.
