Socalled

Twenty years ago, Josh “Socalled” Dolgin’s Ghettoblaster exploded onto the scene as a landmark album redefining contemporary Jewish music, blending hip-hop, klezmer, funk, and soul with humor, virtuosity, and deep fluency in all of the cultures being channeled. Following its 2006 release, Ghettoblaster quickly became a touchstone of the early-2000s Jewish music renaissance.

This 20th-anniversary remaster and reissue of Ghettoblaster brings the album to vinyl for the first time ever, retaining the energy and irreverence that made it such a groundbreaking and influential release while presenting it to a new generation. Drawing on Yiddish song, Hasidic melodies, hip-hop beat production, live instrumentation, and the lyrical mastery of both Yiddish and hip-hop traditions, Ghettoblaster rejects rigid genre boundaries in favor of hybridity and experimentation.

Both deeply rooted in the past and brazenly of its time, Ghettoblaster brings together tradition and innovation with an ease that remains striking two decades on. This anniversary edition invites longtime listeners to hear the album anew and reintroduces a record that opened the door to a vibrant, boundary-crossing Jewish musical world.