The Juggaknots’ self-titled debut on Fondle ‘Em was the second entry in the cult label’s short, hard-to-find, but massively influential catalog. And even before a 2002 Re:Release expansion that rescued it from vinyl-only scarcity, it felt more substantial as a nine-track, 36-minute EP/LP midpoint than a lot of the skit-bloated, filler-crammed 70-minute rap offerings to hit shelves during the peak-CD late ’90s. You can credit that in part to Breeze Brewin’s ability to be as devastating with a message track as he is in pure-battler form. Of course he’s nice with the bitter punchlines and the interrogative delivery in that latter state; there’s plenty of it in “Jivetalk,” “Epiphany,” “I’m Gonna Kill U,” and especially the imposingly agile-flowing “Troubleman” — that last one a rare moment where Breeze’s brother/beatmaker Buddy Slim gets to obliterate the mic alongside him (and over a loop from Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things,” just to complete the audacity of the thing). But the conceptual storytelling that made Breeze such a good fit for Prince Paul’s rap opera A Prince Among Thieves three years later is what pushes Juggaknots over the line from underground collector gem to true lost classic. “Clear Blue Skies” became such a standout off its depiction of white intergenerational familial panic over mixed-race relationships — a masterpiece in the rapper-dual-role so convincingly inhabited by Breeze that some people still mistake it for a Breeze/Slim back-and-forth —  that bootlegs turned it into the EP’s new de facto title track. But the crack-wave horror stories of “Loosifa” and the next-gen youth violence warnings of “Romper Room” are no less deeply felt, inhabited with lines containing whole social panoramas that toe the line between traumatized anger and intensely sorrowful empathy.