Murder Was The Case 1994 vs Murder Was The Case 30th Anniversary RSD 2024
1994 release
2024 30th Anniversary release
Today let’s go over a copy of the original release of the ‘Murder Was The Case Soundtrack’ and compare this to the recently released Murder Was The Case 30th Anniversary RSD 2024 (Record Store Day) release.
The original song “Murder Was The Case” was included in Snoop Doggy Dogg’s classic 1993 release, DoggyStyle. In my opinion this is his best album simply because it’s an ‘un-skippable’ album. By that I mean if this was only ever released on cassette, I would not care to skip tracks because you could start playing this at any point in the album and let it play and all songs and skits are classics. In fact this is exactly what happened when this album came out – I recorded it to tape and had it playing on loop for months!
What appears on this soundtrack is the (again, in my opinion) superior Dr. Dre Remix version of ‘Murder Was The Case’ and the rest of the tracks are original tracks by various Death Row and Death Row affiliated artists.
Cover
The background colour on the cover jacket is slightly different but mostly the same between the two editions.
The font used for the mock gravestone inscription text on the top and ‘The Soundtrack’ text at the bottom is similar but slightly different on the RSD edition.
Lastly the red ‘Murder’ text is in red foil on the RSD edition.
The other main difference for the RSD edition is that the jacket cover is die cut. Pull out the record sleeves and the top sleeve reveals the full cover as you can see below.
When you pull out the sleeves in the RSD edition, the inner back cover is a cropped version of the picture on the back cover of the jacket.
Back Cover
The back cover has lots of differences when comparing the two releases.
The RSD edition is the same back cover used for the 1994 CD release. The CD version had references to Suge Knight and Interscope Records which have been removed.
The 1994 release is quite a different back cover – this includes all the album credits including all the producer credits, all the engineering credits and individual song credits. The 1994 version did not have a lyrics sheet or anything similar and so all the credits were included on the back cover of the jacket.
1994 release
2024 30th Anniversary release
Inner Record Sleeves
The 1994 edition has regular white record sleeves, but the 2024 RSD edition has more deluxe sleeves with graphics and a bonus which we’ll cover below.
2024 Inner Sleeve 1 Front
2024 Inner Sleeve 1 Back
2024 Inner Sleeve 2 Front
2024 Inner Sleeve 2 Back
Most notably the second inner sleeve has new graphics that is not on the original vinyl or CD release.
Vinyl
1994 release
2024 30th Anniversary release
The 1994 release has two black vinyls, four total sides. The record labels have the song titles for each side.
The RSD release is this nice translucent red, and all four sides of the two records have the same art and no song titles.
Murder Was The Case – case files
Case files folder
Case files – inner artwork
The included case files folder is what makes this release stand out.
Somewhat keeping with the overall theme of the soundtrack (a murder case) the RSD release includes a mock case file folder that you sometimes see in TV shows; a folder with a stack of paper, photos and notes. While you don’t get this, you get a folder with 4 sheets of graphics and on the back of each is hidden text.
The four ‘files’ included have ‘Murder Was The Case’ spread out over the four ‘documents’ and is the same artwork found in the CD release.
On the back of these have what looks like on first glance like a red and blue rubber stamps of ‘Murder’ stamped furiously all over the sheets.
However the cool gimmick of this RSD release is the hidden text on the four case files. By using the red vinyl as a ‘decoder’, place the record on the back of these case files and the lyrics of all the songs are revealed. This is similar to the red cellophane found with the old school Transformer toys to decode the strengths of the robots!
While this is a really inventive way to use the translucent red vinyl combined with the included artwork – reading lyrics while playing the records would of course be a very cumbersome way of reading the lyrics! You’re better off reading them on Genius instead.
Final thoughts
As a DJ, the 1994 release of ‘Murder Was The Case’ was great from a set perspective as there was 3 tracks per side which generally means good volume overall. The tracks that I wanted to play in certain sets included ‘Natural Born Killaz’ which paired Dr. Dre and his former running mate in N.W.A. – the incredible Ice Cube. Other tracks which I liked to play were ‘Come Up To My Room’ by Jodeci with Tha Dogg Pound and ‘Dollars & Sense’ by DJ Quik.
As a vinyl collector, having the original 1994 release is always cool in any collection but adding the Murder Was The Case 30th Anniversary RSD 2024 release is also nice to have and I do highly recommend.