Joe Bataan – Drug Story

Rare and unreleased material from Joe Bataan and his Ghetto Records vaults, including an entire side of Bataan’s never-before-issued Latin Funk that spans the gamut from Salsa to Soul. “Drug Story” was inspired by true events and ranks highest among Bataan’s finest achievements as the poet laureate of El Barrio.

Ghetto Records was Latin music legend Joe Bataan’s way to get over on The Man and out of the ’hood, a bold move by an artist looking for independence and creative control in an industry that had exploited his talents and treated him like chattel.

As Bataan puts it today, “Ghetto Records was part of my journey, a stepping stone to everything else that I’ve done. I learned enough that it enabled me to get out of the box with my thinking, it showed me how to deal with adversity.” Like many dreams and schemes born of the street, this one was audacious, perhaps even reckless to a fault.

Hatched from desperation yet full of hope Ghetto Records came crashing down shortly after its inception. The seven albums in its discography languished out of print - until now. These are the definitive reissues of these albums, licensed from Joe Bataan, with his oversight and input into a – page oversize book by Pablo Yglesias that details Bataan’s larger-than-imagination life and his little Latin label that could.