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Ice-T’s Power Track by Track

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Ice T Power Track by Track
By Rob Parkour

“Ice-T is a rapper? I didn’t know that.” Neither of my hiking partners knew Ice-T came to
fame as one of the pioneers of Gangsta Rap, to them Ice-T was just the guy from Law & Order
SVU. I thought of referencing a famous Ice-T hit to jog their memories, but I realized that even
his singles didn’t get the airplay or crossover success of a song like Biggie’s “Big Poppa.”
Between Ice-T’s lack of radio hits, Coco, and his role on Law & Order, Ice’s rap career never
gets the credit it deserves. Let’s change that and unpack his classic second LP, 1988’s Power,
track by track.

“Power” – The drums aren’t a James Brown sample, but nonetheless you can tell that you’re
listening to a late-80’s rap album just by the first ten seconds. “The rap motivator, teacher, talker,
night rhyme stalker/Words thrillin’, so real they’re chillin’ the hit author/Gettin’ louder than a
shotgun, you don’t want none.” The song serves as a great intro for album because it represents
the ethos of the album in a way no other single track does. The biggest beef I have with this song
isn’t with the actual song, it’s that “Power” takes the rightful spot of “Colors” as the album lead
off. The track “Colors” is the theme song for the 1988 film of the same title. In “Colors,” one of
his biggest hits, Ice-T details the dangers and drama of gang life in LA. “Colors” is better than
this song and more recognizable to hip-hop fans than any other song on the album. So why
wasn’t it included on the album? Ice-T gave this horrible excuse in Brian Coleman’s book Check
the Technique:

“I don’t know why I didn’t include ‘Colors’ on Power. It was probably just timing. I
never really thought about it, to be honest. I love that song, that’s the one I close my show to
even to this day.”
You don’t know why? Timing?! You never thought about it?! Well I have! I’ve spent
that past two months trying to figure it out, and that answer isn’t good enough. I’m not an A&R,
but you might want to include your concert closer on one of your albums. Regardless of how you
slice it, “Colors” is one of Ice-T’s best handful of songs. Like I said before, leaving “Colors” out
is more about a missed opportunity than an indictment on the “Power” track. Ice-T sounds great
on here and sets the scene of LA street crime and its consequences.

“Drama” – Ice-T will be the first to tell you that Philadelphia emcee Schooly D inspired him to
break out of the electro hip-hop he was doing and start making hard tracks like “6 in Tha
Mornin’.” Hardcore rhymes come so naturally to Ice-T, if you’ve ever watched his documentary,
Art of Rap, or listened to any interview with him, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Ice-T
unprompted will start reciting one of the thousands of street raps he has saved in his mental
rolodex: it’s not just a bar or two…he’ll rap an entire verse and you can feel the interviewer
thinking, “Okay that was cool but what does that have to do with Fab 5 Freddy?” Hard bars came
easier to Ice-T than maybe any other 80’s rapper this side of N.W.A.
I love how he starts the track: “Cruisin’ for a bruisin’ I’m takin’ no crap/Pipe bomb in my
trunk, got a nine in my lap.” Ice-T makes driving around with a gun in your lap sound as normal
as someone driving with an iPhone in their cupholder. Ice raps about coming home and seeking
revenge: “Gauges out the window, one lay cross the roof/They all die if those suckers ain’t bullet

proof/I’m rollin’ death tollin’ of course the car’s stolen/But I’m blind to what’s wrong, all I want is
what’s golden.” That’s great 80’s gangsta rap.
If you go beneath the surface, you’ll realize that Ice-T’s rhymes aren’t just braggadocios,
‘my car, my gun, my woman’ raps. Ice-T’s raps are real life. If he commits a robbery, it’ll be on
the run in the next verse. Here, Ice-T and his accomplice rob an electronics warehouse and his
man snitches on him. Ice-T said he learned from his father to tell morality tales rather than
glorifying the game or saying ‘don’t do this.’ Ice said his father would tell him about someone
robbing a million dollars and they would OD later that night.
The bass for this track is crazy, sounding straight out of a techno song, but bumps in the
car. Producer Afrika Islam produced the whole album, and has one of the most 80’s hip-hop
sounding names. He produced Ice-T’s first four albums, including the seminal OG. Before he
made his way out to the West Coast, Afrika Islam got his producing PhD at an early age by
joining the Rock Steady Crew at 10 years old, producing under hip-hop pioneer Afrika
Bambaataa, while being part of the Zulu Nation. He even was a member of the Supreme Team.
When Afrika Islam arrived in LA, Ice-T drove him around the rough parts of LA to give the
Bronx native an idea of what type of sound he was going for. For Power, Afrika Islam used two
SP-1200s and a 909-drum machine. On this particular track, Afrika Islam took a 303 and put it
into the SP-1200: I have no idea what that means but the results are glorious. In the James Brown
drum sample era of the late 80’s, it’s refreshing to hear someone who clearly likes to spend his
time geeking out on drum machines. Afrika Islam fell off the face of the hip-hop world after Ice-
T’s classic 1991 OG album. He went to Europe and got some of the endless stream of money
that seems to be available to any American musician who’s ever been associated with a famous
American…keep gettin’ dem checks Afrika Islam! Had Afrika Islam chose to stay in America

and worked with other artists, he very well could’ve gone down as one of the greatest producers
in hip-hop history. Afrika Islam went out on top: having your last moment in the game being the
producer on OG is the rap producer’s equivalent of John Elway retiring after winning the 1998
Super Bowl.

“Heartbeat” – Afrika Islam uses a War sample to give us a third straight fire beat. Ice-T is
always in control over the beat, making you bop your head for the entire track. I gained a deeper
appreciation for this song the more time I spent with the album. One of the more rewarding
aspects of having a long term phase with an album is songs you didn’t instantly love become
some of of your favorites.
Ice-T is nearly a flawless rapper: he’s part of the rare breed that can effortlessly glide
over any type of beat, slow or fast. Ice is in full control of his tempo. He’s never in a rush, and
gets to his sweet spots while staying perfectly on beat. Part of my brand is being a voice snob: I
put a disproportionate amount of importance on how clear and enjoyable your voice is. My three
favorite rappers, 2Pac, Rakim and Jay-Z, happen to be 1, 2 and 3 in my voice rankings. Out of
new rappers, Nipsey Hussle would be first in my voice rankings, and Kenrick Lamar would be
dead last.
Let’s take a break from the music to discuss the album cover, one of the most iconic in
music history. Ice-T’s girlfriend at the time, 19-year-old Darlene Ortiz, appeared on the cover of
Ice-T’s debut Rhyme Pays wearing a bikini in a Porsche with Ice and Afrika Islam. Darlene
appears on the single cover for “I’m a Pusher” in a skinny red bikini that accentuates her curves
perfectly on what is one of the best single covers of all time. On this cover, Darlene takes it up a

notch, brandishing a sawed-off shotgun and wearing a bikini that has approximately 14 square
inches of material to cover her nipples and box. “Your album was the first album I ever jerked
off to,” N.O.R.E. told Ice-T during his Drink Champs Podcast. The first? What the hell was the
second, N.O.R.E.? This cover is famous for many reasons but “the most jerked off to album
cover of all time” may be the best. I imagine in the 80’s, this cover was as crucial for the streets
as the Bo Derek poster was to pimple-faced white teenagers.
My god Darlene Ortiz is a thing of beauty. Sure, her posing strongly with a gun is an
important image for women and all that, but I just can’t get over how hot she looks. Go on a
Google image deep dive of Darlene Ortiz in the 80’s and 90’s. Your jaw will drop, she’s that
bad. Which leads me to my next take: Ice-T should have never left Darlene Ortiz for Coco.
Those who know me personally may be surprised, “but Rob, I thought you loved thick women!”
First of all, Darlene Ortiz is 80’s thick, especially for a 19-year-old. If you look at
pictures of her in the 90’s when she filled out in her 20’s, you’ll notice she only gets hotter and
thicker as the years went on. Second of all, I am not entirely sure Coco’s ass is real…scratch that
I’m positive it’s fake. I saw a picture of her in a magazine when she was 18 years old and she
was curvy for a white girl but her ass wasn’t crazy. Actually, it was probably smaller than
Darlene Ortiz’ on the cover of Power. Coco had a doctor come on her own talk show to
“prove” she didn’t have an ass job, but so did America’s most famous fake butt. I remember
being forced against my will to watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians in 2012, and Kim took
(and passed) a similar test to prove her ass is real, and we all know that’s a lie. I understand (and
love) the fact that asses get bigger as women get older, but Coco’s ass grew out of proportion for
what a Serbian woman’s body should look like.

Coco will willingly admit that her tits are fake (a tell), and she’s obviously had work
done on her face. I find it funny she thinks that’s any less shameful than having an ass job. When
your butt is the only reason people care about you, you have to hold on to the illusion as long as
you can. Darlene on the other hand is 100% natural and her personality strikes me as down to
earth and chill. Isn’t hip-hop about loyalty? Wouldn’t have it been cool to leave the game with
the chick you came into it with? I can’t imagine a reality where Coco would be a better hang
than Darlene Ortiz. Objectively, Darlene has a prettier face than Coco. On his last album,
2006’s Gangsta Rap, Ice-T tried to recreate the magic of the Power cover by having a nude Coco
laid across Ice-T’s naked body. The result? No one cared about the cover or the crappy music
inside. Darlene Ortiz truthers stand up!

“The Syndicate” – If you’ve read my reviews on golden age hip-hop albums, you’ll start to
realize I have certain pet peeves. My biggest pet peeve from that era is rappers having one
reggae-centric song stuck in the middle of an otherwise classic album. I’m also unnecessarily
hard on rappers who experience a sophomore slump after a classic debut. Another pet peeve of
mine is having your homies, double-A rappers, jump on a track that only you deserve to spit on
(the beats for these songs are always very good to compensate for the lack of talent which makes
the star’s smaller role that much more frustrating).
This may sound hypocritical since 2Pac is my favorite rapper and was known to have his
young homies featured on his albums. I stand by Big Skye and the rest of the Thug Life’s
contributions on Thug Life; the Outlawz weren’t as enjoyable as Thug Life, but at least they were
lyrical (I suspect 2Pac wrote their lyrics). Donald D, who met Afrika Islam when they were both

members of the Zulu Nation, has two verses on here and actually doesn’t sound terrible. Hen-
Gee is also featured on two verses but leaves something to be desired.
It’s pretty crazy that Ice-T ended up getting a Syndicate album and a Donald D solo
album (which somehow charted and was produced by our guy Afrika Islam). Donald D sure was
in the right place at the right time. Ice-T’s heart and intentions were good: The Syndicate was his
way of giving back and trying to put his homies on. It’s ironic that the Syndicate was
compromised of all New York rappers. There was a third album birthed from the Syndicate.
Remember House of Pain? You’re trying not to? Okay, well do you remember the white rapper
Everlast who had a beef with Eminem? Yeah, that guy. Nothing like white on white rap beef!
How much leverage did Ice-T have with Warner Bros. in 1989 to release the Everlast solo album
Forever Everlasting? Who greenlit that album title? While we’re talking about Everlast, have
you ever had an itch to listen to a hip-hop, blues and rock fusion album? Yeah? Well you’re in
luck, Everlast’s second LP from 1998, Whitey Ford Sings the Blues has you covered. I’m not
sure what’s weirder, the fact that AllMusic gave a Hip-Hop/Blues/Rock album 4 and a half stars,
the fact that Sadat X is featured on two songs, or the fact that having his name attached to the
album didn’t kill elderly Whitey Ford.
Speaking of Thug Life, you’ll recognize the “Aqua Boogie” Parliament sample from
“Shit Don’t Stop.” The beat is great and makes you wish that Ice-T had three 16 bar verses to
himself, but Hen-Gee and Donald D are serviceable and don’t ruin the track.

“Radio Suckers” – Ice-T samples Chuck D’s voice on the hook and does his best Public Enemy
impression on the track, admonishing rap stations for playing cheesy commercial songs instead

of the real rhymes that were being ignored. Someone even more cynical than me may say that
Ice-T eventually sold out, because he’s been in over 400 episodes of Law & Order, but I think
that’s wrong for a couple reasons. For one, it’s better that he sold out acting in a show (that
somehow every American woman has seen in its entirety) than if he had started to make
commercial rap singles. People don’t realize Ice-T was already 29 by the time his debut dropped
which is a very old age to be starting rap at. Off the top of my head, only Rick Ross, dropping
Port of Miami at 30, was older at the time of his debut. What was Ice supposed to do? Continue
rapping until he completely destroyed his legacy? According to Ice-T, nowadays he’s all about
eating, living good, relaxing, playing Xbox and going to shoot Law & Order: seems like a pretty
good life to me.

“I’m Your Pusher” – In Ice-T’s first single he uses music as an alternative to drugs. Afrika
Islam samples “Pusherman” by Curtis Mayfield for a beat that is incredibly smooth and easy on
the ears. I feel like I’ve heard “Pusherman” sampled before, but almost all the samples since this
song sample Curtis Mayfield’s voice and not his music. “I’m Your Pusher” does the opposite,
sampling the music, but using a real-life pimp to sing the hook. Pimpin’ Rex sings the chorus
and does an excellent jobm but that shouldn’t be a shock to anyone: if your name is Pimpin’ Rex,
you excel at everything.
“Pusherman” is probably Ice-T’s best all around song: at the very least it checks the most
boxes and would be the track you would show to someone who never listened to Ice-T. I actually
played it for my hiking friend who’d never heard Ice-T’s music and she was so impressed that
she immediately added the song to her iTunes. Ice-T’s always had music that could crossover but
as he detailed on the previous track, he never had the machine behind him.

Ice-T dedicated a full verse to dissing LL Cool J on “Syndicate,” starting off the verse by
telling LL, “A lot of MC’s like to talkin’ bout they self/A first-grade topic, I think you need
help/How many time on one album can you say you’re def?/I’m baaaad- Yo punk, save your
breath.” One song later, Ice-T tries to sell a fiend rap instead of drugs and the fiend gladly
accepts Ice-T’s array of musical offerings including Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Doug E.
Fresh, Public Enemy, Biz Markie, and even LL’s biggest rival Kool Moe Dee, but when Ice
offers the fiend some LL Cool J the fiend tells him, “Nah, nah man, I don’t want none of that/
You can keep that man.” I remember the first time I heard it took me by surprise and I started
laughing out loud. Why the hell would Ice-T want to diss LL Cool J? According to Ice-T, LL
was claiming he was the best rapper out and Ice-T, being a major player on the West, had to
stake his claim and represent his coast. That statement doesn’t seem like enough to start a beef:
Benzino and his neck had the same conspiracy I have of what started the beef. Benzino asked
Ice-T during his appearance on the Drink Champs Podcast if LL Cool J fucked Darlene Ortiz.
Now that would’ve made sense to why Ice-T was going at LL so hard, and would’ve been a
great wrinkle in the beef. Just look at how bad Darlene looks in the “Pusherman” video! If LL
Cool J was straight, he surely would have smashed Darlene. There’s an old saying in the NBA
that all fights are either over women or gambling debts. You would think more beefs would start
over a rapper taking another rapper’s girl: hip-hop beef may include that babymother aspect (Jay-
Z’s infamous Jeep line on “Superugly,” Rick Ross and 50), but rarely does the beef start over a
woman. Someone who has insider industry secrets needs to release the oral history of rap beefs
that started over a woman.
According to Ice-T, the beef was never personal, the two hadn’t met until a few years
ago. The ironic part about LL and Ice-T beefing is that they have very similar career paths. In the

80’s they both released multiple successful albums (BAD, Radio, Power, The Iceberg) which
made them a star on their respective coasts. In the early 90’s they both released their magnum
opus (OG, Mama Said Knock You Out) and had great acting moments (Ice-T in New Jack City,
LL starring in the criminally underrated sitcom, In the House). Then, they both experienced
identity crisis’ (Ice-T’s rock phase & LL’s West Coast phase) before their music careers slowed
down to a crawl. LL and Ice-T both released albums in the 00’s to little fanfare, before becoming
full-time actors on a crime procedural show (NCIS and Law & Order). In 2018, they’re both
known as actors instead of rappers, despite being somewhere in the 15-20 range of best rappers
of all time.
Afrika Islam remembers when the beef came to a head and they confronted Ice-T: “We
all sat down at a table. I remember it was me, Flavor Flav, Red Alert, Mike Tyson and Afrika
Bambaataa and we were like ‘you have to stop this.’ LL was battling Kool Moe Dee and Dee and
Ice were friends. Having Mike Tyson there made sense, because he was down with hip-hop and
the Zulus, and I’ve always considered rappers like boxers anyways.” Wait just a second, can we
go back to the part where Flavor Flav, Mike Tyson, Red Alert, Bamabaataa and Ice-T were
hanging out at the same table?! What a meeting of the minds! “Having Mike Tyson there made
sense,” might be the beginning of my favorite sentence ever.
LL Cool J beef aside, this is a classic song that you will not tire of regardless of how
many spins you give it. This song also includes one of my favorite lines of the album when Ice-
T claims that, “People high off dope but still physically fit.” I understand what the line means,
but the imagery of a bunch of jacked fiends doing pull ups in an outdoor California beach gym
cracks me up every time. I’m curious though, do in shape fiends work out before, after or during

their first high of the day? Personally, I can’t work out even if I just smoked a little bit of weed,
so I can’t imagine doing burpies high off crack.

“Personal” – The five scariest words in rap: “Are the guitars on there?” Remember my hip-hop
pet peeves? Here’s another one to add to the list: rappers trying to incorporate rock guitar riffs
into their rap beats. The guitar riff comes from the 1976 Heart song “Magic Man,” and somehow
Africa Islam takes the corny riff and makes it into a pretty good beat, at least when compared to
other rap-rock beats of the era. The most egregious example of this is on No One Can Do It
Better when D.O.C. says “Dre laid the tracks, I laid the vocals, we need some guitar that rocks,
know what I’m saying?” No, I don’t know what you’re saying! I literally almost got into a car
accident one time because I was fumbling around with my phone trying to skip the song before
the guitar came on.
But what about Run-DMC? They’re an exception to the rule but their best stuff isn’t rock
based, or at least in the “Walk This Way” collaboration way. Run-DMC’s song “Raising Hell” is
a best-case scenario for “letting the guitar rock.”
There’s something hilarious about rappers that are so cool talking with such giddiness
about guitar riffs that are so overtly corny. I just listened to 55 seconds of Body Count’s album
and my face is permanently stuck in the “I just smelled a bad fart” expression.

“Girls L.G.B.N.A.F.” – On this track, Afrika Islam took two 909 drum machines, linked them
together playing different beats, and sampled Rufus Thomas. The song sounds like it was
recorded during the Rhyme Pays period and is probably my least favorite track on the album. The

concept of the song was, you’ll never guess this, a diss to LL Cool J. In the 80’sm LL was the
king of making rap ballads like “I Need Love,” and Ice-T thought that was corny because back
then if women dug your raps that meant it wasn’t good. If social justice warriors were around
back then they would say that this track’s energy is filled with nothing but toxic masculinity,
which of course is the point. If LL needs to beg and serenade a girl for their love, than Ice-T is
going to come up to you and not sugarcoat his intentions: the acronym on the title stands for let’s
get butt naked and fuck.

“High Rollers” – Camp Lo would be proud of the Blaxploitation sound the Edwin Starr sample
from the Hell Up In Harlem Soundtrack gave the track: somewhere Sonny Cheeba and Ski Beatz
are smiling. Speaking of Edwin Starr, did you know that Air sampled him on their landmark
1997 album Moon Safari, and the next year DMX sampled him for It’s Dark and Hell’s Hot? I
love the juxtaposition of that.
The song is one of the three or four best songs on the album and is one of the first videos
Ice-T ever shot. Ice-T said that all the guns, jewelry and cars they used for the video and photo
shoot were real, and the people who were filming were getting uncomfortable being around that
much drugs, money and guns. The fact that Ice-T never even thought to rent a car or jewelry for
his video proves he’s cut from the right cloth. Let’s get back to the era where you were shamed if
you rocked cars and jewelry that were rented.
“High Rollers” is Ice-T’s second single and he uses it to warn of the traps that come with
the flashy lifestyle of street crime. Ice sets the scene and makes being a drug dealer sound fly:
“Lifestyle plush, females rush/This high profile personality, who earns his pay

illegally/Professional liar, schoolboys admire/Young girls desire, very few live to retire/Cash
flow extreme, dress code supreme, vocabulary obscene/Definition-street player, you know what I
mean” An underrated fact of 80’s rap is that they didn’t have to curse to set the scene, tell stories
and sound cool.Rakim is the king of not having to curse. Ice-T not needing cursing makes you
realize how some rappers use curse words as a crutch. Ice-T’s stories aren’t here to romanticize
anything. “They’ll say I’m glamorizing the hustling hood/And a record like this can do no
good/But I’m not here to tell ya right or wrong/I don’t know which side of the law you belong.”
He’ll show you the cinematic lifestyle of a player in the beginning, but makes sure you hear the
reality of it at the end: he’s not telling you how to live, just showing a mirror to the streets and
letting you decide. “Yes, the game has flash, but sometimes hurts/Behind any mistake, hard
times lurks/And jail’s not your only problem though it may seem/You just may die by a barrage
from an M-16/But to each his own, choose the mobile phone.”

“Grand Larceny” – A solid track that doesn’t stand out in a particular way. Ice-T uses his fierce
raps as a metaphor for stealing and robbing. He has better “positive thing replaces criminal
activity” tracks on this album, so by the time you get here, you’re underwhelmed by this
particular offering. If only Ice-T would have replaced this song with “Colors”.
Ice-T’s personal story is both tragic and inspiring just like his rhymes. Ice-T was born in
Newark, New Jersey and his mother died of a heart attack when he was just in third grade. His
father raised him in a single parent household for four years before also dying of a heart attack.
Orphaned at 12 years old, he soon moved to live in LA with his aunt. Ice-T saying on The
Combat Jack Show there’s a reason orphans become billionaires at a rate higher than everyone
else is something I’ve always remembered, even though I haven’t listened to that podcast

episode in over 5 years. A lot of rappers faced brutal childhoods but Ice-T’s was among the very
worst. It’s nothing short of incredible that Ice-T made to the heights he did when he was dealt
such a bad hand.

“Soul on Ice” – This spoken word track pays homage to Ice-T’s namesake and biggest
influence, street author Iceberg Slim. Ice-T received Iceberg Slim’s books as a 14-year-old and
was fascinated by the fly lifestyle of pimps. I have to give Ice-T credit, his spoken word/jazz
track sounds like it could be taken from an Iceberg Slim novel. Hustler’s Convention a
funk/poetry, toasting album by Lightnin’ Rod had also is a clear influence on Ice-T’s
storytelling.
Iceberg Slim’s influence is everywhere in hip-hop whether you realize it or not. The Ice
in Ice Cube is a nod to the author, the pimp references in Snoop and Too $hort’s music, Pimp C
referring to himself as Sweet Jones, and Jay-Z’s memorable, “Iceberg Slim riding rims in the
suburbs” line. But nobody embodies the soul of Iceberg Slim more than Ice-T; he’s not Kobe
Bryant copying Michael Jordan down to how he chewed gum obsessed but it’s close. Ice-T
named his third album “The Iceberg”, wrote the introduction to Iceberg’s posthumous book
Doom Fox, and produced the acclaimed documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp. If you’re
not familiar with Iceberg Slim, watch the documentary on Showtime, and go to your local library
to grab a copy of Iceberg’s best book Pimp.

With the exclusion of “Colors,” it’s hard to make an argument for Power being in the
Top 100 rap albums. Once you get to the cutoff line it’s splitting hairs and missing that classic,
all-time track. Regardless, it’s a golden age classic and certainly in the Top 125. 1988 was such a
stacked year that you can make an argument that a classic like this doesn’t even belong in the top
ten.

Albums from 1988 better than Power:
Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
Slick Rick – The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
Big Daddy Kane – Long Live the Kane
Eric B & Rakim – Follow the Leader
EPMD – Strictly Business
Eazy-E – Eazy-Duz-It
Marley Marl – In Control Vol. 1
Ultramagnetic MC’s – Critical Beatdown

Albums released in 1988 that are in the same league as Power:
Boogie Down Productions – By All Means Necessary

Jungle Brothers – Straight Out the Jungle
MC Lyte – Lyte as a Rock
Biz Markie – Goin’ Off
Too $hort – Life is…. Too $hort
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince – He’s the DJ and I’m the Rapper

Just look at that list. There are nine pantheon rap albums that you can’t put Power ahead
of. Good luck trying to figure out what gets the tenth spot out of the other seven classics to be
released that year. What an incredible year: if you add Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather,
Stetasonic’s In Full Gear, King Tee Act A Fool, and Doug E. Fresh’s The World’s Greatest
Entertainer that makes over 20 albums in one calendar year. 1988 was a clear turning point for
the rap LP. You could argue that 1988 by itself was a better year for rap (or at least the rap
album) than 1983-1987 combined.

Albums in the same league as the aforementioned 1988 albums:
Eric B. & Rakim – Paid in Full
Boogie Down Productions – Criminal Minded
Run DMC – Raising Hell
Run DMC – Run-DMC
Public Enemy – Yo! Bum Rush the Show

LL Cool J – Radio
LL Cool J- BAD
Ice-T – Rhyme Pays
Schooly D- Saturday Night Thee Album
Stetasonic – On Fire
MC Shan – Down by Law
2 Live Crew – 2 Live Crew, Is What We Are
Just-Ice – Kool &; Deadly
Heavy D &; The Boyz – Livin’ Large
Whoodini – Escape
Salt N’ Peppa – Hot, Cool & Vicious
Kurtis Blow – Kurtis Blow
Kool Moe Dee – How You Like Me Now?
The Treacherous Three – The Treacherous Three

You could construct an argument and say Paid in Full and Criminal Minded are the two
best 80’s albums but that would be the only area that ‘83-‘87 has over ’88. The top 5, top 10m
and 11-20 albums are clearly better in 1988. What a special year. Related: I was born in 1988.

Uptown Saturday Night Track by Track

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Uptown Saturday Night Track by Track

By Rob Parkour

 

 

What a Blaxploitation movie would sound like is the best way to describe Camp Lo’s sound. The mid 90’s duo Camp Lo hails from hip-hop’s birthplace, but their 70’s influences predate hip-hop. The title is lifted from the 1974 Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby film, and the cover art pays homage to the painting “Sugar Shack” produced by artist and former NFL player Ernie Barnes. The famous painting was also used for the cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic album I Want You and seen on Good Times during the credits of the final three seasons (most of the artwork done by JJ on the show was Ernie Barnes’ work.) Ernie Barnes played in the NFL for six years, had his paintings used by Marvin Gaye, Good Times, Camp Lo, and had countless other Professional Sports Franchises: what a life. Let’s turn back the clock and unpack Camp Lo’s debut:

“Krstyal Karrington” – The title of the song is a reference to a character from the 80’s TV series Dynasty. 90’s rappers loved referencing TV shows that 20 years later no one would remember. Camp Lo starts off with a gritty beat that transforms us into a world full of diamond heists, sex and drugs. The song acts as a backdrop for what’s about to come like an opening montage in a film. We’re introduced to Sonny Cheeba whose distinct voice and delivery make him instantly enjoyable. Then, we have Geechi Suede (named after Harry Belfonte’s character in Uptown Saturday Night) who’s more lyrical and dexterous with his flow.

Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede are so close in skill and complement each other so well that there’s no issues of wanting to hear one more than the other like some other duo’s I’ve reviewed.  There’s a total of 8 verses on this song which sounds extreme until you realize that rarely on this album does either rapper give a full 16 bars.  It isn’t a Jadakiss & Styles P bar for bar back and forth, but usually each rapper’s verses last 6-10 bars and flow so smoothly into the next verse that no hook is needed.

“Luchini AKA This Is It” – This upbeat, horn driven, optimistic track is the group’s biggest hit.  The famous horns are sampled from Dynasty’s “Adventure in the Land of Music.” I hope this euphoric song is being played when I enter the Pearly Gates. If this song comes on and doesn’t make you immediately happy there is something seriously wrong with you. I’m sure as soon as the group heard the beat for this song, they knew they had a hit. Did Ski offer the beat to anyone (Jay-Z) first?

“Fallen pharaohs courtesy of Black Caesar, the convincer/Silky days, satin nights, taking flight, Donald Goines.” Dropping Black Caesar and Donald Goines in the span of two lines?! Incredible job by Sonny Cheeba, who even ends this four bar verse with a Searchers reference so white listeners feel involved. Sonny Cheeba also name checks Duke Ellington’s Harlem River Quiver. Other rappers had better gun, cars, girls and sports lines, but no one has more dope name checks than Sonny Cheeba. The 70’s inspired video looks like an Iceberg Slim novel brought to life.

I didn’t want to do this, but I can’t write about this song without bringing up it’s popular freestyle done by Red Café and Fabolous in 2010. Red Café is in the ‘your comedian’s favorite comedian’ genre of underrated rappers who ghostwrite. By 2010, Fabolous was washed up but managed to turn back the clock on this freestyle, sounding perfect over the beat and providing a hook that turned the freestyle into a song. This song turned out to be the highlight of a decade where Fabolous went through a disturbing mid-life crisis (calling himself Young OG & dressing like a teenager who has Supreme push notifications), released one cringe worthy studio album (the single “Lituation” from the 37 year old MC didn’t stick), several uninspired mixtapes, seemingly hundreds of bad R&B features, infected Dave East’s career, and got charged with domestic abuse for attacking his baby mother, who may be the hottest baby mother in hip-hop history. At least the decade provided us with that Friday Night Freestyles mixtape with Jadakiss?

When I researched this freestyle, I found there is a Wiz Khalifa “Luchini” freestyle and you’ll never believe this but Wiz’s flow sounds horrific and he steals Curren$y’s style. Also, there is an S.A.S. “Luchini” freestyle which is great because who doesn’t want to listen to two British dudes who were signed to Dipset?

“Park Joint” – Ski Beatz laces the duo with an old school type beat that harkens back to hip-hop’s birth in the early 80’s. Every hip-hop junkie has a producer who sticks out to them and becomes their personal favorites; they may not have the catalog of a DJ Premier, Dr. Dre or Pete Rock, but you argue they deserve to be in that conversation based on quality. Large Professor is my best friend’s personal favorite, even though Large Professor doesn’t have the quantity of credits of a RZA. Ski Beatz, now known as Ski, is my favorite personal producer. His beats flash you back to the vinyl era, smooth yet high-energy beats that sound great in the car, but are classy enough to play around your Aunt. Let’s take a quick look at Ski’s career and try to figure out what the hell happened and why he’s never listed on All Time Great Producers lists:

Pre-1995 – Ski produced and rapped for Original Flavor, a duo that included a rapper with the great name Suave Lover. Original Flavor was Dame Dash’s first hip-hop act, and their first two albums had moderate success. The second album featured Jay-Z on two songs and Sauce Money on another.  After the group disbanded, Dame brought Ski back into the fold and Suave Lover was never to be heard from again.

1995 – Jay-Z “In My Lifetime” – Hov’s street buzz reaches an all-time high with the Ski produced single “In My Lifetime.” More on this song in a second.

“Your World Don’t Stop” – AZ.  Great album cut from AZ’s classic 1995 debut Doe or Die

1996 – Jay-Z “Politics as Usual”, “I’m Feelin’ It”, “Dead Presidents II” and “22 Twos.” Good god those are four incredible beats. There was friendly competition during the recording of Reasonable Doubt: Ski and his mentor DJ Clark Kent were competing to get their beats to Hov first while Jay-Z was doing his best to keep up bar for bar with Biggie on “Brooklyn’s Finest.”  Ski’s “pourin’ bubbly” sound went perfect with the ethos of Roc-A-Fella records in the mid 90’s: popping bottles, dressing fly, money, cars and laughs. Ski ended up having four (most on the project) of the better beats on Reasonable Doubt but it should have been five: “In My Lifetime” the single that gave Jay-Z buzz was curiously left off the final track listing. The Clark Kent Jaz-O Remix landed on the Streets is Watching Soundtrack but the original was never released on an official project. The cover for the single “In My Lifetime” literally had a champagne bottle on it and you’re telling me it wouldn’t have fit in with the rest of Reasonable Doubt?

This year Ski also produced a track each on two critically acclaimed albums by female MC’s (Lil’ Kim and Bahamadia). Ski also produced four songs for Outsidaz member Young Zee’s very underrated solo debut “Musical Meltdown” that was shelved for 19 years.

1997 – Ski produces nearly all of Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night which is critically and commercially acclaimed. Six months’ prior, Ski had the most beats on the debut for the hottest up and coming rapper, Jay-Z. So how many beats does Jay-Z enlist Ski for on his second album, In My Lifetime Vol. 1?  A measly two tracks, “Who You Wit” and “Streets Is Talking,” which are two of the best tracks on the album.  The Mafioso rapper traded his cigar and champagne for a shiny suit when he enlisted Teddy Riley and Puff Daddy for his follow up.

To be clear, I am a Vol. 1 defender.  “Always Be My Sunshine” is obviously corny and Jay-Z raps inside a Rubix Cube in the video. “I Know What Girls Like” isn’t as terrible but is similarly corny and must have been very disturbing for fans in 1997 to hear that Jay-Z sold out by the third track. To be fair, Diddy’s Hitmen Production team also did “Imaginary Players” which is one of the Jay-Z’s best album cuts ever. “Lucky Me” doesn’t belong but it’s listenable and Teddy Riley does a good job on “The City Is Mine.” The real problem was having Diddy produce the singles. Had Diddy given Jay-Z more album cuts like “Imaginary Players” for the album and let Ski or Clark Kent do the singles we’d talk about Vol. 1 in the same breath as Reasonable Doubt, Blueprint and The Black Album. Unfortunately, the beginning of Jay-Z and Diddy’s disturbing relationship coincided with Jay-Z’s second album. As great as Blueprint and The Black Album are there’s nothing better than 90’s Jay-Z. Vol. 1 is a classic that management, A&Rs and Roc-A-Fella sabotaged from being a classic.  It doesn’t take a genius A&R to figure out how to fix this: Replace the two singles and “Lucky Me” with “Only A Customer” (from Streets is Watching Soundtrack) and “In My Lifetime”(you may want to include the song the album is named after), and push “City Is Mine” as the single: just like magic you have a 13 track LP with no weak tracks.

1998 – “Cross Bronx Expressway” – Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz ft. Big Pun & Fat Joe.

“I Declare War” – Pacewon.  Incredible beat made for the Outsidaz’ other member whose LP, like his Outsidaz’ groupmate Young Zee, went unreleased. 50 Cent, Tony Yayo & Lloyd Banks freestyled on this on the last installment of G-Unit Radio, and Sean Price freestyled over it on “Figure Four.”

“John Blaze” – Fat Joe ft. Big Pun, Nas, Raekwon & Jadakiss.  One of the best posse tracks of all time: late 90’s hip-hop at its best.

Produced 7 songs on Sporty Thievz’ criminally underrated Street Cinema album.  Had Ski just produced the whole album Sporty Thievz would’ve have gotten the credit they deserve.  Regardless, there’s lots to love on this album.

2000 – “Ultimate High” – Nature ft. Nas. It’s fitting that one of rap’s most underrated producers did a beat for one of rap’s most underrated albums: For All Seasons by Nature. The album is a classic and if you haven’t heard it you need to lock yourself in a room and listen to it non-stop.

2001 – “People Talking” – Jay-Z.  Hov reaches another level of fame post “Big Pimpin” but doesn’t let Ski produce on any of his studio albums. He did let Ski produce the only good song on his crappy “Unplugged” album. Jay-Z was the biggest rapper in the world for over a decade and he couldn’t throw his first producer a bone at any point? It’s not like Ski would have given Jay-Z a terrible beat.

On Jay-Z’s retirement album The Black Album, he was supposed to have a different producer for every song and everyone assumed Ski would be do a track.  Ski didn’t have a track, but Kanye and Pharrell had two tracks each, including the “Change Clothes” single that aged like an Avocado left in the back of your kitchen cabinet.  Maybe I could understand if there weren’t any bad producers on The Black Album, but Hov enlisted a teenager named Aqua whose claim to fame is doing the score for the George Lopez show. In other Jay-Z news, there’s long been a rumor that he strong armed Ski for the beat, flow and hook for “Feelin’ It.” God knows what other songs Jay-Z extorted from Ski back then; the fact that Camp Lo had to somewhat start over after this makes Uptown Saturday Night that much bigger of an accomplishment.

Dame Dash: “Hey Hov, I have a great idea.  Let’s do an unplugged, live instrumental version of all your biggest hits.  People won’t care that the concept is dumb and it’s a clear money grab, they’ll see MTV Unplugged and think of Kurt Cobain.”

Jay-Z: “I’ll only do it if I can wear my Che Guevera T-Shirt”

Dame Dash: “Wear whatever you want.  I have one more idea that can really give us worldwide fame.  I’m thinking of you doing a collaboration album with a rock band, no new music just fusing their singles with your singles.

Jay-Z: “Wait, why would you combine Rap and Rock?

Dame Dash: “Have you ever even listened to Linkin Park?”

2002-2009 –Ski was supposed to be in his prime during the mid-00’s but besides his work with Camp Lo, he only produced one Angie Martinez song and one Willy Northpole song during this seven-year stretch.  This doesn’t count 2007 which must’ve been a very dark time in Ski’s life/career, because Pittsburgh Slim somehow convinced Ski to give him seven beats.

2010-present – Ski’s post 90’s career highlights came in 2010 and 2011 when he produced both of Curren$y’s Pilot Talk albums. This was before the entire hip-hop community decided all at once to stop listening to Curren$y. That’s just kind of the crappy luck Ski had: his best late career beats on are on projects by a rapper that no one will re-listen to. Ski released two albums under his name that had some great tracks on it, but were ultimately ruined by mediocre rappers.  There’s a world where Ski keeps the momentum of his Jay-Z and Camp Lo projects and becomes recognized as one of the best producers ever. Based on quality of beats, Ski Beatz still deserves to be in on the short list of best producers ever.

 

“B Side To Hollywood” – Camp Lo opened for De La Soul on their Stakes Is High tour which lead to Trugoy the Dove from De La Soul being the first and biggest feature on the album. Biggie gets credit for his “stop your blood clot crying” (which Jay-Z bit on “D.O.A.”) from “You’re Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You)” but it was Geechi Suede who said the line first: Uptown Saturday Night released two months before Life After Death.  Trugoy the Dove (never noticed how lame of a name this is, only De La Soul would think it’s funny to name yourself Yogurt spelled backwards) does a good job keeping with the themes of the album by rapping about Popeye, Rickety Rocket, Daniel Boone and Honeycomb cereal.  Trugoy the Dove produced this song and received co-production credit for “Coolie High”

“Killin’ ‘Em Softly” – This song is Camp Lo’s version of Ski Mask music.  Even on an aggressive track like this you root for Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede like you would two bad guys in a movie.  Even though the song isn’t similar to the upbeat tempo of the other songs it still garners a response out of you.  This isn’t an INI or Deda Pete Rock-produced album where you can passively listen to it: each track is making a statement that requires your attention.

“Listen to this super fly/Bumpin’ Black Caesar on high/Tuned to the Black Belt Jones.” For those scoring at home, Sonny Cheeba has three consecutive bars name checking three different classic 70’s Blaxploitation films that he’s already referenced on the album. I just want to find a woman who loves me as much as Sonny Cheeba loves Blaxploitation films.

“Sparkle” – They should have titled this song “Bubbly” because this is the decadent, spilling champagne with high rollers track Ski and Camp Lo do better than anyone else.  It’s very rare you can get two rappers with such clear voices and good flows.  This is rap music that is accessible, but ultimately not detrimental to the genre like House of Pain or Kanye.  Camp Lo’s sound can’t be selling out because there isn’t anything quite like it.  Jazz, funk and soul are three major sounds in hip-hop, and somehow Ski manages to mix all three of them together without leaning too far into one.

Like all innovative hip-hop artists, Camp Lo saw their sound influence many other rappers.  None were bigger than Will Smith who enlisted the duo as the only rap feature on his mega-hit album Big Willie Style.  When I first had this album as a child, I had no idea who Camp Lo was and it’s really trippy to hear Sonny Cheeba talking shit on a song that shares an album with “Miami” and “Gettin’ Jiggy With It.” Will Smith must’ve really liked Camp Lo but not enough to give either Sonny Cheeba or Geechi Suede a verse. Three cookie cutter Will Smith verses and not a Camp Lo verse in sight: it’s a crying shame.

“Black Connection” – The Van McCoy sample sounds like it’s from a montage in a Drug Kingpin movie.  You know, the Blow/Scarface montage where they ship all the drugs onto the private island on mini-jets and the drug lord, surrounded by beautiful women feeding him fruit, enjoys his freedom that the viewer knows is fleeting.

This is the track where Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede are able to display their storytelling chops. It’s a Camp Lo story so you know there is going to be diamond heists, Italian clothes, sex, and celebrations on yachts in Europe. I can’t stress enough how impressive it is that Camp Lo maintains such a sparkling image in my head despite rapping about the same things that Kool G Rap raps about. They may be prone to the occasional jewelry robbery or massive drug deal, but Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede are two men you’d feel comfortable taking your daughter to prom.

 

“Swing” – The second big name feature of the album is by Butterfly of Digable Planets who the group also met on the Stakes is High tour. Butterfly has a really good guest verse and does a great job splitting the hook with Geechi Suede. This is the only song where Sonny Cheeba is absent which makes the listener realize how important he is to keeping the 70’s aesthetics of the album.

“Rockin’ it AKA Spanish Harlem” – I usually don’t like it when rappers force another culture’s music into rap i.e. the terrible reggae influenced songs in the late 80’s/early 90’s. This song has a Latin vibe to it even though the main sample comes from the British R&B group Loose Ends. This salsa like song sounds like it would be played at summertime BBQ in Spanish Harlem filled with unbuttoned shirts, cocktails, empanadas and smoking hot New York Latinas who have terrible attitudes.  It’s a testament to Ski that he can blend many different sounds on this album and still maintain that New York sound.

“Say Word” – Really bumpin’ beat that sounds amazing in the car.  This is the first of two guest verses by Geechi Suede’s brother Jungle Brown.  This isn’t an act of charity or nepotism on Geechi’s part, because Jungle Brown can really rap. I did a Google search to find out what happened to Jungle Brown, and if he ever released any music, and there’s basically no trace of him, but now I know there’s a UK hip-hop collective called Jungle Brown who, stop me if you’ve heard this before, plans to restore the golden age feeling in hip-hop by going back to the smooth jazz instrumentals of the early 90’s.  Why listen to A Tribe Called Quest when you can listen to three douchebags from England who weren’t born in 2Pac’s lifetime?

Fast-tempo songs like this are perfect for the duo’s knife through butter flows. Sonny Cheeba has a knack for starting verses off with vigor, jumping on this track saying “Cheeba Cheeba y’all” with a level of self-confidence that us mere mortals can only pray to reach. Overall, I enjoy Sonny Cheeba a little bit more even though he clearly isn’t as talented as Geechi Suede. I put a lot of stock into how enjoyable a rapper’s voice is, and Sonny Cheeba’s voice and delivery are A+. I’m not sure exactly why, but there’s something about Pusha T’s forceful voice and slick flow that reminds me of Sonny Cheeba. When I first came up with this comparison, I had that same aha moment I had when I realized Drake stole Phonte’s flow and style. I googled “Pusha T and Sonny Cheeba” to see if anyone agreed with me and came up with nothing which makes it a Parkour exclusive!

“Negro League” – The darkest track on the whole album comes from a genius sample from the soundtrack of the Twilight Zone. I’d be interested to find out Ski’s thought process and how he stumbled on this unique sample. The song features Crimewave’s Karachi R.A.W. and some guy named Bones who, in what’s becoming a tradition, has no information online, but searching for him I was introduced to a white rapper named Bones from Michigan who helped coin the subgenres Emo-Rap and Trap-Metal. Trap Metal?!?!

Karachi R.A.W. is a pretty good rapper whose destiny was to be a role player in hip-hop: good enough for two solid guest verses but not capable of carrying an album. This track threw a bone to all the hardcore NY hip-hop fans who wanted some grit on this shiny album. Once again, it’s a testament to Ski that he can incorporate different sounds into the project without messing up the flow of the album. Sonny Cheeba’s “In Madison Square drinkin’ Shasta” line always makes me laugh.

 

“Nicky Barnes AKA It’s Alright” – This song is amazing. Ski takes an Isaac Hayes song from the Shaft Soundtrack and speeds it up to make a beat that will make you nod your head. Geechi Suede starts off the song with a strong verse that includes the bar “I study clowns like sola god and Metu Neter.” According to my research, Metu Neter is a seven-volume series of books on the philosophy and spirituality of Ancient Egypt by Pan-Africanist scholar and musician Ra Un Nefer Amen. Geechi, I think you bit off more than you could chew with that line. How many of your fans do you think understood the reference? Jay Electronica, who was 20 in 1997, probably heard the line and thought Geechi Suede was the best person in the world.

The second verse features Geechi’s brother Jungle Brown who wins the Notorious B.I.G. Memorial Pause award for the most suspect line when he says, “Articulating these figures with these pretty brown niggas.” Maybe Jungle Brown was influenced by the previous year’s Pause award winner Fredo Starr for his “Sexy niggas get abducted” line on the Onyx’s classic 1995 single “Last Dayz.”  I’d hate if that one suspect line was the reason Jungle Brown never resurfaced in the rap game.

Sonny Cheeba floats impeccably over the beat. “Sip Iceberg Slim, smoke the Goldie reefer” line seems like it was made just for me. Listen Sonny Cheeba, I’m already a big fan, you don’t have lay it on so thick by shouting out my favorite movies and authors. Sonny Cheeba gives us an idea of what a rapper from 1973 would rap about and sound like.

The song’s title pays homage to Nicky Barnes, a 70’s drug kingpin from Harlem who was nicknamed “Mr. Untouchable,” who eventually snitched on his organized crime syndicate because one of the members slept with his mistress. Cuba Gooding Jr. portrays Nicky Barnes in the Frank Lucas biopic American Gangster.

 

“Black Nostaljack AKA Come on” – Another incredible up-tempo, feel good beat that uses a speed up sample of Curtis Mayfield’s “Tripping Out.” If they made modern rap beats in the disco era, I imagine this is what it would sound like. As you can tell, I’m a nostalgic type of guy so these type of beats make me happy. The songs are pro-fun but also pro-happy without coming off cheesy. Give Sonny Cheeba a beat this retro sounding he’s bound to go off: “Scored like 10 on my IQ test/Stay fly with the vines so I’m so funky fresh/I rocks to the east, I flows to the west/This Max Julien number one draft pick/A finger to the rest, here we go for the Knicks.”  Everything about these bars is perfect: Cheeba starts off with self-deprecating humor, refers to his clothes as vines like he’s Sweet Jones from Pimp, uses his words-on-a-string flow to make a simple line sound cool, refers to Max Julien, the star in The Mack, as a number one draft pick, and tops it off with flicking you off as he roots for the Knicks. That’s a tour de force in how to make me a happy listener.

The next verse Sonny Cheeba refers to Geechi Suede as Errol Flynn’s kin.  What Errol Flynn movies has Sonny Cheeba seen?! Geechi Suede fancies himself as Poitier, the director and star of the film Uptown Saturday Night. If I had the opportunity to interview Camp Lo, I’d spend the entire time asking them about their favorite movies.

While researching this album I found out that they shot a video for this song that paid homage to Good Times. I quickly jumped on YouTube and found it wasn’t there. Next I tried a Japanese site that almost gave my computer a virus, and after that I tried an MTV African website that didn’t work. Through hell and high water, I was determined to find this video. A 90’s hip-hop group paying tribute to Good Times in a music video is two of my world’s coming together in beautiful harmony, like if Werner Herzog were to make a documentary on the 2001 76ers.

I finally found the video on an MTV Spanish site.  The music video is both a work of art and Camp Lo Fan Fiction.  Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede (dressed like Cooley High extras) crash a Good Times episode and rap on a set that can’t be the real Good Times set but looks very similar: the concept is too good to be true.  JJ and Thelma Evans are both playing their characters from the show, JJ sprays cleaning spray into whatever his sister Thelma’s attempting to cook. JJ looks fat and washed up but Thelma hasn’t aged and still looks incredible after all these years. I’m prone to speak in superlatives but when adjusted for era I think Thelma is pound for pound the hottest woman ever on a sitcom.  My research also brought my attention to Thelma’s daughter who is also impossibly beautiful: the gift that keeps on giving!

“Coolie High” – This very smooth, mellow single from 1996’s Great White Hype Soundtrack gave them the exposure that lead to their record deal.  The track is named after the film Cooley High which is wrongly classified as a Blaxploitation film.  Cooley High is one of the 70’s best movies but a movie can’t be a Blaxploitation film if it eventually gets spun off to the TV series What’s Happening.

This single is so soft and laid back. Janet Jackson’s “Funny How Times Flies” from her classic Control album is sampled here. In hindsight it may seem clear that this song would translate into a laid back rap single but it takes a special ear to realize it in the moment. It’s impressive how “Coolie High” and “Luchini” couldn’t be any more different in tempo but both maintain that classic Camp Lo sound. Geechi Suede’s third verse reads off like a Camp Lo version of Mad Libs: “Cruisers and Rovers. Diamond crooks taking it over with Razors and cutters with the sugar and butters/Pimping Caesars in leathers, we live for Coolie High treasures and pleasures.” Sonny Cheeba somehow goes his first verse without mentioning any Blaxplotation films, before bringing up Super Fly, Cleopatra Jones and Dolemite during his third verse. Sonny Cheeba using Cab Galloway as a verb should be my favorite line on this song, but Cheeba telling a woman he’s going to “drench you in my Donald Goines” is the best line on the album and maybe the best line ever. Sonny Cheeba mentioning Donald Goines in both Uptown Saturday Night singles makes him an American hero.

“Sparkle (Mr. Midnight Mix)” – Basically the stripped down, drum-less version of “Sparkle.”  The track sounds fine and I’m sure you could make an argument for it being better than the original but there’s no need for both of them to be on the album.  The song’s biggest crime is its placement as the final track, which robs “Coolie High” of being the album’s lasting memory.

Had this track not been included, the album would’ve closed with “Nicky Barnes,” “Black Nostaljack,” and “Coolie High,” back to back to back. Those three songs flow so well together and would’ve been the perfect way to close out the album. Albums, even great ones, often end on a low note but Camp Lo flipped that and saved their best for last. Ending an album with three songs that strong in a row doesn’t seem fair. There can’t be more than a few rap albums in history that close up with three tracks that are all A+’s like “Nicky Barnes”, “Black Nostaljack” and “Coolie High”.

 

Uptown Saturday Night is a classic that somehow sounds fresh even though it’s over 20 years old and is influenced by the 70’s.  It’s closer to a top 40 all-time hip-hop album than a top 75 album. It was the first classic album to be released in 1997, the year after the best year (1996) for the rap LP.  Let’s see where it ranks against other 1997 hip-hop albums.

 

Albums better than Uptown Saturday Night:

Notorious B.I.G. – Life After Death

Wu-Tang Clan – Wu Tang Forever

 

Albums on the same level as Uptown Saturday Night:

Jay-Z – In My Lifetime, Vol. 1

Capone-N-Norega – The War Report

Ma$e – Harlem World

Puff Daddy & The Family – No Way Out

 

Albums a level below Uptown Saturday Night:

Scarface – The Untouchable

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – Art of War

Master P – Ghetto D

2Pac- R U Still Down?  (This is Pac’s best posthumous release that largely uses original production. That said, I can only put a posthumous album so high.)

Missy Elliot – Supa Dupa Fly

Rakim – The 18th Letter

The Firm – The Album

Slum Village – Fan-tastic Vol. 1

Suga Free – Street Gospel

Three 6 Mafia – Chpt. 2: World Domination

Cru – Da Dirty 30

OC – Jewelz

Soul in The Hole Soundtrack

I’m Bout It Soundtrack

 

Good albums that deserve a mention:

Twista – Adrenaline Rush

Common – One Day It’ll All Make Sense

KRS-One – I Got Next

The Beatnuts – Stone Crazy

Wyclef Jean – Presents the Carnival featuring Refugee All-Stars

Diamond D – Hatred, Passions & Infidelity (Diamond D went from Stunts, Blunts & Hip-Hop to Hatred, Passions & Infidelity? What a bummer.)

Busta Rhymes – When Disaster Strikes

EPMD – Back in Business

MJG – No More Glory

TRU – Tru 2 Da Game

Juvenile – Solja Rags

B.G. – Chopper City

Will Smith – Big Willie Style

 

“Slept on” albums that I’ve yet to have a full phase with:

Company Flow – Funcrusher Plus

Alkaholiks – Likwidation

Organized Konfusion – The Equinox

Kool Keith – Sex Style

Del the Funkee Homosapien – Future Development

Artifacts – That’s Them

Latyrx – The Album (Two “The Album” in the same year??)

Killarmy – Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

 

1997 turned out to be a transition year for hip-hop after the monster year of 1996.  Rappers disappointed (The Firm), got shelved (Slum Village), were too young (No Limit & Cash Money), or past their primes (EPMD, KRS & Diamond D). You could make a strong case for Uptown Saturday Night being the third best album of the year. Gun to my head, I would probably pick Harlem World because it’s equally as fun and I’ve had a Ma$e poster hanging in my living room for over a decade. It doesn’t seem right putting Jay-Z’s fourth or fifth best album over Camp Lo. No Way Out may have highs that reach the same level as “Luchini” and “Coolie High” but the album doesn’t hold up track by track the way Uptown Saturday Night does. For hip-hop, 1997 can’t live up to any previous year in the 90’s, but Life After Death, Wu-Tang Forever, Harlem World, Uptown Saturday Night and In My Lifetime Vol. 1 is a strong starting five with R U Still Down? being the first man off the bench.

How I Discovered How to Listen to Jazz

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How I Discovered How to Listen to Jazz

By Rob Parkour

 

 

            On a beautiful afternoon during the summer of 2015, I drove to my best friend Sam’s house in North Plainfield to trip on LSD. For me, the trip was a comeback of sorts. Tripping on various psychedelics was a weekend tradition with my group of friends in High School. We’d wear old sports jerseys, smoke, listen to trippy music, and laugh. Our tripping golden era was during 2004-2005, my junior year of high school. As our weed smoking increased, our psychedelic trips became so infrequent that we had only one trip during the second semester of senior year: that trip was the last time I tripped on any type of drugs until that day.

Okay, that’s a lie. Three months earlier, my backup weed connect told me he could get his hands on some acid. Sam and I took four tabs each, and watched the complete first season of the hood web series Money & Violence, which is like The Wire if you took out the politics, actors, and budget. It was Sam’s first time seeing the show, and my second: doing something as ridiculous as tripping LSD to a hood YouTube series was an on brand way for us to reintroduce ourselves to the tripping game.

We huddle around Sam’s laptop and are transported into the world of Flatbush Brooklyn, where everyone either wears a Yankees World Series Patch fitted or a Brooklyn Nets snapback.  I know Sam’s under the influence when he starts comparing Money & Violence plots to Shakespeare multiple times during the same episode.

You know how people say everything under the sun has been said or done? I can safely say Sam and I are the only people to trip acid to the complete first season of Money & Violence. That just gave me a great idea. You know those Ayahuasca trips people take in the wilderness where they trip so hard that they confront demons and come back new people? Well think about that concept and apply it to Money & Violence. Fill up a van of 10 brave souls, go into the deepest parts of the woods, meditate, take a sheet of acid, and completely give yourself up to the genius that is the first season of Money & Violence.  After the trip is complete, Sam will lead a group discussion centered around comparing Shane and Tai’s story arc to Hamlet.

As fun as that trip was, the acid wasn’t the strongest.  I was definitely tripping and experienced feelings that I wouldn’t have otherwise felt, but I was still very much in control of myself and experienced minimal visual distortion of colors or shapes. The Money & Violence trip was equivalent to getting very buzzed off five beers, and knowing there’s still another level to reach if you want to get drunk.

When I get to Sam’s I unload my backpack which has my Xbox 360 and Bose Bluetooth stereo.  At the round table we both set up shop in our personal GB stations and chop it up while listening to rap.  The acid that I’m given is not from the same person as last time, this time the person purchased the acid at one of those Jam Band music festivals where the acid is so strong it makes wannabe Phish groups sound bearable.

“Should I take one or two?” I ask Sam who gives me a look that said ten years ago you never would’ve asked that question. I take two tabs, and less than an hour later I scratch my leg. When I bring my head back up a wave comes over my body intensely. All of a sudden things are brighter and I can’t stop smiling. My cheekbones are starting to feel sore because I can’t stop cheesing so hard.  Sam looks at me and can tell the LSD dropped, he is sitting this trip out and being my trip advisor instead of my tripping partner.  His early 80’s music fetish aside, Sam has the best taste of music out of anyone I know and there’s no one else I’d trust more to curate the music for my trip. Sam turns on YouTube on his SmartTV and plays Afrobeat Godfather, Fela Kuti. Coming up on acid and watching Fela’s sets was an out of body experience similar to discovering masturbation. During hour 2 of our Fela experience, YouTube was experiencing buffering issues that couldn’t be solved but luckily Sam had a laptop full of downloaded music that needed no internet to listen to.

“What are you in the mood to listen to?”  Sam asked as he lorded over his MacBook that contained his music library.

“No rock but no rap either.  Need something with real instruments that has rhythm to it.”  Eventually we landed on Jazz.

“Have you ever listened to Thurst by Herbie Hancock?”  Sam asked while he scanned his iTunes.

“Nope, only Headhunters.”  I responded, referring to Herbie Hancock’s most popular album. Sam pressed play, Mike Clark’s drums came on, and my life was changed forever.

Before we dive into Thrust, let me explain my personal history with Jazz.  In elementary school, I owned a very small collection of cassettes and CD’s, none of which were Jazz.  They mostly consisted of The Beach Boys, Elvis, The Beatles and Jock Jams.  I moved to Georgia in 1999 during Ludacris’ and OutKast’s heyday which I got swept under: The Beat 95.5 FM gave me my (mostly southern) base education in Hip-Hop.  The same year my family bought a CD stereo for the living room, and I even got a little Sony Jukebox for my bedroom. I took two CD’s out of my parents hard Red CD case, one was a Doo-Wop mix that you may see on TV, and the other was Jazz music from the Big Band era.  Don’t ask me why, but listening to Big Band Era Jazz was my hype music to listen to before a baseball game.  The music was from another era and had a certain level of class to it which made me feel like a grown-up listening to it.   A couple years later I made my stereotypical first Jazz purchase, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.  I moved to New Jersey and got really into buying CD’s at Borders with my friends. I wasn’t consciously buying Wilco albums over Jazz albums but that’s what I was doing. Throughout all those trips to Borders I only remember buying three Jazz CD’s, Getz/Gilberto’s self-titled album, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, and A Love Supreme.  There were so many other genres and unknown artists for me to discover that it didn’t occur to me to go further down the road with jazz.  At this point of my life I used jazz as a nice change up to the rock and rap I loved, putting it on as background music as I messaged my friends on AIM talking about our crazy trips.  During high school, I listened to more soul and standards which left jazz as a distant fifth place.

In my early 20’s I would put on jazz playlists on Songza and use it as background music as I wrote.  Of course, now I know this isn’t the way to listen to jazz, but at the time I was uneducated and liked the vibe it gave me as I wrote.  It’s curious that I didn’t go down a jazz rabbit hole at some point. With rock and rap especially, I took great pleasure in going into the deep recesses of the genres and finding diamonds in the ruff. I think there being no vocals subconsciously made me look at it different.  During this time, I got further into John Coltrane and Miles Davis, familiarizing myself with their five best albums but I was slow to give other artists a shot.  Charlie Parker was the only other Jazz musician whose discography I sought out but that was easy because his entire recordings are in like two places.  I would listen to Headhunters by Herbie Hancock only because I was aware of how it’s been sampled so many times in hip-hop.  I liked Jazz in the same way someone “likes” football but only tunes in during the playoffs.

“Holy shit this is incredible, what the fuck is this?!”

“Thrust. Jazz-funk, really good isn’t it?”  Sam can tell my answer by my eyes bugging out at Mike Clark’s drums, Paul Jackson’s bass and Herbie Hancock’s Piano melts my face off.

“This is fuckin amazing too!” I yell at Sam as the next track “Actual Proof” somehow eclipses “Palm Grease”

“Word big guy, one after another on this album.  All the songs are great,” Sam says as he chuckles.  I keep repeating to Sam how good the album is as if the album will stop playing if I stop complimenting it.  Sam’s vigorously researching online, but from my GB station at the round table I can’t tell if he’s looking up more jazz albums or deciding what food to have delivered at 3 in the afternoon.

It turns out both. 30 minutes later he changes the album, and ten minutes after that Sam’s sister comes down the basement stairs holding food, really making it feel like 2004. They ask if I want any food.

A few quick notes on Thrust before we move on.  Thrust is a better album than Headhunters.  It’s my fault for not investigating this on my own but based on everything written on his albums, Headhunters is his best from his funk period but this sentiment is dead wrong.  Thrust is funkier and better than Headhunters, I don’t care how many times “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon” have been sampled.  The upgrade from Harvey Mason to Mike Clark is a big reason why Thrust is better than Headhunters.  It is probable that this is the only time that replacing a black drummer with a white drummer made the music better and funkier.  “Mike Clark may be the funkiest WASP of all time,” Sam said, and he’s not wrong.

Why isn’t Mike Clark more famous if he’s so good?  Bad timing. Jazz-funk never took off and morphed into Weather-Report-style bullshit, and his prime coincided with the 80’s which is when jazz was in the process of being institutionalized and forgotten by society.  After Thrust, which was his first project, Mike Clark was featured on only one more Herbie Hancock studio album, Man-Child, which is good but fails to live up to its predecessor.  He performed on Betty Davis’ They Say I’m Different album which I’ve never listened to but supposedly has a cult following.  Herbie Hancock enlisted him for his Headhunters group. When guys like Donald Byrd do this, it reminds me of a rapper standing out on a few features on an album then getting invited to join a group that will never live up to the master’s work.  The Headhunters were jazz fusion’s version of The Outlawz, relegating poor Mike Clark to Yaki Kadafi status. The Headhunters album is okay, but all the jazz-fusion Herbie was involved in post-Thrust lacks the grab you by the collar intensity you feel when Mike Clark is jamming away in “Actual Proof.”  Mike Clark did have one last shining moment before jazz faded away commercially. He was featured on Eddie Henderson’s Heritage album in 1976 that opens with “Inside of You,” which Clark Kent sampled on the classic Jay-Z & Memphis Bleek song “Coming of Age.”  I’m sure Mike Clark would appreciate me using one random song that Jay-Z happened to sample him to highlight his entire post-Thrust career.

“Fuck food, give me more jazz!”  I tell Sam with pupils the size of saucers.  Food is the last thing on my mind, even though I took the acid on an empty stomach, I am not hungry and it seems like I’ll never be hungry again.  Music seems 1000 times more important than food.

To keep up with the jazz-funk vibe, Sam puts on Miles Davis’ On the Corner album as he envelops himself into a sea of Ricotta and Mozzarella.  When I join Sam outside for his post meal cigarette, I am struck by the formations the clouds are making.  The baby blue sky never looks more vibrant and all the clouds start morphing together into weird shapes that eventually reveal themselves as the lady in the Starbucks logo.  As much as I want to enjoy nature on my trip, my weed and jazz are in the basement, and those are the only things I need.

When we get down to the basement, we listen to more of On the Corner which is the best jazz-funk album, and one of the best jazz albums of all time.  Sam tells me On the Corner and Birth of the Cool are his favorite Miles Davis albums, and I appreciate the juxtaposition of that take.  It was obvious how I wanted to spend the rest of my trip, listening to jazz. I sat back and soaked up all the instruments in the clarity you only get on psychedelics. Sam pounded away at the computer researching what album we should listen to next.

“Mingus Ah Um is one of Ian’s favorite albums, he put me onto to that at MKA.”  Sam tells me referring to a high school friend of his.  Sam puts the album on and every song is as amazing. “Yo! How is this so fuckin’ good?!” I’d ask as Sam chuckled at my enthusiasm.

Next Sam plays Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins which sounds impossibly good.  “Where has this album been my whole life?” I ask myself as I soak in the sounds like a junkie enjoying a hit.

“Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk is a classic,” Sam says as he changes the album and takes a seat on the couch. I can tell Sam is creeping close to a food coma because every time I say something to him his responses become shorter and shorter. I get so wrapped up in Brilliant Corners that I miss the fact that Sam hasn’t been responding to anything I’ve been saying for ten minutes. Sam’s officially passed out and I’m tripping too hard to drive home. I call my girlfriend at the time and ask her to pick me up. Stupidly, I tell her the truth—I was so high I thought telling the truth to my girlfriend was a good moral play that would work in my favor. She asks me why the hell would I ever do something so dumb and not to come home until the next morning when I sobered up. One of the things about doing psychedelics is you have to be in a comfortable environment with positive energy people and have nothing like school, work, or driving on your plate. I assumed the LSD was going to be on the weaker side like the first trip but my biggest mistake was not lying and telling her that my car broke down and I needed a ride. I couldn’t undo telling her or talk my way out of it, so I was stuck alone in a negative energy headspace.

I tried to shake Sam to wake him up because I didn’t want sit alone to soak in this feeling of rejection during the peak of my trip. When Sam’s in a food or drug coma there is no waking him up. During a weekday trip in high school, after trying to wake Sam up for ten minutes, Sam’s mom literally stepped on his head while closing his bedroom window, and Sam didn’t flinch. I gave up trying to wake Sam out of his carb coma and walked over to his MacBook and tried to find something that would bring my energy back up after a disorienting and negative interaction on the phone my girlfriend. I put on Smokey Robinson and The Miracles’ Greatest Hits. Wrong choice. Don’t get it twisted, Smokey is an all-time legend and that compilation is one of the greatest soul compilations in history, but instead of getting me out of my feelings it threw me further into them. When “Tears of a Clown” came on I couldn’t hold it anymore and started crying like I haven’t cried since I was locked up. The irony wasn’t lost on me and I couldn’t control the tears, they were flowing out of my eyes so fast that my nose started running. As a man, I naturally try to hold back tears and can generally control them unless it’s an extreme situation but there is no controlling your tears when on acid when shit goes left, it just all comes out. I felt sad and alone and knew if I stayed in this current mind state I would start reeling and who the fuck knows what dark and scary places the trip would take me. I had one bad shrooms trip in high school which was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, I was sure I was going to die. I can still remember crawling to the bathroom like an infant to escape my trip. My friend’s brother’s room was next to the bathroom, and he fell asleep with ESPN on the screen. Something about seeing Marc Bulger and Matt Hasselbeck on the screen comforted me and let me know that I was in the clear.  When I returned to my friends’ room, I could not believe that my bad trip had lasted only 20 minutes. Before I escaped to the bathroom, I felt like I was stuck in the bad trip for months.

I was determined that a bad trip was not going to be my fate for the evening. I stopped crying and turned off Smokey Robinson. I needed entertainment comfort food so I searched Sam’s DVD shelf for something to watch. I brought over Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon a couple months back and popped that into my Xbox. The British accents in the movie really freaked me out for some reason, and I ejected the DVD within minutes. Sam’s DVD shelves left a lot to be desired. I had brought over a Spike Lee DVD box set a year ago trying to get Sam to watch Do the Right Thing. I bought my dad the DVD set for his birthday when I was in high school. Not to get sappy, but it really felt like my dad was looking over me making sure I would have an enjoyable movie experience that didn’t include English accents.

Which Spike Lee film should I watch? Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite American films of all time but I’ve seen it so many times. Clockers would be a fun watch on acid but I’ve also seen it a bunch of times. I’m not in the mood for Crooklyn, and Jungle Love would have had me back in my feelings. Mo’ Better Blues is my perfect option. I’ve only seen it once, and after my jazz epiphany earlier in the afternoon, no movie could be better to watch than Denzel Washington playing a fictional trumpet player. The movie largely takes place in smoke-filled jazz clubs, the same places I imagined I was in when Sam and I listened to Brilliant Corners mere hours ago.

Sam wakes up as Joi Lee’s character gives birth. I’m not sure how many people can say they’ve woken up and the first thing they saw when they opened their eyes was a woman giving birth, but Sam is now one of those people.  Sam and I watch the last 15 minutes of the movie, then have a hearty laugh about the absurdness of him waking up to that scene.

Listening to Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk earlier were great, but after watching Denzel play a fictional trumpet player, I wanted to hear the best trumpet player in history. “Put on Miles in the Sky” I tell Sam who’s somewhat shocked I picked such a late album. We listen to the album on YouTube which is great because I can see the trippy album cover while I do gravity bongs at Sam’s round table. Since I’m going to be staying at Sam’s until the next morning, I take the last tab of acid I have which kicks my trip back up but not to the extreme point from earlier. Having weed to smoke is essential during a trip: somehow it calms you down and intensifies your trip at the same time. Weed, music and good people are the only essentials for a successful LSD trip.

Sam and I spend the next 7 hours smoking and listening to various albums in Miles Davis’ discography. After Miles in the Sky we listen to Round About Midnight, Birth of the Cool, Milestones, and Miles’ first studio LP Musings of Miles. After that, we listen to the four albums that were recorded during two sessions in 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Hackensack, New Jersey. Miles’ quintet at the time consisted of the stacked team of John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and my man Philly Joe Jones (is that jazz’s death lineup?). Those sessions resulted in Steamin, Workin, Cookin and Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. The latter album was so good that Sam and I couldn’t believe it was such an unheralded project.  During the span of listening to Miles Davis with Sam I said “God, this is so good!” approximately 200 times.

Sam must have felt like he was tripping when we found our way to Doo-Bop, Miles Davis’ last album he recorded with the one and only Easy Mo Bee. “How high do you think he was when he recorded it?” I ask. Without replying Sam rolls his chair to the side and just points to a shirtless, washed Miles on the cover.

Around 4 AM Sam says he is going to bed. His mom is on vacation, so he tells me I can use her bedroom whenever I feel tired and want to pass out.  An hour later, I bring my Bose speaker into Sam’s mom’s bedroom and play Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, one of the few Jazz albums I already have saved to my phone.  I keep falling asleep for five minutes and waking up thinking I had slept for hours.  Around 7 AM, I manage to fall asleep for a full 20 minutes and wake up in a pool of sweat, I feel like I had just had a complete night of sleep.  I don’t remember staying up for 48 hours being a side effect of acid.

I know my girlfriend will be on her way to work by now, so I pack up my bookbag and gravity bong at 8 AM, and step out into the light of day. I’m still a little loopy as I drove home, but I concentrate very hard and make it home safely.  I realize I haven’t eaten in over a day, so I walk up the street to Dunkin Donuts and buy two egg and cheese croissants.

The next thing I do is download Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s complete discographies and upload them to my phone: just in case of an emergency I’ll have more than Sketches of Spain at my disposable.  After that, I sign up for Google Play because there’s too many jazz albums for me to download, I need to have the world of jazz accessible to me at all times.  When my girlfriend comes home from work 8 hours later, I’m still smoking gravity bongs and listening to Miles Davis.

I tripped two more times over the remainder of 2015 and did a mini one-hit trip early in 2016 before temporarily hanging up my psychedelic jersey in the rafters. The other trips were fun, especially the following trip when Sam and I tripped to Killa Season in an attempt to recreate our Money & Violence trip. My last full trip was Sam and I playing Fifa on Christmas Eve while we listened to jazz for 14 straight hours. My mini comeback to tripping after being out the game for so long reminded me of Magic Johnson’s 1996 NBA comeback. I wasn’t the tank I was in my tripping prime, but I could still run the point forward and give you 15, 7 and 6. Acid is an eye-opening experience that helps you realize things about life and yourself that you wouldn’t have otherwise known: there’s a reason Steve Jobs said it’s one of the most important things he’s ever done. The downside is there’s a certain haze it leaves you in after, and I’m not talking about the haze that hovers over you the day after. I feel there’s a certain number of trips people can take before they get burnt out and stupid. Some people can handle it more than others. Like most things acid can be a good or bad thing depending on your body chemistry and the mindset you enter it in.  You do experience a feeling of “I know exactly how things work now, how I need to treat people and what I need to do,” while tripping, but that is fleeting and can’t be recaptured on demand.  I feel I have a decent number of trips left in me, but I’ve decided to use them when I’m in a more stable chapter of my life.

My psychedelic phase ended, but I haven’t gone a day without listening to jazz since that fateful trip. Every night before bed I listen to jazz for an hour as I unwind, smoke and think about my master plan. One of the great things about jazz is there’s so many interesting things going on at any given moment, but if the situation calls for it, jazz can also fade into the background in a way rap, rock and even soul can’t. Even after three years of listening to jazz non-stop, I find new discoveries in albums that I’ve listened to time and time again. I can’t describe technically what draws me to jazz so much. It’s positive vibrational music that’s appropriate morning or night, happy or sad, driving or relaxing: it can guard all five positions.

Penguin’s Guide to Jazz core collection and other lists served as a great starting point to help lead me to artists I either didn’t know or wasn’t familiar with their work as front-men. Freddie Hubbard’s Open Sesame lead to Hubtones and before you know it, I had a phase with over 5 different Freddie Hubbard LP’s. There are certain legends that cannot be defined by one compilation or LP, heck, a lot of the greats were already out of their primes by the 50’s when the jazz LP resembled what we now know it as. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Art Tatum and others are legends with catalogs so grand in scope that you can’t just listen to their greatest hits or their best live album.

After the mind-blowing experience of listening to Thrust on LSD, I searched for a jazz-funk album that could live up to it.  Nothing could live up to Thrust or On the Corner, but searching for a great jazz-funk album lead me to Grant Green’s Alive album who quickly became one of my favorite all time jazz musicians.  Only Wes Montgomery can hold a candle to Grant Green on the guitar. Alive is probably the third best jazz-funk album ever but doesn’t even crack Grant Green’s top 3: his recordings with Sonny Clark are some of the best jazz records ever recorded.  Donald Byrd’s Blackbyrd was the only other jazz-funk album that did it for me.

I took recommendations from the few people in my life who had an actual opinion on jazz. One of Sam’s favorites is Clifford Brown which lead me to a heavy phase of listening to his album with Max Roach. It’s cruel that Clifford Brown died in a tragic car accident after being one of few jazz players in that era to not be involved with drugs. While delivering pizzas I became cool with an older black man who worked at the front desk at the Hilton. I would be running late with a bunch of deliveries waiting for me back at the pizza shop but I always made sure I had enough time to chop it up with the man who grew up listening to the albums that I was just getting into. “Have you ever heard of Errol Graner’s Concert by the Sea…..what about the Dexter Gordon Our Man in Paris album?” He would laugh out loud and ask me how I heard of these albums that he loved but hadn’t listened to in so many years.

Another cool thing about jazz is how you can find your next favorite jazz artist by looking at the lineup.  Like Cannonball Adderley’s work on Kind of Blue?  Then you’ll be sure to love his album as a leader Somethin’ Else.  The collaborative aspect of jazz reminds me a lot of hip-hop and sports.  During a film session, Lakers coach and fellow LSD fan Phil Jackson was trying to get Kobe Bryant to stop playing selfishly and get Shaq and his teammates more involved. Phil Jackson paused the tape and relayed a story of John Coltrane going on an unbelievable solo and at the end of it Miles stares at him coldly and says, “Hey, man, sometimes you have to know when to put that shit down.” God, I love Phil Jackson.

My first year of listening to jazz every night was thrilling. Right as I was done listening to The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson I would already have Lee Morgan’s Sidewinder in the chamber as my next classic to digest. Andrew!!! By Andrew Hill, The Real McCoy by McCoy Tyner, The Amazing Bud Powell, Moanin by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Back at the Chicken Shack by Jimmy Smith, Sonny’s Dream by Sonny Criss and so many more.

Like Miles, John Coltrane is an artist that I have to digest every one of his studio albums.  Coltrane’s discography is one of the most diverse catalogs in all of music.  A Love Supreme, Giant Steps and Blue Trane are three of the best jazz albums ever.  He has another five or so records that are A’s and even unauthorized releases like Coltrane’s Sound became one of my favorite random jazz albums.  But John Coltrane’s catalog like all other jazz musician fails in comparison to Miles’ prolific career.  Let’s break down his important albums into categories.

Albums that are in the Pantheon of greatest albums regardless of genre:

Birth of the Cool, 1957 (recorded in ’49-’50)

Round About Midnight, 1957

Milestones, 1958 (my favorite jazz LP of all time)

Kind of Blue, 1959

Sketches of Spain, 1960

In a Silent Way, 1969

Bitches Brew, 1970

On the Corner, 1972

Albums that range from A- to A+:

Musings of Miles, 1955

Dig, 1956

Walkin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, 1957

Miles Ahead, 1957

Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants, 1959 (recorded in 1954)

Porgy and Bess, 1959

Someday My Prince Will Come, 1961

E.S.P. – 1965

Live at the Plugged Nickel, 1965 (I could have included any number of Miles’ Live albums but this is the best)

Miles Smiles, 1967

Sorcerer, 1967

Nefertiti, 1967 (Miles contributed three classic albums to the best year in music history)

Miles in the Sky, 1968

Filles de Kilimanjaro, 1969

Jack Johnson, 1971

Live-Evil, 1971

1958 Miles, 1974 (recorded in….1958)

Agharta, 1975

Water Babies, 1976 (recorded in ’67-’68, I seem to be the only person who likes this album)

If you’re keeping track at home, that makes a total of eight pantheon albums. Every Beatles album is an A- at worst but even the Fab Four don’t have that many best of the very best albums. Please Please Me, A Hard Days Night, Rubber Soul and The White Album are four albums are undisputedly in the pantheon. You could construct an argument around including Help!, Sgt. Peppers, With the Beatles and Magical Mystery Tour but it’d be a reach. Including two of those four albums in the pantheon would be a stretch and still leave The Beatles two albums behind Miles. Even if you wanted to get greedy and include all four of those albums to make it an even 8 vs. 8 you’d still have Miles’ TWENTY-TWO other albums that fall in the A grade scale. Twenty-two. That type of output is unmatched by anyone in Western recorded music history. Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and 2Pac all have at least three pantheon albums…wait a second, are we sure Michael Jackson has a third pantheon album? Let’s give Michael Jackson the benfit of the doubt because his best stuff is that good. Okay so that leaves them with 27 more A-level projects to go until they reach Miles’ level. Christ, there’s genres out there that don’t have a total of 30 A-level albums. Miles wasn’t pumping out these albums using the same formula ala Future. Cool jazz, bebop, hard bop, avant-garde, funk, fusion, orchestras, international sounds, electric sounds, rock etc. Miles was the on the forefront of nearly every post 40’s change in Jazz.  It was also Miles who slowed down the furious pace in jazz and saved it from becoming a caricature of itself.

In 1987 Miles Davis was invited to the White House and shockingly a lot of the old white people had no idea who he was.  Nancy Reagan turned to Miles and asked what he has done to merit an invitation.  Miles replied with a straight face “Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”

Being an incredible musician wasn’t the only thing that drew me to Miles.  He was very cool and carried himself with the same swagger as a rapper or boxer.  Finding out Miles was a boxing nut was one of the many cool things I found out about Miles when I read his biography that was written with help right before he passed. There’re so many interesting stories to read in there from Miles kicking his heroin habit in his childhood home in St. Louis, to Philly Joe Jones’s drug escapades. Maybe nothing was cooler than finding out that Sugar Ray Robinson and Miles Davis were close friends. Eventually I slowed down on listening to Miles every week, but more than any of my other favorite artists, I go back and listen to one of his great projects. There’s so many of them that it’s impossible to tire yourself out.

When I get a tattoo to represent a piece of art that impacted my life I try to keep it simple and not just paste the person’s face on my skin. I have my favorite Japanese novel Kokoro in Japanese letters. I have the Fassbinder film Fear Eats the Soul to pay homage to a film that changed how I look at cinema. I love those tattoos but I don’t think I’d love looking in the mirror every day and seeing Fassbinder’s chubby face tattooed on my arm.  With Miles I broke this rule. I didn’t want to get a stereotypical Bitches Brew tattoo, or one of the famous pictures of him blowing the horn. I got a tattoo of Miles just how I envision him when I close my eyes: playing in the midst of a cloud of smoke at Birdland, the jazz corner of the world.

Dead Serious Track by Track

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Dead Serious Track by Track

By: Rob Parkour

 

 

 

Sometimes being outside of the echo chamber can be healthy.  Das EFX members Dray and Skoob met through a mutual friend on a road trip while attending the HBCU Virginia State University.  The man sitting between Dray and Skoob leaned back, so the two could hear each other’s raps.  Dray (Teaneck, New Jersey) and Skoob (Brooklyn) had roots in the New York City area, but this was before the internet and the two had to rely on their imagination to come out with an original sound: necessity is the mother of invention.  The two up and coming MC’s eventually formed a group and were discovered by Erik Sermon at a college talent show, who rigged the contest so the two MC’s would lose and famously gave them an easy ultimatum “would you rather have a hundred dollars or a record deal?”  The duo kept in touch with EPMD and eventually signed to their label, and what followed were words, styles, flows, references and sounds that were completely unique, but soon spread throughout hip-hop.  Let’s unpack their classic 1992 debut Dead Serious track by track.

 

“Mic Checka” – The catchy, hard driving second single leads off the album.  References to Gadzooks, Geronimo, Gladys Knight, The Flintstones and Annie in the first handful of bars lets the listener know they’re in store for something different.  The “Iggity” suffix the group added to words sets them even further apart than their unique pop culture references.  Adding iggity to the end of words came about because Skoob and Dray didn’t like pauses in their verses, so they tried to figure something to say to fill those pauses.  In conversation and music, the small moments of silence tell their own story. One would think logically that emoving these breaks of silence would hurt the music.  Wrong.  The iggity and other made up sounds the group uses to fill in the pauses actually add rhythm to their rhymes.  The iggity sound became their signature and many groups jacked the style as the group moved away from the sound after their debut.  DJ Clark Kent put it best, when he said the group using “iggity” was them playing DJ and scratching their words.

The group barely finished the song before the album because they couldn’t come up with a hook on the song, until one of the producers came up with the idea to loop one of Dray’s lines in the same song for the hook.  May seem like a lazy cop out, but it worked and proves a looped sample of a hard line is always better than a forced “melodic” hook.

 

“Jussummen” – Dray and Scoob weren’t backpack rappers, gangster rappers, pimp rappers or punch line rappers: they were just two friends getting busy on the mic.  The “La Di Da Di” Doug E. Fresh sample, “just some men that’s on the mic,” provides the simplicity needed for the track.

“Well I’m the jibber jabber, jaw like Shabba/Ranks making bank, operating like Trapper John M.D./yea, that’s what folks tell me/I plan on going far and be a star like Marcus Welby.”  If you read that opening line, you’d probably be confused and wonder why a golden age hip-hop song could make references to Trapper John M.D. and Marcus Welby, two Doctor sitcoms that, um, didn’t quite stand the test of time.  I love the logic: everyone is rapping about women, money and status, but we’re going to reference TV shows that no one will remember in 20 years.  If you have a sense of humor like mine, you’ll listen in glee as Dray and Skoob reference Shaka Zulu and Orville Redenbacher in the same line.  Who else would apologize to Mr. Keebler for loving Nabisco-Brand Vanilla Wafers, and reference Stella Doro breadsticks in the same verse?

A good sense of humor can only carry you so far.  Go back to the first line and listen to how the pauses and bar breaks are manipulated to break up Shabba and Ranks. It may seem easy but there’s a high degree of difficulty in pulling it off right. Their unique lyrics and wordplay rightfully get the attention, but their incredible knack for understanding pauses, cadences and rhythm is what makes their music flow and bump.

 

“They Want EFX” – The biggest single of the group’s career was written when the two were poor, struggling college students.  The beat came from two friends from Brooklyn, and the duo tinkered and looped James Brown’s “Blind Man Can See It,” until they found what they were looking for.

I tried getting into Das Efx many years ago, but gave up when I found out, after a deep internet rabbit hole that there’s no explicit version of Dead Serious available.  Fans hoped that the 25th anniversary release of the debut would finally give them the explicit only version of the album to no avail, and it doesn’t seem the explicit version is coming any time soon. Only an edited version being available is a unique circumstance, but oddly there’s not much information about this anomaly online, other than Das Efx fans complaining about it to each other in hip-hop blogs.  The dirty version of this album has to exist somewhere, right?  Das Efx fans deserve closure on this strange case, just tell us A.) if dirty version album exists B.) why the dirty version was never released and C.) why the hell can’t you release it, we’ll give you money?

In this particular case I was wrong for giving up.  Listening to a clean version of a Das Efx song is different than trying to listen to a clean version of “Murder” by UGK.  There are certain rappers that curse so often that censoring the curses leaves too many gaps for the listener to fill.  My best friend Sam put the clean version of Capone-N-Norega’s War Report on my phone, and the pauses were so numerous and frequent that I had to turn the album off while I cursed Sam off in my head for what I perceived as a cruel joke.  Das Efx doesn’t suffer from this fate: their curses are infrequent and the breaks and cuts used to cover curses actually sound pretty good.  I finally decided to give the album another shot a few years ago and was shocked that I immediately forgot the songs were edited, and got swept up in their sound once I stopped looking for edited curse words.

Skoob heard KRS-One say, “they want effects,” and instantly knew that’d be the hook for the song.  Other than Wu-Tang, I can’t think of another rap group that just said, “fuck making hooks, I’m either going to sample a line or forgo the chorus.” This is a great thing that could have saved us a lot of boring hooks if more groups/rappers adopted this method for a chorus.

 

Think about how creative and interesting your voice and delivery have to be to make these lines work in not just a song but a worldwide single:

“My waist bone’s connected to my hip bone
My hip bone’s connected to my thigh bone
My thigh bone’s connected to my knee bone
My knee bone’s connected to my hardy-har-har-har”

It’s not all about jokes and pop culture references: okay it’s always about pop culture references but Das Efx can sound hard too.  “A-Blitz shoots the breeze, twiddly-dee shoots his lip/Crazy Drayzie shot the sheriff yup, and I shot the gift.” Now that’s not a hard line in the Kool G Rap sense, but go listen to the line in the song and tell me it doesn’t give you that fearless, I’m-better-than-you vibe that the hardest rap instills in you.

What is the most important cultural moment for “They Want Efx?”  In the 24th episode of the 2nd season of Beverly Hills 90210, future radio host/rapper David Silver (played by Brian Austin Greene) is relaxing in a lounge chair, listening to his Walkman as he raps along to Das Efx’s breakout single.  “But I can fe-fi or fo, diddly-bum, here I come/So Peter Piper, I’m hyper than Pinocchio’s nose/’Cause I’m the supercalafragilistic tic-tac pro/I gave my oopsy, daisy, now you’ve got the Crazy I’m Crazy with the books” Poor David Silver is about to rap through the entire verse, before Steve Sanders comes over in a AC Slater style tank top and, without asking, turns off Das Efx and tells David “we have to talk business”. This is a very important footnote to the history of the group’s biggest single and should be treated as such.

 

“Looseys” ­– Das Efx holds the honor of being the first (only?) group to rap about having to take a shit in public.  In the days where all rappers were too cool for school, this humorous take on a very relatable situation must’ve been a breath of fresh air.  In hip-hop it takes big guts to rap about different subjects and situations, and not be afraid to make yourself the center of the joke.

For the fourth straight track, Das Efx samples a rapper for the hook, using a line from Special Ed’s “Hoedown” song, and again the decision pays off.  This song has maybe my favorite sequence on the whole album, “I scored 26, I caught a fake and now I’m outty/I’m takin it to the hoop and then this kid tried to foul me/Boom to the gutter, I hit the floor, I wanted to flip/I couldn’t, damn, all of a sudden I had to shit.” Having to shit in the middle of a basketball game when you have 26 points (what were they playing to, first to 50?) is funny, but I’m more impressed that Skoob didn’t settle for a contested midrange jumper, instead opting to take contact and go for the more efficient shot at the rim.  Dray and Skoob have the same chemistry in songs that a point guard and center have after doing thousands of pick and rolls: if I don’t point out the basketball and Beverly Hills 90210 references than no one will.

Solid Scheme produces every song on Dead Serious, except “They Want Efx” and “Klap Yo Handz,” which ironically are my two favorite beats on the album.  Solid Scheme (Chris Charity and David Lynch) did an incredible job producing this project: they put different spins on samples and concepts we’ve already heard.  There’s an unfounded rumor that EPMD ghost produced the album since they discovered the group and have the Executive Producer label on the album.  The production shares some qualities with EPMD’s early 90’s work and it’s common practice in hip-hop for the master to help his protégé: 50 Cent “giving half of his sophomore album” to Game, D.O.C. writing Doggystyle or Dr. Dre allegedly ghost producing Eminem’s beats.  This is not the case here: these beats have their own flavor and are plain better than any 90’s EPMD project.  Had EPMD came up with these beats they would’ve kept them for themselves.

The bigger mystery of the album is what the hell happened to Solid Scheme after 1993.  They went on to produce Das Efx’s sophomore album Straight Up Seweside, which I haven’t given a long enough listen, but strikes me as one of those albums that was rushed to capitalize on the sudden success of a debut, using cutting room floor tracks to make up the majority of the album rather than starting from scratch.  Has anyone ever compared Straight Up Seweside to With The Beatles?  Solid Scheme produced only three songs on the group’s third album while DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee and Pete Rock handled the rest of the project that was critically panned.  Side note: I need a hip-hop 30-for-30 on how Easy Mo Bee, Pete Rock and DJ Premier in the mid 90’s wasn’t enough to make a good album for a group as talented as Das Efx.

The rest of Solid Scheme’s production career consists of three Das Efx credits from their ’98 LP, a handful of PMD solo tracks, and one track for a rapper named Crown that I’m afraid to find out more of.  That’s it. What the hell happened? How do you go from producing one of hip-hop’s greatest debuts to obscurity in two years without having a musical drop off or scandal?  Where the hell did Solid Scheme go?!  Reach out to Myriad Muzik Solid Scheme, and tell your side of story!

 

 

“Dum Dum” – Solid Scheme comes up with another great beat by sampling Otis Redding’s “The Happy Song (Dum Dum),” and Run DMC’s “Here We Go (Live at The Powerhouse).  Solid Scheme has a knack for infusing old school samples with 80’s rap hits.

This is the second straight song where Dray and Skoob get on their Slick Rick and give us story time, except this time it’s not about being away from home base when you have to take a dump.  This track is about the how females don’t want anything to do with you when you’re down and out, but when you start achieving success, they want you.  The beat is really cool, the content is fine, but overall this is the weakest track on the album.  It’s a great sign for an album that the weakest song is a solid song that is enjoyable enough that you don’t skip over it.

There is one song in particular that could take this spot.  “Hard Like a Criminal” was the B side to the “Straight Out the Sewer” single.  It’s another banger from Solid Scheme and is also a storytelling song but with more substance.  Dray proves himself to be master of the pen and Skoob better at the ridiculous pop culture punchlines.  The song appears on the 25th anniversary edition but for some reason was left off the 1992 release.  In general, its better to keep albums shorter and tighter, forcing you to cut the fat, but in this case it’s different: Dead Serious is only ten tracks, has no fillers, and clocks in at under 40 minutes.  “Hard Like a Criminal” is a great loose track that would’ve been a top 4 song on the album and should’ve been included.

 

 

“East Coast” – It’s fitting that Rakim, Erik Sermon and KRS-One are sampled in the hook of a song titled East Coast.  The bridge for the song shouts out more legends but there’s one name in there that doesn’t fit, let’s see if you notice which name doesn’t belong with the rest:

EPMD
Heavy D
Redman
Special Ed
Main Source
Slick Rick the Ruler
Brand Nubian
K-Solo
A Tribe Called Quest
Gang stiggity-Starr
BDP
Kool G Rapper

I understand that K-Solo, like Das Efx and Redman, were signed under EPMD but come on, you can’t put his name next to those legends.  When I hear the names of all those classic artists, I’m instantly brought back to their classic material, but when I hear K-Solo’s name all I think about is the Keith Murray fight, and him taking a lie detector test on Beef II to prove to ex-cellmate DMX he wrote “Spellbound,” (SPOILER: the results were inconclusive.)  I would totally watch a show where rappers took lie detector tests to settle beefs.  Come on my new Rap Lie Detector show 50 Cent, and let’s find out how much of The Documentary you actually wrote.

As I mentioned earlier, having a base knowledge, but being removed from New York City radio forced the group to come up with their own sound and style while they went to school in Virginia.  Many acts tried to copy their style like labelmates Da Youngstas. Jay-Z, who has a history of being liberal in borrowing styles (what up, Young Chris?), is said to have taken Das Efx style, but in reality, he was just using the style of his OG, Jaz-O.  Funkdoobiest and Fu Schnickens were the most brazen in their use of the duo’s distinct style.  Common before he found his voice and was still known as Common Sense also borrowed from the duo.  Dray said that everyone wanted to “wear Carhartts and Timbos.”  That’s such a great way to describe that hard, gutter, winter time sound that groups like Onyx and Wu-Tang perfected. Carhartts and Timbo music!

 

“If Only” – Another incredible beat that many choose as their favorite instrumental on the project. The beat flips Stanley Turrentine’s “The Man with the Sad Face.”  The beat is a departure from the “Straight from the Sewer” grimy, Boom Bap beats.  The beat is richer and would sound more in place on a Spice 1 album.   Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick’s “La Di Da Di” is sampled for either the second or fifth time on this album, I can’t keep track.

Dray has a hilarious line in his fourth verse where he says “I’m kniddity Gnarly Dude!” in a tone that sounds like he’s mocking a Saved By The Bell extra who won’t leave him alone.  I could transcribe their funny lyrics, but you don’t get the full effect unless you listen to the record and hear the tones, inflections, and mannerisms in their voices.

 

 

“Brooklyn to T-Neck” – Since I’m from New Jersey I get excited anytime a random New Jersey city gets shout out in a bar, let alone a song title.  For the 8th straight song, and last time on the album, the duo uses a sample as a hook but this time you can’t blame them.  Rapper Chubb Rock shouted out both of the rapper’s hometowns in his song “What’s the Word”.  When something that unlikely happens it’s meant to be.

The beat stands out as different from the rest.  Joe Tex’s often sampled “Papa Was Too” is used here as well as The Bar Kays’ “Humpin,” but with two great samples at hand, it seems like Solid Scheme should have produced something a little stronger. Like the beat, the raps are fine but leave something to be desired.

 

“Klap Ya Handz– My favorite beat and song on the album.  The beat is produced by someone from Brooklyn named Dexx.  It’s this song that the duo performed at the talent show that lead to them being discovered and signed by EPMD which forced them, against their parents’ wishes, to drop out of their senior years in college.

Similar to how Digital Underground used Parliament’s “Flash Light” on “Rhymin’ on the Funk,” then for the sick beat on “Danger Zone”, Das Efx uses the same “Blind Alley” by The Emotions sample they used on “Jussummen” for this track.  If you just went to YouTube to listen to “Blind Alley,” all you will hear is Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” sample.  A great part about sampling is you can use the same song for a sample over and over because they all have tiny cracks and crevices to make the beat sound your own, despite the original song already being synonymous with another artist.

It doesn’t seem possible that the first ever recording of the group could be my favorite song, but I can’t lie, this is the song I’m most excited to hear when it comes up and the most disappointed when it’s over.  Skoob sounds like a veteran as he glides over the smooth beat.  I’m not sure why I love this beat so much but it’s just great.  I tried to look up Dexx to see if he produced anything else and not only did I not find anything else by him but I now know who Famous Dexx is. Bad Times.

 

“Straight Out the Sewer” – The hook was born when Dray, waiting in the booth for the beat to start, was messing around and said “blah blah blah straight out the sewer” and Parrish made him repeat what he said birthing the hook and the song.  I love little antidotes like this that prove that a lot of artists’ greatest sayings and lines happen by accident rather than trying to force it.

Creepy moment: the line “So give me the mic check, get respect, dude, I’m gnarly/
I betcha if I was Ken, then I’d be fuckin’ Barbie.” This whole time I thought the line was “I betcha if I was ten, then I’d be fuckin Barbie.” Not only did I not find it weird they were rapping about underage sex with Barbie, but I thought it was a funny Das Efx-y line. Obviously, it’s way cooler and makes more sense to say if you were Ken you’d fuck Barbie.

Das Efx was more than just a ‘new rap duo’ they were different, they were really underground, like in the sewer with rats and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles underground. This was the last song recorded from the album and the stir-crazy, high-in-the-early-morning sound comes across on the song.   Credit to Parrish for realizing that “The Sewer” would be the groups identity, shooting videos in sewers and making their logo look like the Sewer manhole covers you see in streets.

 

Dead Serious is a certified Hip-Hop classic.  Despite being only 10 tracks and 39 minutes, Das Efx’s debut deserves to be in the Top 100 all time.  The originality, great production and lack of filler stand out even in an era where there were many New York choices and different regions of the country started popping up.  Let’s see where Dead Serious ranks in the classic year of 1992.

 

Albums better than Dead Serious:

Dr. Dre – The Chronic

Redman – Whut? Thee Album

Gang Starr – Daily Operation

Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul Brother

Eric B. & Rakim – Don’t Sweat The Technique

Diamond D – Stunts, Blunts & Hip-Hop

Grand Puba – Reel To Reel

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo – Live & Let Die

Showbiz & AG – Runaway Slave

 

Albums that are on a similar playing field as Dead Serious:

Spice 1 – Spice 1

Compton’s Most Wanted – Music to Driveby

UGK – Too Hard to Swallow

 

Albums that are worth mentioning but not as good as Dead Serious:

Ice Cube – The Predator

EPMD – Business Never Personal

Boogie Down Productions – Sex and Violence

Lord Finesse – Return of the Funky Man

Common Sense – Can I Borrow A Dollar?

Da Lench Mob – Guerilla’s in the Mist

Too Short – Shorty The Pimp

Fu-Schnickens – F.U. Don’t Take It Personal

Double X Posse – Put Ya Boots On

Twista – Runnin off Da Mouth

DJ Quik – Way 2 Fonky

N2Deep – Back To The Hotel

MC Ren – Kizz My Black Azz

 

Albums released by rappers who haven’t gone through puberty yet:

Chi-Ali – The Fabolous Chi-Ali (Just wanted to mention Chi-Ali in two straight articles)

Kriss Kross – Totally Krossed Out

 

“Classics” that I can’t rank because I haven’t had a long phase with them yet:

Pharcyde – Bizarre Ride to the Pharcyde

Beastie Boys – Check Your Head

Arrested Development – 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…

 

The early and mid-90’s were the golden age for the Hip-Hop LP.  1992 doesn’t ring in my head as the best rap year ever but the top four albums, The Chronic, Mecca & The Soul Brother, Whut? Thee Album and Daily Operation are top 25 albums.  You could easily construct an argument that Dead Serious is not a top ten album from 1992, but to me it gets the nod out of the other three choices for the 10th spot. Spice 1 isn’t as memorable and UGK hadn’t entered their prime.  Das Efx ability to truly stand out during rap’s most competitive era proves to be their biggest accomplishment.

Sex Packets Track by Track

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Sex Packets Track by Track

By: Rob Parkour

 

 

Digital Underground are best known for discovering Tupac, and Shock G’s silly nose and personas. Dig further than that and you’ll feel lucky when you unearth their 1990 debut Sex Packets.  Digital Underground has many moving parts so let’s start unpacking the album track by track.

 

“The Humpty Dance” – Shock G, leader of Digital Underground, wears numerous hats on the album.  Humpty Hump, the star on this track, is his most famous.  Big glasses, fake noses, colorful outfits, and a clown-like personality make Humpty a loveable albeit silly character.

The line “I like the girls with the Boom/I once got busy in the Burger King Bathroom” feels like it was written for my friends and I.  The song is so fun, in today’s pop climate it would be damn near impossible to release a radio single this pro-fun.

For better or worse, this song will always be associated with the group.  The beat is very recognizable, the famous drum loop is a Sly & The Family Stone sample, and the handclap snare is from a Parliament song.  There may be older, more classic beats, like “The Message,” but for me this beat is the most Hip-Hop-y beat of all time: it’s been sampled by over 100 artists.  Any true Hip-Hop head can recite Jay-Z’s opening line on Public Service Announcement, “Allow me re-introduce myself, my name is HOV, H-to the-OV,” but how many know Jay-Z’s paying homage to Shock G with that line?

This illustrates the problem of how Digital Underground is remembered: our mind pulls up images of Shock G’s ridiculous outfits and nose, but real rappers and producers know they’ve been biting/paying homage to the group for years.  Three years after “Humpty Dance” came out it had already been sampled 20 times.

Next time I get accused of body shaming at work I’m going to pull a Humpty and reply “Yeah I called you fat, look at me I’m skinny!” Should be enough to get me on the unemployment line!

 

“The Way We Swing” – I’m sure the label made the group put “The Humpty Dance” as the opening track but this is the true intro for the album. Shock G displays the sound the group is going for. This is ironic, because the group is known for their original mixture of jazz, funk and live instruments, but the beat samples the Jimi Hendrix song “Who Knows.”  This particular track doesn’t stand out, but it gives you an understanding of what type of sound you’re getting yourself into.

The cassette version of the album has “Hip-Hop Doll” following this song, an extended “Gutfest ’89” (yes, please), “Sound of the Underground,” and “A Tribute to the Early Days,” all of which do not appear on LP, CD or any streaming sites.  The songs are on YouTube: I’ve listened to them a few times but it wouldn’t feel right reviewing them because I’ve listened to the rest of the album 497 times more than those three unreleased songs.

 

“Rhymin’ on the Funk” – This is the Digital Underground sound we know and love.  The beat is the first of two on the album that samples Parliament’s “Flash Light”. Sure, other groups may have sampled Parliament in the 80’s, but no one at the time was mixing sounds like Chopmaster J and the rest of the production team.  Speaking of other Digital Underground members, we finally get introduced to our second MC of the evening, Money B. Money B has an interesting voice and a smooth flow: I’m glad he appears on numerous songs, but I’m also glad Digital Underground stuck to the Buckshot/Dres formula of giving the better rapper two thirds of the verses.  You have to give credit to Black Moon and Black Sheep for choosing to feature its star more prominently.

Growing up, I always wished that OutKast would have employed the two thirds formula and let Andre 3000 take more shots.  Since rap is so competitive, I imagine it’s not easy telling an Alpha male rapper he’s not good enough to get half the verses, but at the end of the day you should do right by the music, and I truly believe OutKast would have been even better if Andre 3000 was allowed to rap more of the verses he clearly wrote for Big Boi. Not every group has a power struggle: Pimp C, Havoc and Capone are good enough to warrant a 50/50 split, but you can’t tell me that 8Ball & MJG wouldn’t have been better if they didn’t have MJG rapping so much.  Let’s move on to the next song before I type another triple negative.

 

“The New Jazz One” – Usually I don’t include interludes on my track by track breakdown but this one is smooth and uses real instruments, remember those things?

 

“Underwater Rhimes (Remix)” – The song is delightfully silly.  Shock G performs it under his alter ego MC Blowfish, which is exactly what it sounds like, but somehow not lame.  Only an MC like Shock G and a group like Digital Underground could make a song this mindless actually bump in the whip.

The beat samples “Chameleon” by Herbie Hancock which feels like it’s been sampled a million times, but apparently it’s only been sampled by “Words of Wisdom” (check out my 2pacalypse Now review), “Money on My Brain,” by Kool G Rap (overwhelms the beat but it’s such a sick sample it sounds great), and “Cell Phones Dead” by Beck (umm). What happens when you mix a Parliament sample with a Herbie Hancock sample? A beat so good that you can sound hard on the silliest of songs ever.  This was one of my favorite songs to bump in the car, and one time at a light I was caught rapping passionately the line “Well I’m a deep sea gangster, underwater prankster/Kissin’ all the girl fish, dissin’ all the…,” and realized the car to the right of me was staring. Let’s just say I was so embarrassed that I contemplated running the red light and wrecking my car in the intersection.

 

“Gutfest ‘89” –  Mix this song with baking soda and water and let me freebase it.  Gutfest is exactly what you’d think it is.  I know what the ladies are thinking: sex parties? Gross. You are way off base on this one: “Gutfest ‘89” is for men and women alike.  When you’re attending something called Gutfest, how could you not have an amazing time?  I hereby command that from this point forward all Playboy Mansion style sex parties will be called “Gutfest ‘89.”

“Gutfest ’89” is a tour de force by Shock G.  First, he plays a news reporter from Oakland California named Ted Casey who is interviewing Scott Thompson (also played by Shock G) for exclusive coverage of Gutfest.  Bill, live from the scene, tells Ted everyone is having a fun time, while the fictitious band Blue Death plays in the background.  Bill also informs the audience of the rest of the lineup which includes:

The Who: Keith Moon’s whole life was one big Gutfest party.

The Clash: Something tells me whoever wrote this lyric either thought The Clash were a British Invasion band, or The Who were a Punk band.

Digital Underground: Why not?

EPMD: Joe Strummer and Erik Sermon would’ve been like two peas in a pod.

Miles Davis, Chick Corea & Herbie Hancock: What the fuck is Chick Corea’s name doing in the middle of two musical titans.  Come on, Shock G, do better!

The Who: While The Who get announced for a second time the piano starts playing The Doors.  I really hope Shock G didn’t think “Break on Through to the Other Side” was a Who song.

The beat is up tempo and groovy.  The Dexter Wansel sample is an eclectic choice, shout out to that Philly sound.  I feel artists of his era and sound weren’t being utilized enough during the Boom Bap James Brown drum sample era.

Shock G (as himself) has a great line “Black girls, white girls, candy stripe girls, girls with lots of back fat/It’s safe to say more healthy guts then you can shake a stick at,” then Money B slides through so seamlessly you don’t even realize the transition.  Money B also provides the hook which may sound simple “crazy guts, crazy guts, it’s Gutfest ’89,” but that simplicity is all you need on a song that has this much going on.

At the end of the song, Bill and Ted continue to have a conversation that is genuinely entertaining.  I would absolutely watch a show where Bill and Ted investigated and gave coverage of any and all sex parties.  I love Shock G as a rapper but he missed his calling as the greatest voice actor of his generation.

 

“Danger Zone” – “Flash Light” by Parliament is used for a second time, but this time for the hardest beat on the album.  This beat goes in the car: you’ll be rapping to yourself hard as hell about a crackhead.  Which begs the question, why use the hardest beat of the album for a song about the dangers of crack?  I’ve turned this question over in my head many times and ultimately it doesn’t matter why they did what they did, a lot of times we overthink our outlandish impulses until we sap the fun and creativity out of what we’re doing. I’m sure if Digital Underground had an “intelligent” conversation about making a song about a Blowfish rapping about other sea animals, then they never would have made or remixed that genius song.  Digital Underground went with the flow and weren’t scared to be as ridiculous as possible: that takes a lot more courage than it sounds.

Let’s be clear about one thing: Shock G is a real MC and no punk.  When he raps “You see, your boy Shock G wrote this/To open up your mind, do you know who I am, deliverer of the rhyme/My job is to verbally slay suckers, Like an Uzi spray motherfuckers.” Sure, those lines as read on paper may not be of the, to quote Combat Jack, “Lyrical, Miracle, Spiritual” type, but you have to listen to how tough Shock G sounds while he spits theses lines.  I’m not the only one that thinks so either. Later in the album, one of Shock G’s characters is listening to same bars as he negotiates a drug deal.  Backpack rapper geeks go on XVideos and search “Dead Prez lyrics” in the search bar, but what they don’t understand is so much of rap is how pleasant your voice is to hear, your flow and the unquantifiable coolness factor that some rappers have and Wale doesn’t.

Another question has been bugging me about this beat.  Why hasn’t anyone freestyled over it?!  This beat is dying for someone to spit 100 bars of murder on it.  This beat and many other Digital Underground beats should have been used and abused during the mid-00’s glory days of freestyles over classic beats.  Sometimes you’ll listen to an album cut of a classic rap album and be like “I remember that beat from a G-Unit mixtape.”  I’m sure there’s been freestyles over some of the Sex Packets beats, but I can’t remember any of the top of my head.

DJ Kenny K has the middle verse on this song for his lone album appearance.  For a DJ, Kenny K has a natural flow that would sound good even if it wasn’t over such a great beat.  Kenny K introduces us to dope fiend Carla who “has crack every night for dinner.”  Dope fiend Carla is a great nickname for a crack head: it makes me feel like I’m watching an episode of “The Corner.”  Kenny K continues to glide over the beat and instructs Shock G to “grab the nine.”  Shock G grabs said nine, comes back on the beat. and gives me one of my favorite lines on the album, courtesy of poor, old Dope fiend Carla:

“Stuck her head in the car, it was Dope fiend Carla/She said “Can you spare five dollars?” I said “hell no”/She said “why?  I’m not asking for much”/I said “bitch, I’d rather give a crippled crab a crutch)”

Bitch, I’d rather give a crippled crab a crutch?  What can you do after a line like that other than do a chef kiss in the air?

 

“Freaks of the Industry” – I had this song, featuring the the most female grunts in the history of music, playing as I was picking up a friend of mine to go on a hike.  The problem was I forgot his girl and two kids were also coming along with us and the females grunting seemed to get louder and louder as they approached the door of my car. I scrambled to find my BlackBerry to change the song.  I was so terrified from this close call that I turned Digital Underground off all together and put on Bobby Womack for the ride.  As the kids say, this song is NSFW.

Money B sounds so good over the track that he gets first dibs on the song, but Shock G quickly comes to steal the show with a story for the ages.  Shock G is with a lady who looks like Vanessa. Money B questions, The Right Stuff Vanessa?” As if anyone past the year of 1990 would remember her crappy album or singing career.  Shock G corrects him that this young lady reminds him of another Vanessa, Vanessa Del Rio, the Reggie Miller of Porn, a trendsetting star ahead of its time.

Shock G lays out the scene in shockingly vivid detail. My favorite part is how the story starts: “You’re lying on your back with your head on the edge of the bed/The booty’s two feet from your head.” I like when my rap verses start off with hints of face sitting. Unfortunately, there was no face sitting as Shock G gave himself these choices: “A, take the time to find a condom/B, you walk right over and you pound ’em/C, tell her that you want her love/Well the answer is D, all of the above.” Despite the furniture squeaking, everything is going according to plan, that is until “the booty starts making that clapping sound,” which wouldn’t be a problem, but Shock G’s pervert friends are in the next room. “The clappin’s getting louder, you don’t want them to clown you.” What type of creepy, asshole friends was Shock G hanging around at this time?  Not only are they not giving Shock G any type of privacy but they’re going to clown him for blowing the back out of a bootleg Vanessa Del Rio?!

This brings us to Shock G’s second multiple choice question of the evening: “What do you do: A, you simply back up off her/B, you hit it just a little bit softer/C, you take it out and put it in the butt/Well, D is what I do….” Shock G is so flustered that he’s contemplating anal. Luckily Shock G figures out a solution, “I put a towel on floor by the two-inch gap under the door/Now they can’t see me anymore/Check the locks so they can’t clock, but they can listen/There’ll be no bargin’ in and there’ll be no dissin.” You see all Shock G has to go through?  He has to stop mid-strokes and barricade himself in the room like a police standoff.  Again, what kind of people is Shock G associating with that he has to worry about them looking under the crack of a door to watch him have sex with a porn star lookalike?  They know he’s having sex and he still has to lock the door. Who on god’s green earth knows someone is having sex and just walks in?

 

“Doowutchyalike” – Second biggest single of the album: there just wasn’t that many beats that sounded like this in 1990.  This track should put to rest any question of Shock G’s level of talent.  He proved his great sense of humor on numerous tracks already, proved on “Danger Zone” he could spit hard, and proved on “Freaks of the Industry,” he’s as good as a high school senior at concealing sex.  This song may not be in my top five for the album, but Shock G’s performance proves him to be one of the most versatile rappers in history.  It takes a certain skill to go bar for bar with another rapper like Jadakiss and Styles P do, but it’s a whole different ball game to go bar for bar with your alter ego.  I’m not sure how he did it but he went back and forth between Shock G and his Humpty Hump alter ego 29 times.  My favorite part of the song is Shock G’s saying “Vanessa Williams you’re so divine/Just wanted to put your name into my rhyme,” not realizing he had a Vanessa Williams (the Right Stuff?) reference in the previous song.  Shock G thought Vanessa Williams would be this generation’s answer to Marilyn Monroe.

 

“Sex Packets” – So far there’s been 8 songs and one interlude.  Including this song, there’s two songs and three interludes left on the album which would leave us with about 25% of the album left.  It’s at this point that Digital Underground decided to make Sex Packets into a concept album about a glowing, quarter sized pill that comes in a condom wrapper.  The pill is supposed to let you experience sexual fulfillment during some type of hallucination.  It’s an interesting decision to wait this long to turn the project into a concept album, but since when did Digital Underground play by the rules?  It’s also an interesting decision to follow up the strongest run of songs on the album, with Shock G crooning back and forth with some guy named Maverick.  I wish I could find more information on Maverick, but there is no information on the singer. In my head, he’s one of the creeps trying to look under the door while Shock G is having sex with a Vanessa Del Rio lookalike.

This used to be my least favorite song on the album, I thought it was slow and broke up the flow, but it really grew on me the more I listened to it.  So much in fact that I would start crooning like Shock G in the middle of work, “Nooo sex could be greaterrrr, it’s a pillllll wrapped in a paperrr,” as my coworkers looked on at me trying to decide whether they should call HR or not.

There’s a haunting moment at the end of the song where Shock G says, “It feels so real,” and some female computer voice replies, “It is real, it is real, it is real….” Digital Underground: on the forefront of the creepy virtual reality sex scene!

 

“Packetman” – Really great beat that’s dying for Jay-Z and Beanie Sigel to freestyle over.  Quick aside: we really need to bring back rappers freestyling over classic beats.  It would force rappers to actually rap, the beats sound better, and it would give the kids a history lesson.  It would help bring the real mixtape game back, and remind the old heads of classic beats they may have otherwise forgot.  I can’t even imagine my joy if a few years down the road I heard a rapper spitting over this beat.

Shock G plays the customer and drug dealer selling the sex packets.  At first, Customer Shock is skeptical until he hears about the sale going on: “3 for $10 it can’t hurt to try it.”  Customer Shock is sold on the packets once he sees his options “Chinese girl, age 17, waist 24, hips 33/Hmmm, this one here says young black virgin.” Apparently Shock is in a reality where the age of consent is 17. Dealer Shock tells Customer Shock that the packets he’s looking at aren’t strong and nudges him towards the ones that last a half an hour.

Dealer Shock is all about gender equality: “By the way, I need something for my woman/Sure, I got guy packets.”  Dealer Shock cares even more about doing his share in keeping America’s divorce rate down, “If you’re married, it’s no big deal/You’re not cheating at all, you’re just poppin a pill/And if your wife’s got a headache and wants to hit the sack/It’s cool, take a packet fool.”

Eventually Customer Shock comes back a happy customer: “My god man, that was like nothing I’ve ever had in my life, it was like she was really in the room with me!” Dealer Shock gets excited thinking about his future earnings.  Customer Shock is already fiending for more packets, except he’s “kinda tapped right now, hook me up and I’ll get ya Tuesday.”  Once Customer Shock realizes Dealer Shock won’t front him any packets, he goes full stereotype crack head, “See this TV here?”.  Dealer Shock is disgusted, “Ohhhh, here we go man.  I got enough TV’s.”  Customer Shock pleads, “Come on man, it’s brand new I just paid $500 for it.”  Dealer Shock doesn’t budge, and says Customer Shock’s “wife will do cuz I can’t mess with this stuff myself”.  The symbolism of that is obvious, but the highlight of the track is Dealer Shock’s disgusted reaction of Customer Shock offering him a VCR: “If I get another VCR I’m going to hurt somebody!” How many VCR’s could Dealer Shock possibly have?  What was the over/under for the amount of VCR’s a crack dealer owned in 1990?

 

Sex Packets is rap’s most unique masterpiece. There’s no one quite like Shock G. Digital Underground’s sensibilities and humor are on another level.  It’s an album that’s so pro-fun that Shock G will make you smile on your darkest day.  It’s closer to being a top 50 album than a top 100 album.  Being weird, having a gimmick, wearing funny outfits and singing in rap is all the rage now, but do they know where it came from?