Bacdafucup the Onyx is herrrrrre! Onyx are the second most underrated rap group of the 90s (Above the Law is the first, ironically given the title of this new Onyx joint). "Slam" got a lot of play back in 1993/94, but their next two albums, All We Got Iz Us (1995) and Shut 'Em Down (1998) only made a minor dent in the public's consciousness, in spite of selling reasonably well in the underground. Onyx came back last year with the pretty brilliant Wakedafucup but - you spotting a trend here? - it got zero traction or even acknowledgement.
Undeterred, Sticky Fingaz and Fredro Starr are back with a new EP, Against All Authorities, which dropped yesterday. "Fuck the Law" is another zeitgeist-repping anti-establishment track, which should now be pretty familiar, but Sticky and Fredro have always gotten by on bristling energy and sheer force of personality, both of which are in abundance here.
Now we come to a group that I sincerely believe to be one of the all time great first wave gangsta rap ensembles, and possibly the most underrated of the 90s. First of all, there is a very good case to be made that the G-funk sound made famous by Dr. Dre's The Chronic had already had the seed planted two years earlier with ATL's debut, Livin' Like Hustlers. Dre was assistant producer (with ATL's Cold 187um) and the album was issued on fellow N.W.A. alum Eazy E's Ruthless Records, so there is always the question of which producer had the most influence over the album's sound. Either way, even assuming Dre was the real mastermind this record nonetheless marks a stripped down, funk laden departure from his work with N.W.A., retaining the heavy beats but otherwise holding the samples to just one or two per track, and occasionally having live musicians recreate elements of a sample's instrumentation.
But regardless of whether ATL influenced a single other rapper or producer, the consistency and energy of their work is worth repeat dips to the well. Cold 187um's calm, steely delivery was fairly unique with his laid back style and penchant for rhyming words during any part of a line - beginning, middle or end:
When I sit down and write and recite for the mic I hold
Make sure my beats are loud, and bold, and Cold
187, that is my name, makin it simple and plain
Here to rearrange and change
The things that I didn't do in the past
Don't be surprised when you got a shotgun up your ass
None of ATL's trio of rappers - Cold 187um, KMG or Go Mack - were particularly gifted wordsmiths, but each had a gift for entertaining, crowd pleasing tales from the hood. Lyrically they weren't pioneers, but they immersed themselves in the gangsta narrative of the time and chewed the fuck out of the scenery with sincere enthusiasm. Livin' Like Hustlers would not turn out to be their greatest album - primarily because side two, where all the pimp tracks were concentrated, didn't quite live up to the brilliance of the gangsta tracks on side one - but it was a hell of a start.
"So just hand me a flag from the fascists / and watch while I burn that motherfucker to ashes". Nearly impossible to imagine this song coming out in 2010, though I'm sure the sentiment still simmers in many corners of the ghetto. Not much known about this band, so not a lot to tell, but according to All Music Guide the Burn Baby Burn EP had to go through an alternate manufacturer, as the label's go-to pressing plant refused the order on the basis of the incendiary album cover. Otherwise the group put out a full length album the next year, Doin' Hard Time on Planet Earth, before the scattered members faded into obscurity. We'll be revisiting that album when the blog gets to 1991.
In startling contrast to the lighthearted wordplay of Brand Nubian and A Tribe Called Quest is "Mind of a Lunatic" from the Geto Boys, to this day possibly the most fucked up set of hip hop lyrics ever recorded. Most of 1990's Geto Boys was simply a major label remix/repackage of the previous year's indie release Grip It On That Other Level, but I'm willing to cheat to shoehorn it in here because goddamn, it doesn't get much more bloodcurdling than this.
After an extremely terse musical introduction, Bushwick Bill kicks things off impatiently with an audibly gleeful romp through one of his favorite rape fantasies:
She begged me not to kill her, I gave her a rose
Then slit her throat, and watched her shake till her eyes closed
Had sex with the corpse before I left her
And drew my name on the wall like helter skelter
Scarface also has female problems of a sort, namely a run in with the cops after he's killed his girlfriend for getting strung out on coke (or it may be her mother who suffers his wrath, it's sort of unclear, but granny definitely gets offed when she tries to run interference). Rather than submit to arrest and whatever consequences that might entail, the erstwhile Brad Jordan decides to go out like Butch and Sundance instead:
No sheriff's gonna take me on a road
Dark as fuck, and let his pistols explode
Fuck that, cause I ain'ts to die
So I reloaded my uzi and fired up another fry
It got me crazy as fuck
A ragin psychotic full of that angel's dust
Willie Dee (frankly always the weakest rapper in the Geto Boys, and that includes his later replacement Big Mike) has no specific bloodthirsty tale to impart, but does articulate his misanthropic nature quite nicely:
November 1st 1966
A damn fool was born with the mind of a lunatic
I shoulda been killed
My sister fucked around and let me live
Who writes shit like this these muthafuckin' days? They just don't make 'em like they used to.
