Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Pharcyde
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
(Delicious Vinyl, 1992)
Jazz and funk licks, witty skits and chicks with man-bits in this undersung West Coast rap gem.
There is surely a Gender Studies dissertation in "Phobia Of Inadvertent Homosexual or Transsexual Encounters In 'Golden Age' Hip-Hop". Try that one on your prof next term. The paradigm, natch, is Tone Loc's 1989 pop-rap classic Funky Cold Medina ("I don't fool around with no Oscar Meyer wiener," Tone assured us, perhaps protesting too much). Something similar happens in The Pharcyde's rollicking Oh Shit, a litany of causes for consternation culminating in a date with a "Crenshaw cutie" that goes a bit Crying Game. "I got a funny feeling like something was real wrong," frets rapper Fatlip, "Looked at her shoes and her feets were real long."
Other West Coast rap groups of the time might have overreacted - one can imagine Ice Cube getting busy with some "gat"-based retribution - but this being The Pharcyde, there's nought but a shrug and a belly laugh. It's the font of their debut album's charm - a one-off full of good-humoured ensemble rhyming from 'Lip, SlimKid 3, and helium-shrill Imani, with warm jazzy breaks marshalled by producer Juan "J-Swift" Martinez - Coltrane and Herbie Mann slipping in alongside the then-regulation Donald Byrd and JBs. Single Passin Me By is the loping signifier of their otherness, an unusual rap single in its melancholy tribute to unrequited adoration, borne on the wistful organ from Quincy Jones' ace version of Summer In The City.
Less serious-minded than their East Coast cousins in the Native Tongues posse and prone to old-fashioned, super-stupid boasting (I'm That Type Of Nigga), The Pharcyde are sceptics, questioning Cali rap's glorification of weed (Pack The Pipe) and swiping at in-vogue "conscious" hip-hop in the intro to their most gloriously feckless tune: Ya Mama (as in "ya mama got a glass eye with a fish in it"). There's also room for an evolved pop at Uncle Tomming that's of a piece with Robert Townsend's brilliant late-'80s blaxploitation satire, Hollywood Shuffle.
A reminder of the sheer variety of West Coast rap styles extant on either side of 1990 (anyone for Del Tha Funkee Homosapien or Digital Underground?) it's worth going back to this bright-side flip of the skunked-out nihil-threat posed by the DJ Muggs/Cypress Hill/Funkdoobiest axis, ladyboy "action" notwithstanding.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 14/07/2010
Further Listening
Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – I Wish My Brother George Was Here (Elektra, 1991)
Funkdoobiest – Which Doobie U Be? (Immortal/Epic/SME Records, 1993)
3rd Bass – The Cactus Album (Def Jam, 1989)
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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Still a great album from West Coast Hip-Hop's Golden Age, though I'd recommend "Innercity Griots" by Freestyle Fellowship as the meaty main course after this appetiser.
Posted by Psodal at 1:41 PM GMT 14/07/2010 Report Abuse
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