A-side
I don’t know how this information found its way to my eyes, but at some point today I was reading about Jonah Hill acquiring the rights to the story of largely-forgotten-90s-rap-trio 3rd Bass. Hill planned to star as MC Serch, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio’s Pete Nice, in a soon-to-be filming biopic called Product of the Environment. A pretty good name for a movie about their story, honestly.
Needless to say, this news delighted me to no end, if only for the rush of nostalgia resulting from a dormant memory suddenly resurfacing: the purchase of their debut record, The Cactus Album, at Mr. Cheapo’s Commack location. Record? Album? I bought a CD.
I also remember the recommendation of this album by a friend named Kris. He was the music snob to my music nerd, and we’d go rarity hunting at Mr. Cheapo’s often. He’d just as often score some 30 year old vinyl pressing of Lou Reed scratching carpenter nails on a rusty pipe as I would walk out with a Beatle’s bootleg and a $3 Paula Abdul CD because I liked that one song with MC Skat Kat. In any case, if Kris was recommending something, I generally heeded his advice. He actually didn’t much like hip-hop, but was an avid reader of music news. Those that knew about such things were very high on this group, he’d read.
In retrospect, his pitch of (and the discourse around)3rd Bass presented less as a musical judgment and more of a racial one. The critics, proxied by Kris, offered a false binary: if you were a white rapper, you were either a Beastie Boy—or you weren’t. And if you wanted to listen to white rappers, you should listen to 3rd Bass, because they were more “real.” In 1989, despite the existence of Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties were still largely seen as a novelty act. 3rd Bass, meanwhile, was stepping to the A.M. and claiming their white supremacy (so to speak).
That was the story, anyway. In truth, The Cactus Album is wrapped in an obvious insecurity about 3rd Bass’s place in the NY hip-hop scene at the time. The album includes multiple disses aimed at the Beasties themselves, with the track Sons of 3rd Bass taking shots at the trio for breaking their Def Jam contract to sign with Capitol. But it’s the album’s directing of a Gas Facetm at the Beasties that probably best exemplifies the Cactus Album experience.
You’re probably asking: What the fuck is a gas face? And the answer is: 3rd Bass presented a debut album steeped in a lore and culture that didn’t yet exist. Instead, they arrived on the scene with a fully formed lingo and image that presented as if it were the established lore of some subculture you were now allowed access to. They said shit like you already knew what it meant, which could charitably be called “respecting the audience’s intelligence.” Realistically, it just all rang false, as if they’d just came up with their own versions of existing words. Which is kinda what they did.
That’s not your jimmy, that’s a cactus.
I don’t diss you, I gas you.
You aren’t out looking for a buddy, you’re trying to enter the Oval Office.
Props where they are due, though: Prime Minister Pete Nice, the Columbia educated half of 3rd Bass’s emcees, foresaw the “deez nutz” era before its time, with a title-track shout out to the bozack (which the listener is free to “step up and swing on,” per his invitation).
This part of the 3rd Bass experience—the made up lore, the in-jokes that leave you confused—is only one part of it. There’s another equally true fact about the Cactus Album: the record itself mostly rules. Maybe it’s the summer of 1990 talking, my first summer with a job and a license and a car where I could smoke cigarettes and blast 3rd Bass, but I do love this album.
DJ Richie Rich is likely the unsung hero of the group: for all of Pete Nice and MC Serch’s lyrical silliness, the beats and samples behind them are propulsive and clever, taking you for a fun enough ride that you don’t realize how dumb you sound singing along:
Put vanilla on a cone
walk to the corner, dial a number on a phone
you got the Gas Face!
Not all the lyrics go this dense and, when 3rd Bass stops trying to drum up a beef with a band that doesn’t think about them at all, there are plenty of gems dropped from start to finish. The supposed beef was the weakest part of the whole experiment. Years later, we’d all learn that 3rd Bass was signed to Def Jam just after the Beastie Boys’ unceremonious departure from same, and their feud wasn’t so much inherited as forced upon them. If you were on Def Jam, you had to go after the traitors. Their hearts just weren’t in it, I don’t think.
Ultimately, both Nice and Serch gave all three Beasties their due publicly, deciding they ought to praise them like they should. With the questions of Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA settled, 3rd Bass changed their focus on their second album, going after a much more deserving target: Vanilla Ice.
Oh, and that Jonah Hill movie? Not happening. Turns out I fell for a meme. Real cool.
B-sides
- What? — A Tribe Called Quest
This will not be the last Tribe song that appears in a playlist here, I can guarantee that. This one’s a quickie, minimalist and funky on a record otherwise mostly filled with chill, jazzy loops and the actual Ron Carter himself on the bass. The loop that sits under the whole thing is the opening (and best) 12 or so seconds of Uncle Willie’s Dream by a guy named Paul Humphrey. Never heard of him. I have heard this Tribe song, though, maybe thousands of times in my life. Just Q-Tip doing his Abstract thing, all stream-of-consciousness questions with no answers and weird asides. - Le Bien, Le Mal — Guru, MC Solaar
The Tribe’s Low End Theory walked so could Guru’s Jazzmatazz could run. Or something. Both albums share DNA: they’ve got (the jazz), they’ve got rap: you see where I’m going? A spiritual cousin to Low End Theory, Jazzmatazz dug deep into the Blue Note catalog to bring old school bebop into the hip-hopped 90s. Or at least that’s what I remembered. Turns out that was a story I constructed in my mind, probably based on the album’s cover, which expertly mimics the Blue Note template down to the last detail. Well done, Guru. And great track: I’m a sucker for non-English speakers rapping, and these French verses don’t disappoint. - Chapter 7 (feat. Ty) — Ezra Collective
I don’t know this band at all. Why? I came across this song somehow (couldn’t tell you how), loved it (could absolutely tell you why), and this is part of the point of this playlist project. It’s not that I haven’t discovering great new music: I just couldn’t tell you what I’ve discovered. I don’t remember learning about Ezra Collective, but they somehow made it into my library. But now? Boom: I know this band a little better. I know their name, for one, and the kind of music they play. Also: their bassist is a lefty.