Twin Hype “Nothing Could Save Ya” (1991)

While writing "Supernatural Delight," (the first entry of Actual Facts) I realized that the disappearance of dancing from rap videos in 1992 was not the watershed moment I wanted it to be. Genre fanatics enshrine and sanctify the music of their adolescence. Such rituals are repeated by subsequent generations of fans, unaware that their longing for an invented prelapsarian past is linked not only to the history of the genre's discourse about its own development (see any "back in the day" rap song whether it waxes wistful about the pre-crack era, old school rap, childhood, or all of the above) but also to a  pervasive romantic tradition that precedes rap by centuries. The transition from day-glo D.A.I.S.Y. age reverie to Timberland stomping aggression was anything but tidy.

While a movement towards coarser beats and subject matter is apparent in the early '90s, the seeds for this change were planted many years in advance and too many acts (Just-Ice, King Sun, The Jaz, Brand Nubian, to name a few) defy the ol' implicit aesthetic binary (conscious vs. gangsta or whatever it's called this week) that manages to gain popular credibility the more the passage of time reveals it to be yet another fallacy. Partygoers of every era of rap likely danced carefree and fucked up under an omnipresent threat of violence or they just nodded along to the beats and threw game at the girls. Or they did all of these things in a single night while listening to songs that extolled the virtues of a cool pose, songs meant to incite public rowdiness, and songs that made a plea for unity and level-headed thinking.

My youthful wish for a enlightened party jam was burdened by fallacious thinking even if the desire came out of a sincere concern for the violence that I observed at house parties and teen clubs. There was no exact profile for a party disruptor. Kids who considered themselves righteous and learned sometimes found themselves dragged into altercations. Normally mild-mannered people beat the ever living shit out of their best friends while high or drunk. Herbs became emboldened by the easy availability of handguns. Sometimes scuffles broke out with no rhyme or reason whatsoever and people got lumped up while Kwame played in the background. The professed ideologies of rappers and their fans (through song or shit-talking) were not always congruent with their actions in the real world of collisions and conflicts. Still, a part of me clings to my original notion that a danceable plea for peace may constitute an exceptional listening experience.

I fully cop to the fact that I am privileging the kind of song that fulfills most of my ridiculously biased thirtysomething expectations while conveniently ignoring dated corniness and/or the often yawning chasm between the sentiment expressed on the record and the life of the artist. This holds true for Slick Rick's "Hey Young World" and also for the lesser known and equally strange Twin Hype's "Nuthin' Could Save Ya," from their uncelebrated 1991 Double Barrel EP. Twin Hype are of course the Newark, NJ identical twin rappers whose 1989 self-tittled album spawned two minor hits, "Do It To The Crowd" and "For Those That Like To Groove." "Nuthin' Could Save Ya" is more of the same hip-house brilliance. The duo's career was cut short by murder convictions, making their oddly authoritative pleas for a peaceful party experience, in which they order wallflowers to go berserk with "crazy flips and body jerks" and cleverly reverse the typical stick-up kid warning in declaring "nobody stands still, nobody gets hurt," feel all the more poignant. The rarely seen video, which was brought to my attention by their producer King Shameek (the architect of numerous dance-friendly jams including the incredible "Universal Flag" by King Sun) is early 90s absurdity all the way, the kind of jam that retro-fetishizing hybrid-happy young rap fans should eat up happily, if this old codger has anything to say about it.