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.
Nucci Reyo and New Jerusalem’s Second Great Awakening
One night in maybe 2005 I piled into a colicky hooptie in search of a house party that was being held somewhere near the expired electric car line in Long Branch, NJ. Unlike my usual haunts, this shore city is not a felled industrial-commercial center but a faded resort wonderland for the monocled laudanum fiends of the Gilded Age. The broad shabby avenues stay freckled with harbingers of a sizzling new gentrification stirring in the uppermost part of the old South. Pipsqueak fences slung around peacetime craters bear fliers foretelling automated skypads and gleaming mausoleums for the delicate arts. Halogen coils framing eurotrash boutiques and the pastel sunbursts of restored hotels compete with neon signage toasting bulletproof partitioned takeout joints, conjoined pool hall-pawnshop predicaments, and restless Quisqueyana beauty salons.
Terminator X. ft Juvenile Delinquintz “Juvenile Delinquintz”
Teddy CD over at T.R.O.Y. recently wrote about the surprisingly overlooked solo career of Terminator X (of Public Enemy and ostrich raising fame), focusing on his first album from 1991, Terminator X And The Valley Of The Jeep Beats. Terminator's second album (1994's Super Bad) remains a cult favorite; the singles "It All Comes Down To The Money" featuring Whodini and "Under The Sun" featuring Def Squad affiliate Joe Synister, are sometimes cited as lesser known gems of that era. Valley Of The Jeep Beats, though lauded when released, is rarely praised nowadays. That's a shame because the single "Juvenile Delinquintz," which features the youthful rap group of the same name, is a compelling indictment of the public education system, perhaps one of the best the rap genre has to offer.
The Queens Street Life Revisited: Meyhem Lauren “7000 Thoughts”
Relative newcomer Meyhem Lauren's fierce Illmatic-like delivery and fixation on themes like contingency, ruination, and self-annihilation brings to mind the brief but memorable discography of fellow Queens rapper Ak Skills. While Meyhem's emotionally evocative, deceptively unrefined rhyme style is not easily mistaken for Ak's matter-of-fact late 90s delivery, both rappers borrow vocal and poetic techniques from the same source: the anxiously introspective exposition best exemplified by Nas's verse on "Life's A Bitch." On "7000 Thoughts," Meyhem channels Nasty Nas at his most poignant, in a manner reminiscent of Ak's cautious explication of the pitfalls of street life on his lesser known songs "One Life To Live" and "One Thing Or Another," but also effectively evokes regret and pathos in a conversational tone that hearkens further back to one of Nas's principle influences, Tragedy Khadafi (formerly Intelligent Hoodlum).
That Real Live Bunch From Jersey
New Jerseyan dissidents are frequently observed bandying about our state's population density (1,171.1 persons per sq. mi, son!) as if any one of us really has anything to do with it. It is certainly somewhat understandable that each Garden State resident who was elected to be born north of the Rio Grande expects to be counted as a legitimate point o' lite in this spiral galaxy of a clusterfuck. Belief in such a notion may be symptomatic of a contagious mania or an over-dependence on waning Jeffersonian ideals, but the fact of the matter (as I've been told on at least numerous occasions) remains that the inescapable crowdedness of Jersey results from a confluence of factors.
Supernatural Delight
The Future Sound - "The Function"
It's not as if one strange day people just stopped dancing to rap music, but one strange day people just stopped dancing to rap music. They didn't stop jamming or bopping, naturally. But at some point in early '92 everyone* stopped Roger Rabbit-ing the fuck all over their parents' cluttered dining-living rooms.
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Recent Posts
- Twin Hype “Nothing Could Save Ya” (1991)
- Meadow Fabulous (Strong Island Got The Zone)
- Nucci Reyo and New Jerusalem’s Second Great Awakening
- Terminator X. ft Juvenile Delinquintz “Juvenile Delinquintz”
- Crosses To Bear
- The Queens Street Life Revisited: Meyhem Lauren “7000 Thoughts”
- Menlo Park Mall 5/17/08
- Blackboard Jungle
- That Real Live Bunch From Jersey
- Country Buffet and the Rebirth Of Cool
Recent Comments
- Sam Orchard: Thun, I think the difference is that we can look back fondly at the silly moves from the past, whereas we have to witness and shake our head at...
- I'm a bitter 30 something loser: wow this site is awesome! great writing about some of my favorite groups like terminator x and twin hype! Awesome! fag
- A.R. Marks: Being a Hudson River-adjacent Jersey resident for most of my life (first North Bergen, then Hackensack/Paterson/Ridgefield Park), the lack of a...
- passing observer: “Such rituals are repeated by subsequent generations of fans, unaware that their longing for an invented prelapsarian past is linked...
- passing observer: you’re really overdoing it. you pack too much into your sentences for the sake of being descriptive. you’ve sacrificed...
- Conspiracy: Conspiracy was dancing to this song back in 1991 when he was 14 years old. Pure love for Twin Hype. They are classic hiphop celebrities and...
- Chuckle Champ: Beautifully written, great analysis
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