As Remembered By The Working Class Hero: Ready To Die, Notorious B.I.G.: Big’s dominance of the mid-90s started in earnest in ’93 with the summer anthems “Party and Bullsh*t” and “Juicy”. Everybody was rockin’ to these. So the buzz around an album from Puffy’s first hip-hop act was fairly significant. You must remember that Puff exec produced Mary J’s debut (What’s The 411) and basically developed Jodeci into the influential R&B collective they turned out to be.
Ready To Die hit the streets in September and served as the quintessential “back-to-school” soundtrack for most adolescents at the time. More important than it's back-to-school billing, though, was its importance in effectively bringing hip-hop back to the East coast. Many will argue (to the death) what album really brought the east back. Some say it was 36 Chambers...others will contend that Black Moon’s debut Enta Da Stage did it. And in many regards, people in these two camps have very valid arguments. The charts don’t lie though. As seminal and influential as 36 Chambers was it only peaked at #41 on the Billboard 200 and Enta Da Stage’s numbers were paltry at best. From a mainstream perspective, Ready To Die unabashedly brought the East back peaking at #15 on Billboard’s top 200. And while it didn’t out-chart Snoop at the time, B.I.G.’s debut album was the first east coast offering to really challenge the sales that the West was doing. One has to acknowledge that the reign of the West had waned a bit, they had been doing it big since Straight Outta Compton, ya know…
Numerical analysis aside, this album was just plain hard-hitting and dome-splitting. “Ready to Die” and “Warning” pumped in every teenager’s treble heavy car stereo tape deck and “Juicy”, “Big Poppa”, and the remix of “One More Chance” were mainstays on all radio stations. Big’s presence was in its nascent stages, but everyone knew that this guy was here to stay…the fact that he and Tupac would forever be the XY Generation’s John Lennon and Elvis Pressley was unfathomable.
As Remembered By The Working Class Hero: Diary of A Mad Band, Jodeci: The early and mid-90s was the epoch of the “R&B Group” phenomenon and no one did it better than Jodeci. Oh you definitely had your share of perpetrators and wannabees out there (Shai, Silk, H-Town, etc..) but the only group that could hold a candle to Jodeci’s popularity was Boyz II Men. But Jodeci brought the R&B thang to a different audience. They didn’t cross over—at all. They were masterminded by Puffy to usher in what would be known as the New Jack Swing sub-genre of R&B. Diary is widely held as the group’s best album. And for good reason.
“Cry For You”…”Feenin’” ?!?!??! It was a wrap for the airways. Everyone wanted to bang these tracks on their way to work, during, and then through the evening rush hour. And while R. Kelly and lil’ Tevin Campbell sold more this year, it was Jodeci that was the true “People’s Champion” when compared to the rest of the R&B groups that were in mad competition for ears and credibility.
As Remembered By Uncle Harry: Fear Itself, Casual: In the late 80s and early 90s all we knew about West Coast hip-hop was “gansta” rap and Dr. Dre--until sometime in ‘93 when we were introduced to crews like Hieroglyphics and the Likwit crew. I knew of these new dimensions in West Coast rap (as did my friends at school and we all loved them), so I was under the impression that everyone else knew and enjoyed them too. I couldn’t believe how wrong I was.
I was a huge fan of Hiero, who had already released acts like Souls of Mischief and Del tha Funkee Homosapien. Casual was the 3rd release from the crew. He kept in line with the rest of the crew with his lyrical prowess, backed by funky beats.
My freshman year in high school I was in the gym with my brother-in-law somewhere around 5 days a week trying to get some muscles (if you know me you know that didn’t really work out too well). At 14 and 15-years-old, this was the only exposure I had to black men between the ages of, say, 20 – 35, who knew about something other than the drug-game. Everyday in this gym, like most gyms, they played music, but more times than not I would keep my headphones on because they would tend to play the same stuff over and over. At this time the album of choice was the Above the Rim soundtrack which had the lead single “Regulate”; and by this time I had heard this song far too much. At some point they asked me to put what I was listening to in the stereo and it just so happened that, on that day, I was listening to Casual -- as I did quite often, because I was under the impression that it was dope -- so I put it in.
After about the first 6 songs, I was feeling great because I was finally able to workout without my headphones on and still listen to what I felt like hearing. Then I began to hear some mumbles and groans and all around displeasure. When we got somewhere around Track 9, “I Didn’t Mean To”, the mumbles became roars of “what the hell is you listening to?”, and “get this crap outta here!!” So we went back to the norm of the Above the Rim soundtrack to my dismay.
Being an impressionable youth I began to wonder if perhaps Casual wasn’t really that good on the mic, maybe the Above the Rim soundtrack is where it was at. So I did the knowledge. I actually listened to the soundtrack when I was in the gym, and when I would go home I would listen to my music. I studied Fear Itself nonstop and, to my delight, songs like “You Flunked”, “Me-O-Mi-O” and “I Didn’t Mean To” had dope beats and dope rhymes. It was my joint all year until one unfortunate day when my stereo ate my dub tape -- sadly the fate of several tapes back then.
