| The Jungle Brothers are young (19, 20, 21) Afrocentrists from Afro-NewYork. After 1988'sStraight Out the Jungle moved 200,000sopies on a local label, Warners coughed up over a million includingbuyout, one hears, for the right to marketDone by the Forcesof Nature, and if it never breaks beyond rap radio the companycould recoup on street and MTV exposure alone. Such are the economicsof hip-hop these days, and let's hope the artists get a share, becausethese high school grads have their own sound and vision. ImagineDe La Soul's shambling weirdness played casual rather than arch.Drawling funkily through well-observed narratives and rallying criesthat retain a surprising gentleness even when they predict JudgmentDay or deny that Columbus discovered America, the JBs bring theold black-music ideal of positivity to rap--an almost utopian musicalrendition of a life spent sipping orange juice under the sun that'llprobably make white people nervous anyway. But not two 22-year-old white Afrocentrist sympathizers whose styleis a good deal more militant than the JBs', maybe because they havemore to prove. Though 3rd Bass came up in the same street and projectculture that shaped their black brothers (checkProduct of theEnvironment), their desire to reach the hardcore rap communitywithThe Cactus Album (Def Jam) goes up against rap's newlyentrenched ethos of racial solidarity. No lovers of self-hatred,they have the guts to dis Nation of Islam as well as white supremacistdogma, and a pussy song calledThe Oval Office ("Lunch becamefilet of sole with tongue/Oval office work is never done") mademe wonder whether Prime Minister Pete Nice took a John Donne seminarat Columbia. All of which suggests that 3rd Bass will do it theirway if they do it it all. Good. In the rap community, that's usuallythe best way. Playboy, Dec. 1989
 | Nov. 1989 | Jan. 1990 |  |
|
RSS