3rd Bass - Derelicts of Dialect

Suddenly, over the loudspeaker i heard an album that i think is spectacular. If you remember 3rd Bass at all, it's going to be their hit "Pop Goes the Weasle," a dis track making it very clear that 3rd Bass doesn't want you to put them anywhere in the same paragraph as Vanilla Ice, unless like I'm doing you're making it clear they thought he was an embarrassment to humanity at large. Don't worry, they equally hated MC Hammer.

You need a proper historical context for this album. Hip-hop came from the Bronx. It's the melting pot of Jamaican turntablists, clever word play, graffiti, looking fly, and jumping up and down like teenagers do with their black/white/latino/jewish/whatever friends who are equally stuck in the inner-city. Two turntables, some old funk and soul and jazz records, a microphone, and your hype-man showing off some cool new dance moves. Everyody had something to like, because everybody was involved.

Naturally, some coked up white guys in the 80s with ugly ties to match their ugly personalities said "we can make a lot of money if we push this already popular scene into the mainstream, and they put their lawyers to work figuring out how to water it down, bottle it up, and scrape 90% off the top.

Meanwhile, a couple kids who loved it to begin with decided to start their own label in their dorm room and called if Def Jam. Those kids were Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. I don't want to do a whole Def Jam history, so i'll just kind of gloss through the relevant chain of events.

Russell and Rick invested their time and energy and money putting out recordings of actual people they knew making good music because they loved it, a hardcore punk band who dabbled in hip-hop to great success made their first album and it blew up. Like big time. They then preceded to ditch their actual friends at Def Jam for all the friends named Ben at Capitol records, and three other guys from the Bronx inhereted the war of real hip hop vs. mainstream douchebaggery. There's a real love/hate relationship between the Beastie Boys and hip-hop in general, but everybody pretty much agrees that 3rd Bass was the real deal. They were hip-hop kids to begin with, and they had no interest in selling out just for notoriety. They made 2 great albums with no intention of gaining mainstream popularity, broke up, and proceeded to live their own lives like friends do. I've long since lost my cassette of The Cactus Album, but Derelicts of Dialect is one of my most treasured posessions. Yes, the official genre designation of this album is "golden age of hip-hop." It's a masterpiece of plundephonics, collaboration, social critique, and the art of assembling an album. It is specifically modeled after the albums of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, as in "this is what real hip-hop is supposed to be."

I don't want to do a breakdown of all the tracks, because that really would take away some of the joy of listening to this album for yourself.

If you are one of those people who think rap should be outlawed along with skateboarding and driving really slow, then all i can do is quote LL Cool J saying "i don't think so," give you the gas face, and remind you that everybody's invited to the party, even your dad. The only rule is don't be phony. Peace.

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