Def Jam (1993)
Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Age' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.
I really liked 3rd Bass when I was a teenager and I feel like their albums have held up pretty well over the years, even if the Cactus. Al/Bum is probably about twenty minutes longer than it really needs to be. When the group broke up, I purchased the MC Serch solo record, Return of The Product. I never heard from Prime Minister Pete Nice once 3rd Bass was done.
I don't understand how, but I had no idea this album even existed back then. I should have, I was recently reading an old issue of The Source that I know I had as a kid and there was a gigantic ad for it. But for whatever reason I forgot or it just never registered. I definitely don't remember ever seeing a video on Yo! MTV Raps, but I saw one for MC Serch's "Here It Comes." That's probably the biggest reason I bought Serch and didn't know about Pete.
And that's a shame, because the sinister Prime Minister was always my favorite of the two. His gravelly voiced, laid back delivery always seemed elevated and mature, especially next to MC Serch being kind of a clown (a lovable clown, but a clown nonetheless). This album is just chock full of Pete. It's a strong record with production that reminds me a lot of the second 3rd Bass album, Derelicts of Dialect. As a whole, it is better than Return of The Product, I think. But MC Serch has higher highs and there isn't any one song on Dust to Dust that is as good as "Here It Comes" or "Back to the Grill."
I think I also would have liked this more if I had heard it back in 1993. While I have discovered lots of great albums from that era later in my life, the ones that always stick with me the most are the ones I listened back when they originally came out.
Prime Minister Pete Nice & Daddy Rich - Dust To Dust:
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