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Do you remember the damn middle school party? The one where if you asked for Fonzies, you invariably ended up with leftovers, etcetera etceteranza? I remember it as if it were yesterday, one of those sad preadolescent interludes, suddenly and unexpectedly brightened by a chorus that went something like this: "SLAM! Too too roo... Too too roo! Let the boyz be boyz! SLAM! Too too roo... Too too roo! Make noyz B-Boyz...". After asking the person who had pressed play on the stereo, "Who the hell are these crazies?!" and receiving the reply, "Uh. The Onyx," I was just as clueless as before. Onyx? Just like the brand of jeans for teenagers brainwashed by too many episodes of Beverly Hills and years of devoted reading of Cioè?
Fortunately, although the spelling of the name is identical, as I soon discovered, this crew had nothing (and still has nothing) to do with stolen kisses from the best friend's boyfriend and vaginal douches with Coca-Cola to avoid getting pregnant. The history of Rap, perhaps more than that of any other music genre, has been heavily marked by the formula: debut with a bang = second album not living up to the expectations created as a result. There have been and still are happy exceptions. But few have stuck with me like that of these charming rogues. So ugly and so bad, that they count a fair number of admirers even among metalheads. And I'm talking about the heavy ones, not those with Hammerfall T-shirts and Dungeons & Dragons manuals in their backpacks. Always in a bad mood and afflicted by a chronic need to scream their discontent. With rhymes as hard as two-week-old bread and as black as the coal the Befana made you find in your stocking when you were naughty. Surely never as much as them. To whom, however, nothing can be said. Not because the content of their lyrics is not questionable. But the risk is finding yourself surrounded in zero time by a gang of angry ghetto blacks, ready to dispense justice with baseball bats and Timberland-branded kicks.
After the successful debut in 1993, the chair bearing the inscription "Boss" in the control room passes from the hands of the late Jam Master Jay to the filthy and dollar-hungry hands of the main group's members. After downsizing to a trio with the exit of Big DS, Sticky Fingaz, Fredro Starr, and Sonee Seeza are entrusted with the unenviable task of bewildering us and dragging us by the hair (or scruff if, like them, you're bald) through the streets of Queens. The formula is, rappistically speaking, as simple and effective as possible. Namely: booming beats, slaps instead of snares, basses reminiscent of Giuliano Ferrara (in the sense that they are nice and chubby eh. Not anti-abortionists and pro-Berlusconi, for heaven's sake...) and bare-bones sampling for cleanliness. Choruses shouted by whoever is around and fuck! shit! bitch! motherfucker! nigga! like it's raining. If the income from the sales of "Bacdafucup" freed Sticky and company from bothersome tasks like basing cocaine in a rat-infested basement, slapping uncooperative prostitutes, and mugging unsuspecting passers-by, it doesn't seem to have quieted their inner demons even slightly.
As evidenced by the album's introduction, where Sticky even contemplates suicide (yeah right... Anyone would think of ending it all once they reach the point where they can afford 120-inch megascreens, sports cars, caviar for breakfast, and those three or four things all rappers dream of as kids...) in a surreal dialogue with himself. Incidentally, I'd say that titles like "Getto Mentalitee," "Shout," "Live Niguz," "I Murder U," "Last Dayz" (my favorite), and "Evil Streets" speak for themselves. Only tone shifts: the RnB singing (yes, you read that right!) of "Purse Snatchaz" and, content-wise, the harsh racial pride assertion of "2 Wrongs". To be clear, nothing transcendental. The three bad boys from South Jamaica certainly aren't addressing the crowd with deep socio-political analyses and dismantling historical events concerning the African American community (that was Marco Z... Or Macho Y... Or whatever the hell he was called...). However, they occasionally (but really OCCASIONALLY) show they can look a bit beyond their neighborhood.
What else to say? Well, for those who are not very perceptive, perhaps, that this is one of those albums to recover without ifs or buts, consume over and over again, and gift to all your little friends. As long as you're not damn bichassniguz. In that case, I advise you to start running, and hope to be faster than the bullet rounds that have already been aimed at your butts.
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