Cold Crush Brothers — Troopers

Grandmaster Caz is one of the pioneers who have done several good things for the growth of the hip hop music scene in the seminal scene of the early eighties. Formerly known as Casanova Fly, he's the first to DJ and spit rap at the same time, and his lyrics for "Rapper's Delight" are stolen by Sugarhill Gang.

He drops solo singles and with the Cold Crush Brothers, a crew in which himself embodies the lead role; in addition, he puts out some good lines in "Wild Style" (1983). Is the best rapper in 1979 according to Complex magazine, but he has been in the game for at least eight years when he comes to release a studio album: many years have passed. There are really many, the sound has evolved and transformed rapidly over and over, going from that initial mix of disco music and rap, to then go into the electro, up to the hard and pure skeletal sound, starting to glimpse a new sonic evolution just when Grandmaster Caz and his group look out the window.

With exceptions, none of the old school has managed to adapt to the sound that the late eighties scene required or what the early nineties would have been. Neither did Caz. This is a desperate attempt to remain still hot in a scene now crowded with many emerging talents: the sound chosen by the production is skinny and hard, but not that of 1985 that LL Cool J has dominated with the sound of energetic and brave bars, no, it's a light, bland, unloaded raw rhythm.

It's one of the most accessible simple set of beats you can find in the game of the eighties: it works when it remains simple ("Feel the Horns"), but not when it tries to be modern ("We Can Do This") while remaining very poor, cheap, really weak, nor when it tries the Run-DMC emulation with the rap rock sound that's immediately out of place both with a heavy and minimal drum machine (“My Guitar”) both with a more accessible, funky and lively drum machine ("Cold Crush"), since the rapper always delivers without energy, he never seems inspired (at best he's decent).

Caz isn't even helped by the hooks, which in this effort only serve to feed the song, while scratches, jazzy bridges and more lively interpretations are of little use ("Cold Crush", "The Bronx"): at best, the chorus are trivial, the one of "Troopers" is to be forgotten, while the one made in "My Guitar" is simply banal and ridiculous in its attempt to keep rap rock vibes.

Released by Westside Records and B-Boy Records in UK, the LP is published even in Germany but not for US market until 2006, when Traffic reissue it with a slightly different cover and crediting as author Kay Gee The All & DJ Tony Crush instead of the whole group. In summary, it's difficult to save anything (the ode to his borough that closes the album, possibly) from this record, whose advice I personally don't recommend. It isn't essential, I affirm it painfully precisely because it derives from one of the MCs that has represented the most and deserves more recognition among the pioneers of the genre.