In 1986 the New York emcees Gregory "Greg Nice" Mays and Darryl "Smooth B" Barnes form the rap duo Nice & Smooth. They sign with local independent label Strange Family Records, releasing their debut single "Dope on a Rope" as Greg Nice & Smooth Bee. In 1988 the duo makes an agreement with Fresh Records, and the next year debuts with a whole LP. Written, mixed and produced by Nice & Smooth, the project stands out from the rest of the scene for the comic rhymes and sarcasm present in every track.
On the musical contrast between the shouted delivery of one and the velvety one of the other, Greg Nice & Smooth Bee self-produced their debut album in 1989. Their easy-going braggadocio lyrics, generic, flow away in a pretty fluid way, I haven't nothing to say about that. The rhythms are quite functional and accessible (funky, fresh, simple and minimal) and the rapping delivery's honest.
The second cut, "Something I Can't Explain", is one of the most incredibly wrong commercial choices I've seen so far: it's a six-minute ballad that immediately kills the album. If you look at the glass half full, the duo chooses to put the ballad immediately to isolate it from the remaining thirteen hip hop cuts. The disc is quite coherent, easygoing and relaxed, without too many high quality, although it can boast an interesting choice of samples (the original use of the abused "UFO" of the ESG deserves its props): from one of these samples guessed, it arrives one of the best cuts on the record, "Funky for You". Here the rhythm does everything, spectacular, absurdly dope thanks to the Parliament; the two rappers remain generic, anyone would have pulled out a classic over this beat.
Published by Sleeping Bag Records via its hip-hop sub-label Fresh, the record is pushed by the singles "Early to Rise" and "Funky for You" (peaking into the top ten in the rap chart), Praised by both audiences and critics, it later led to the duo signing with Def Jam, and the album was later one of only three titles picked up by Priority Records after the bankruptcy of Sleeping Bag in 1992 and was later included in The Source's list of the 100 best rap albums of all time.
Rating: 7/10.
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