L'Trimm — Grab It!

Rachel "Lady Tigra" de Rougemont and Elana "Bunny D" Cager met in high school, become dancers on a TV show, then friends with a shared passion for hip-hop and form the group XTC. Through a mutual acquaintance with local rapper Mighty Rock, the girls meet one day at the studios of the label Hot Productions, where they are noticed by the label's head, who signs them both while still underage, starting to create tracks and choruses around the rhymes written by the girls, that come out of the pregnant Miami scene with some decent Miami Bass.

In 1987, Hot Productions, through their bass/electro subsidiary Time-X, released "Grab It!", the debut single from Tigra and Bunny's duo L'Trimm — the name pays homage to a popular jeans brand at the time, joined by an "L" to give it a French feel. The track became a local hit and a sensation overseas, leading to a full-length CD: the project was entirely produced by Larry Davis, Joe Stone, and Paul Klein, aka DSK, Hot Productions' production team, which primarily makes house/dance music.

Their weak and superficial rapping and their banal hooks are covered by a foggy naive mood that makes you spend these forty minutes fairly quickly. This pop rap record is rooted in the Miami Bass, but it's evident that it looks with hope towards New York ("Cuttie Pie", with its trumpet). Note "Grab It", the most successful cut: simplistic beat, minimal drum machine, the two girls deliver in languid rapping, vicious pop rap. The song is as inviting as an irresistible cheap porn store, but the lyrics seems to have been written by a lazy and listless pimp.

Critics trash the product with mostly negative reviews, highlighting the superficiality of the tracks, the elementary lyricism, the club-oriented music and the poor technical quality of the group. Despite everything, the album sells like hotcakes and Atlantic does not let it slip away, buying the rights and guaranteeing its distribution in Europe and Canada. Supported by the title track, a sort of answer to Salt-n-Pepa "Push It" and the minor hit "Cars with the Boom" (aka "Cars That Go Boom"), #54 on the Hot 100, the album enters the pop chart and according to sources sells almost a million physical copies.

The following year, Atlantic bets on the duo with a new LP, "Drop That Bottom", which does not produce any hits and is greeted with hesitation by the public and critics. In 1991, the major label was still behind Tigra and Bunny's third CD ("Groovy"), in an attempt to carve out their own space in the vast commercial house market, but the result was a flop that convinced the duo to split up and distance themselves from the music scene.