The third studio album of the Brooklyn group Das EFX, comes out around the period in which the breakup of EPMD takes place, the duo that had discovered them: Das EFX decide to side with PMD. The production is created by Easy Mo Bee, Solid Scheme, Peter Lewis, DJ Scratch, DJ Premier, Kevin Geeda, Soul G., Das EFX, DJ Clark Kent, Showbiz and Pete Rock. The guests are KRS-One and PMD.
The boys enlist some of the best producers of the period to shape the musical landscape of the project and, despite the technical goodness of the performers behind the keyboards, the rhythms are boom bap hard most of the time, but they sound lazy, boring, soporific, lacking the right inspiration. The drum machine is often midtempo, hard, dusty, sparse and dry, accompanied by decent and discreet, melodic and dark sounds, as well as heavy bass lines. On these minimal and scarce beats, the Das EFX delivers generic, raw and ignorant bars with a style no longer as catchy and fresh as it used to be. Following the trend of the previous album, the "iggidy" flows are set aside, almost completely disappeared and replaced by a more hardcore attitude, thus adapting to the trend of the moment in the local scene.
Having provided a much more than great and fresh alternative in the hip-hop scene three years earlier, the group decides to adapt to the scene and go down with hardcore, losing importance from this act. The record doesn't age well, it's decent, irregular, generic, bland, it sounds hardcore but more than hard it seems plastered, rigid, the group is no longer able to innovate or surprise the listener, there are some rare great pieces, some funny moments, some controversial excerpts and many average songs that sound quite similar to each other. They sound rusty, cumbersome, limp, out of their ideal terrain to offer a more hardcore content in which they feel forced and almost completely out of place, in fact, their best song is the cheerful and positive "Real Hip-Hop".
After four discreet, mediocre and little flat choices, box number five shows the strongest track on the record, the banger, "Real Hip-Hop", courtesy of DJ Premier: magical bass line, dusty midtempo drum, dirty, raw, gritty, underground rhythm. The Das EFX bring out an eye-catching and simple hook and deliver with a lively, cheerful, dirty, confident, flowing style. In this song, more mainstream and accessible than the rest, they choose an energetic style but not overly hardcore or shouty, and it's a perfect decision. Among the other songs, "Ready to Rock Rough Rhymes" stands out in the second part: the rhythm of Solid Scheme and Das EFX is sad, with a melancholy and dark, gloomy piano and a dirty and dusty drum downtempo, giving the soundscape a dark and sad atmosphere. The guys do a great job of keeping the mood and thickening it with an appropriate rap, regular, subdued, slow, well thought out delivery style. Among my favorites.
"Represent the Real" boasts a DITC production with Showbiz: tough midtempo drum machine, minimal rhythm, hardcore delivery of the performers. Then KRS-One goes hardcore and kills the beat with a quick, raw, dirty, deep delivery, he destroys everything, that's awesome. The track is so good that KRS decides to bring it back a few months later in his second solo LP, with the title "Represent the Real Hip-Hop". After "Bad News", a weak track with a short contribution from PMD, it comes one of the highlights of the year, Pete Rock's remix of "Real Hip-Hop". Its rhythm is fresh, enveloping, clear, the drum is dry and hard, shiny and clean, midtempo, combined with fantastic samples: the MCs sound best in their life, this would probably be the best song in their debut too, their delivery looks incredibly clean, they run smoothly with amazing dope flow. Pete Rock delivers a masterpiece to the Das EFX, this is an even bigger classic than the original.
Released by EastWest, the album achieved considerable commercial success, reaching fourth place in the rap chart, but being crushed by specialized critics. Slow, not coherent, not fluid, continuously undermined by weak songs and improper moments, with half an hour less, the product would have been more compact, regular, cohesive and much better than it is. It stretches to 74 minutes of listening divided into 20 tracks, there's a noticeable excess of material. It should be noted that part of the failure of the disc lies in the almost total absence of samples — there are three good ones in the whole record, Roy Ayers on "No Diggedy", Nina Simone on "Here It Is", and Grover Washington, Jr. on "Dedicated" — fundamental component in hardcore and in boom bap subgenres, and element on which the group had built its fortunes three years earlier, collapsing after the sentence v. Warner Bros. That ruling killed many artists and overwhelmed Das EFX as well. Either way, it's a good listen for fans of the group and might appeal to hardcore and bare boom bap fans as well.
Highlights: "Real Hip-Hop", ""Here It Is", "Microphone Master", "Alright", ""Dedicated", "Ready to Rock Rough Rhymes", "Represent the Real", "Real Hip-Hop (Pete Rock Remix).
Rating: 7/10.
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