By 1993, the East Coast scene was waking up after a bit of lethargy and everyone wanted to have their say. Unique album by Knucklehedz, a duo from Brentwood, Long Island, formed by Thomas "Tom J" Jimenez and Steve "Steve Austin" Leonard.
The boys went to school with Erick Sermon, are affiliated with the EPMD and are part of the Hit Squad between 1990 and 1993. EPMD split the production equally, with Parrish Smith and Erick Sermon having three rhythms each, the remaining beats are made by affiliate Charlie Marotta. The musical choice is fantastic, and is probably one of the best and freshest of the year on the East Coast: jazzy boom bap, hard and pounding slow dirty drum, honest samples.
On this dusty and edgy soundscape, hard and rugged, the duo spits out random braggadocio bars with an energetic and fresh, youthful, lively and light-hearted style, blessed with fresh DJ 45 scratches and good choices behind the keyboards. The first few cuts deceive the listener that the album will be a nice lively and tight energetic listen, but as the minutes pass, the intensity and energy of the duo falls and the whole project flattens out. It seems to me that there are problems with the mixing of Charlie Marotta, sometimes the beats sound over the delivery of the two performers. Their lyricism is generic and average, they bring out stanzas on weed, parties, vainglory, they've great smoothness flows, but they say nothing for fifty minutes.
Production is the real MVP of the project, props to Parrish Smith, Erick Sermon and Charlie Marotta are a must: Marotta is a bit hidden as a producer, but here he has done a nice coherent and solid job, never disappointing, he's on the same level if not better than PMD, while Sermon disappoints by doing something wrong with his choice of rhythms. There are no guests, it's a personal record that's destined to mark the scene and open a fairly decent career for the duo: they weren't going to be the new Run-DMC or Das EFX, but I think a couple of other albums would have brought them out, with some interesting guests like EPMD, Das EFX and Redman could have easily gone on for a few years.
The duo, in fact, boasts an agreement in principle with Atlantic Records and they must release their debut album with the EastWest branch, however, the year before, the robbery of the Parrish Smith home takes place, and the EPMD duo disband: Knucklehedz suffers collateral damage, losing the deal with Atlantic and the entire album, which is forever shelved sine die. If you pay attention, you'll notice that even on this site, the disc is marked as released in Germany, but there's no edition released in the US: somehow, the duo managed to convince Atlantic to produce the record, which is distributed exclusively for the German market by the European branch of Warner Music, but it doesn't sell many copies and the duo follows the path of the EPMD and breaks up.
Rating: 6.5/10.
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