Debut album for Anthony Peaks, rapper of the Flavor Unit under the moniker Apache. Minimal cover typical of the nineties and a title that lends itself to joking, Peaks here brings out an effort of 14 songs, intro, anti-white racist skit and a few guests for a total of about 45 minutes.
His lyrics are easily ignored, when he's not spitting out random bars, he's all about crime and sex, verses that slipping away aided by decent production. Behind the keyboards there are Apache himself, SID Reynolds, Double J, The 45 King ("Do Fa Self"), A Tribe Called Quest ("Gangsta Bitch"), Large Professor ("Hey Girl") and Diamond D ("Who Freaked Who", "Get Ya Weight Up"). Apart from these cuts, the production is simplistic and weak, made up of jazzy and funky rhythms with sparse drum machine, poor samples and functional hooks.
Most of the guests add little or nothing to the songs: the only exceptions are Nikki D, featured in the spoken intro of "Tonto" and in the ending of "Who Freaked Who", both sexual songs, and Treach, who is easily better than all the others interpreters who took part in the "Woodchuck" posse. Among pro producers, Large Professor is subdued in the reggae filler "Hey Girl", providing a decent simple funky boom bap for a cheerful cut with Collie Weed and Milo (not THAT Milo), and Diamond makes the mistake of still using a sample by James Brown for "Get Ya Weight Up". They are all overtaken by A Tribe Called Quest, here in shape to create the best rhythm (and song) of the Apache project, "Gangsta Bitch", single that reaches the charts and pushes the album to the top 15 among the rap records: simple jazzy boom bap, good jazzy sample, good regular skinny drum, the rapper delivers slow and fit.
Released by Sony/Warner Bros./Tommy Boy, overall, it's a curious, whimsical and irregular album. Funny too, if you look at it with a humorous eye: "A Fight" is one of the most criticized choices of the whole record, especially by critics, it's racist against whites, anti-whites, and it is until the uncredited guest 2Pac pronounces the two final lines of the track, those that should make you understand the irony of it and, more generally, the one that pervades the entire effort. Do you have seen the title? Apache did it just for fun. For me he succeeded. Of course, if you're not a fan of irony, Lench Mob released one of the hip-hop albums of the year few months earlier, get that one.
Rating: 6/10.
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