The boy grew up in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, NY, and made a name for himself in the New York battle rap scene in the early 1990s. In this period, Kwest Tha Madd Lad was noticed in a national battle rap by Dan Charnas, a talent scout for Profile Records. After leaving Profile, Charnas moved to Rick Rubin's American Recordings, where he became the head of the hip-hop division and decided to bring Kwest with him, calling him around 1993 to make the album and signing the rapper to the label. Charnas became the executive producer of his album and between late 1993 and early 1994, the boy began recording his debut album, convincing record executives after performing an early version of "Lubrication".
The album was completed in 1994 and was supposed to be released that same year, however it took another two seasons before it reached the shelves of stores and this fact soured the friendship between the emcee from New York and Charnas. There are no guests, which is uncommon for an album of the mid-nineties. The production was done by Charnas himself together with Erik Romero, Kwest Tha Madd Lad, Baka Boyz, LA Jay and Tony D. DJ Homicide took care of the scratches except for the track "Lubrication", where he was replaced by Kut Masta Kurt.
The album contains over an hour of material poured into eighteen tracks and four skits, one of which is performed by the actor Andrew "Dice" Clay. The music is typical of the East Coast scene of 1993 and 1994 influenced by acts released by the collective Native Tongues and Souls of Mischief, cautious jazz samples, drums that are not saying anything, mild rhythms and pretty functional to the execution of Kwest, who lyrically creates an entire album in battle rap, spitting in freestyle for an hour. The author proves to be funny by reciting humorous lyrics and letting himself go with light-hearted themes in the first part, dealing with weed, sex and various bullsh*t, becoming more serious in the second half, where he faces crime ("125 Pennies for Your Thoughts"), drugs ("Herman's Head") and death ("Damn").
The album comes out exactly as Kwest wants, who has nothing to complain about except for the fact that it's released in 1996: published by American Recordings for the US and European markets, the rapper gets unlimited artistic freedom and in his album everything seems to work (he introduces it with a sexual skit) except for the annoying hooks, the only obvious flaw, however, his project is ignored by critics. Even Kwest himself is soon forgotten because, despite having a second effort ready to be released in the same year, due to problems with the label this debut remains his only officially released work.
Rating: 7/10.
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