T. Robinson bka Top Quality appears in "The Source"'s Unsigned Hype in April 1991, comes under the wing of PMD, becomes a member of PMD's hip-hop collective Hit Squad and in the following years signs with RCA (via Smith's PMD Records, RCA's sublabel), becoming the first rapper from White Plans, New York, to get a major label recording deal.
After having released some songs in 1992 under New Image Records and with the production of Tony Capone aka Tony Dofat, also at his debut, in 1993 he released the single "Magnum Opus" produced by Kievan Mack and remixed by Charlie Marotta. The following year it was the turn of the second single, "I Can't Hear You", which preceded the CD by a few weeks, the only studio album released by Top Quality. PMD is the sole executive producer of the edition.
Behind the keyboards there are Charlie Marotta, Hell Raisin, Kevin Pyatt, John Hall, Keivan Mack, Black Zone, Jesse West, Tra Bag, Chris Charity and Derek Lynch (Charity & Lynch are the Solid Scheme, famous for being the historic producers of Das EFX). There are no credited guests, in fact Jesse West aka 3rd Eye makes an appearance on what is supposed to be the album's soon forgotten promotional single "What".
With the exception of a few parts that are recited in Pig-Latin ("Someone So Fly" and "Check the Credentials"), the lyrics are quite simple and most of the writings of this guy who calls himself Top Quality revolve around weed. The guys at AllMusic, not ironically, write that this emcee has a rare versatile lyricism never seen in hip-hop, those kids are really funny, neither me nor them have actually read the lyrics on this album.
The title is also challenging and disappoints expectations, so let's go to the music. There's a different beatmaker for almost every track and the guys all do a great job if the end goal was to create a set of East Coast boom bap beats that were as generic as possible. Myra Barnes, The Wild Magnolias and The New Orleans Project, The Crusaders, The Emotions, Allen Toussaint, Grover Washington, Jr., Roy Ayers, no sample is saying anything here.
They should all work and deliver classics, but unfortunately nothing works and nothing offers anything remotely memorable, ending up disappointing one more than the other, perhaps Myra Barnes' for "Something New" most of all: this is looped so that it imitates the sound of a duck as much as possible. I didn't really understand why Tra Bag, which I only realize now as I write (and thanks to the discogs database) is one of the thousand different monikers of Baghdad, Hell Razah's brother, has decided to make it sound like this. What happened in "Messages From Uptown"? Hell Raisin, whoever he is, samples "Blind Alley" by The Emotion, he doesn't let it breathe for even a second, he cuts it, tears it, chop it, throws it on the ground and places a farting trumpet on it that for no reason in the world can sound well.
Perhaps even more tearful is "U Know My Name". Top Quality holds his own as a rapper. Jesse West aka 3rd Eye has a banger in his hands, placing a timely sample from "Marcella's Dreams" by The Crusaders for the track. In the following years, the same piano from that piece was used by Pete Rock in a wonderful remix for a piece by Akhenathon and is present in two legendary songs, Godfather Don's "Status" and Buckwild's second remix of Big L's "MVP", the latter two are among the best hip-hop cuts of the decade. Unfortunately, the loop that Jesse West decides to insert is ridiculously "insufficient" to carry the beat, then he adds an abrasive drum that washes away the sample, which should remain in the track, instead it disappears practically immediately except returning briefly for the hook, but you might not even notice.
After EPMD and the Hit Squad disbanded, PMD keeps the Hit Squad but the Hit Squad is no more. He's there. With K-Solo, Das EFX, DJ Scratch and Top Quality. Parrish Smith is betting very hard on this guy and by "betting very hard" I mean that he signs him, takes him to RCA, makes him record ten tracks produced by nameless guys and his historic audio engineer (Charlie Marotta hasn't produced more than three PMD songs in his career, up to four if you also count the ones with Erick Sermon) and throws him into the crowded East Coast market withouth any support from guests, whatever comes out of this project goes to him, period. The big problem is that nothing, practically nothing comes out of this album, which has a lot of difficulty selling copies, not helped by an absolutely disturbing cover worthy of one of the worst horrorcore records ever to come out of the catacombs of Memphis.
Released by RCA and Smith's labels Hit Squad and PMD Records (both inaugurated for this project under the blessing of RCA Records), the album is distributed by BMG and is ignored by everyone, barely reaching one of the last available slots on Billboard's R&B records chart, at number 95. The flop convinces the major to dump Top Quality, whose career comes to an end. PMD tries to relaunch his protégé together with the other members of the Hit Squad in his next album, "Shade Business", published a few months later and which also encountered difficulties in the market.
I think it's right to close by pretending that this is a circular story and returning to "The Source", the magazine that helped launch Top Quality's brief artistic career. In the end I was going to overlook "The Source" review written by Cheo Coker for this record thirty years ago, in which the author provides an excessively enthusiastic writing, throwing himself into risky comparisons that touch half of the contemporary hip-hop scene. However, he's still right with an incipit that is timeless and which, so as not to copy it word for word, states how hip-hop fans and critics needlessly waste time, a lot of time, behind products that would easily be labeled as rubbish with the sole purpose of searching for that hidden gem that all true enthusiasts know really exists in those cassettes recorded in the bedroom that are buried at the bottom of the boxes in the basements of some unknown relative,* destined not to be heard by anyone.
*Note: there is no pun intended in having included so many words with the initial "b" in one of the last sentences. The original writing in Italian was based on an involuntary sequence of terms with the initial "s", for once google translate somehow managed to keep up this alliteration by choosing the right words.
This album isn't rubbish, on the contrary, being a legitimate Hit Squad record it comes close to having that hidden gem, but it just doesn't have it. 6/10.
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