Debut album for Los Angeles hip-hop group Da Lench Mob, formed by rapper DeSean "J-Dee" Cooper, who major duties in rapping, Jerome "Shorty" Washington, second MC, and by Terry "T-Bone" Gray, providing improvisation and hooks in a role similar to that of Flavor Flav in Public Enemy.
The trio debuted in the solo album of Ice Cube, producer of the project, present throughout the album even without being accredited and ghostwriter of most of the texts present. The production made by Ice Cube with the help of Chilly Chill, Mr. Woody, Rashad and T-Bone, is practically perfect, often heavy and funky, hard and strong, energetic, with heavy and deep bass lines, funky, jazzy and soul samples, recreating a rough and tense soundscape that recalls the one created by the Bomb Squad.
The title is a reference to the film "Gorillas in the Mist" (1988) and is linked to a comment made by one of the agents responsible for the arrest and for the beating of Rodney King, which sparked the protests in Los Angeles. This album comes in the wake of the riots and presents this trio in a pretty pissed state of mind. Their militant lyricism is a mix of Ice Cube political aggression and random gangsta ignorance, they spit bars on the Nation of Islam, braggadocio, socio-conscious, pro-black and tackle political issues, declaring themselves against the system, against the whites, against the racism, against the government, against institutional racism, against police brutality, against mass incarceration, against the oppression of whites over blacks, always against, against.
The union of this excellent production, in the first part at least, and this not excellent and fighting lyricism, creates frantic, angry and severe, confused and chaotic cuts, full of compelling and vivid bars and interpreted with a technically flawless delivery, they have the same energy, anger and flow as their mentor, but their lyrical shootings are comparable to a UZI machine gun, uncontrolled and ignorant, going to hit random victims like Jews, Asians and homosexuals, when the target of the group from the beginning of the album is the whites.
The end result is an album similar to Ice Cube's, but not up to par: it's inherently pro-black, vibrant and flowing, partly overlooked and underrated, hardcore political but also gangsta, stupid and ignorant far beyond racism towards whites. Published by Ice Cube's Street Knowledge and by East West, a subsidiary of Atlantic, the album achieves good commercial success reaching the top 25 among pop albums and the top 5 among rap albums, being certified gold by the RIAA at late 1992. Most importantly, the title track ends up on Radio Los Santos, San Andreas.
Highlights: "Buck tha Devil", "All on My Nut Sac", "Guerrillas in the Mist", "Freedom Got an A.K.".
Rating: 8/10.
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