Between Slump & Grind 1 and 2 something happened in the vicinity of San Francisco.
Both are mixtapes of local MCs released by Bay Area DJs B.Cause and Ross Hogg. The change wasn’t so much in the lyrics, which remain centred on the trad hoodlife topics of money, bitches and having fun. But the music got weird. The mid-range disappeared, fading into the background like a half-seen apparition. The percussion stretched, became all rubbery Eastern tablas on “Show Me Your Nasty.’ The synths ceased stabbing and turned into delicate droplets of sound – cotton wool dabbing the livid bass bruise of “Tell Me When To Go.’ And the samples are filtered to all hell. “Pills & Weed’ twists in your ears, synthesising the synaesthetic effects of its titular drugs while Turf Talk sneers his dealer boasts/confessions. You have just been hyphyed.
This may just be down to everyone necking a pile of snidey E as big as the Golden Gate Bridge. Or it may be a logical conclusion of the club-based forms of rap from the South and Mid-West. Whilst the Bay Area isn’ actually in the South, there are plenty of links between the Atlanta crunk scene and hyphy. Lil’ Jon has produced Bay Area mainman E-40 and “Doors Open’ could be the pervy uncle of of the already iffy “Salt Shaker’ (but the Bay is lighter than crunk’s natural habitat of Atlanta strip bars). If demography is destiny then NYC is the refined, elegant, obsolete Old Country to the vulgar New World of the South where the American population is migrating in droves. Which, I guess, makes the Jurassic 5 Oswald Spengler.
I have to love any scene that makes a fetish of stupidity. Odes to getting stoopid thread through these tracks in constant praise of folly. “Dummy” is an aspiration rather than a put down. Which isn’ to say that there aren’ moments of lyrical genius – just that this club crowd want to get ripped and make some bad decisions. But the decisions made on these compilations are pretty damn good.
