![]() “Brooklyn-Queens” pulled off the nearly impossible feat of being absurdly funny AND dope as fuck. Any song could have been a single but the ones that WERE singles were monsters. Even though the trio was not meant to be long lived due to creative differences between Pete Nice and Serch, this was the first of two back to back albums that still hold up as hip-hop classics decades later. The only thing I can tell you is that as an avid listener of hip-hop at the time “The Gas Face” turned me on to 3rd Bass, and “ The Cactus Album” turned me on to the group as a whole. In real life Stanley Burrell was so pissed about this and the line “ The Cactus turned Hammer’s mother out“ on the album that he put a HIT on 3rd Bass.Īgain teenage Flash with no internet was not privy to any of the drama. The song’s infamous outro saw them return to their anti-pop rap stance by loudly declaring “HAMMER! SHUT THE FUCK UP” while the music video saw them give a beatdown to an oversized novelty hammer. drop bars long before the days he’d become better known as MF DOOM. The third verse cemented this by having a guest appearance by Zev Love X of K.M.D. ![]() “Black cat is bad luck, bad guys wear black/Musta been a white guy that started all that” quipped Serch, setting an entirely different standard other than anti-commercialism - one of being “woke” long before that word entered our collective lexicon. If so the irony here is that the overnight success of “The Gas Face” made 3rd Bass just as commercially viable as the same artists they were dissing.Īlthough the aforementioned Sam Sever handled most of the production duties on “ The Cactus Album“, famed De La Soul maestro Prince Paul was the man behind this classic jam. “strictly underground funk, keep the crossover” as EPMD would later opine. Perhaps 3rd Bass was attempting to establish a strident “real hip-hop” movement where the commercial success of songs like “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!)” was not allowed, i.e. I didn’t then nor do I now think of the Beasties as being any more or less legitimately hip-hop than 3rd Bass. It wasn’t obvious to due to the fact that MC Serch and the Boys have one really big thing in common - they’re all white guys of Jewish descent from the boroughs of New York. In hindsight though it’s not hard to pick up on the double entendre of lines like “The Beast now lives in the Capitol “ and Pete Nice referring to them as “three bastard sons” he gave birth to. At the time all I cared about was how fly the rhymes from MC Serch and Pete Nice were, how ill the scratches from Richie Rich sounded, and how dope the Sam Sever track was - sampling from Blood, Sweat & Tears for the music and from Edgar Bergen for comedic lines like “He is stupid, but he KNOWS that he is stupid, and that ALMOST makes him smart”. ^ The 10 Best Albums By White Rappers Archived July 16, 2012, at archive.“Pop figures who figured they’d get paid/Exploiting art the black man made”Īs a teenage Flash when “ The Cactus Album” first released in 1989, the fact that “Sons of 3rd Bass” was a Beastie Boys diss song completely flew over my head.Recording Industry Association of America. ^ Christgau, Robert (December 26, 1989)."3rd Bass: The Cactus Album / Slick Rick: The Great Adventures of Slick Rick". The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). In Brackett, Nathan Hoard, Christian (eds.). ^ Fitzgerald, Muff (January 20, 1990)."3rd Bass: The Cactus Album (Def Jam/Columbia)". "3rd Bass 'The Cactus Album' Def Jam / Columbia". A decade later, Rhapsody included The Cactus Album in its list of "The 10 Best Albums By White Rappers". In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums. The Cactus Album peaked at #5 on Billboard's Top Hip Hop/R&B Albums chart and at #55 on the Billboard 200 chart. It was certified gold by the RIAA on April 24, 1990. The album received positive reviews from the hip hop press and is also notable for featuring the recording debut of rapper Zev Love X of KMD, later known as MF DOOM, on “The Gas Face”. The Cactus Al/Bum (also known as The Cactus Cee/D and The Cactus Cas/Ette depending on release format) is the debut album by hip hop trio 3rd Bass, released on Def Jam Recordings on November 10, 1989. Pete Nice, MC Serch, Sam Sever, Prince Paul, The Bomb Squad (Hank Shocklee, Keith Shocklee, Eric "Vietnam" Sadler)
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