#32: Black Sheep — A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
New York, NY — Mercury Records
The Native Tongues Family consists of De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, but lo and behold there’s always a black sheep in the family. The Black Sheep, the low lives of the family tree. The doo-doo eatin’, vomit tastin’, pee drinkin’, jelly donut makin’, hoe slappin’, kitty cat lickin’, cesspool swimmin’, premarital sex havin’, you know, the whole nine. So run for the hills…and hide your hoes.
It’s that outrageous paragraph, ladies and gentlemen, that Black Sheep, as they themselves put it a less known member of the Native Tongues collective, choose as an introduction to their debut album, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. It’s certainly attention-catching, and not something you’d expect given the pensive aspect of the cover photograph, which could suggest somewhat of a sober, philosophical approach to rapping. That, however, is far from the truth: after that outrageous spoken intro track, we are greeted by U Mean I’m Not, an absurd, over-the-top, obvious, egregious parody of stereotypical early 90s gangsta rap *cough* NWA *cough*, and then by Butt In The Meantime, a very tongue-in-cheek shit shooting session about nothing in particular where the group’s penchant for witty jokes and retorts is strongly hinted at. It becomes obvious that this record’s gonna be quite a ride, right?
Black Sheep was never a rap group to achieve a consistent, long-lived career, even though A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing was pretty successful at its release. Composed of rapper Dres (the crouching bloke with his chin on his hand) and producer Mista Lawnge (the dude with the glasses and the unbelievable high-top fade), the duo’s first record was praised for its “…unique rhythms and intelligent, often humorous lyrics” and granted them significant recognition within the rap scene, only for them to quietly break up and fade away for over a decade in 1995 after their ’94 album, Non-Fiction, got pretty much no exposure and no success (they would kind of join forces again in the 2000s but I dunno nothing about that).
As I was saying, this album really does hit you with a few curveballs right from the get-go. Among ridiculous parody-ish songs and egregious shit-talking sessions, Dres’ taste and ability at coming up with witty rhymes and bars makes itself very clear. The beats are solid at best and middling at worst, with no really incredible moments, but no terrible ones too —Strobelight Honey, Similak Child, Hoes we Knows and Black With N.V. are the best of the bunch in my opinion. Their lyrical brand is their humor and how much they own it: it is seldom straight up parodical, but there’s a constant tongue-in-cheek feel to it, like they’re never really taking themselves seriously, but with enough subtlety to keep you second-guessing yourself.
That humor, however, is sort of this album’s undoing to me as well. See, it clocks in at a whopping (and very satisfying) 1:11:00, and pretty much the entirety of it consists of humorous songs about run-of-the-mill themes such as having sex, being a great MC and being better than the competition, and, most commonly, about absolutely nothing in particular, with scarce, incipient little storylines thrown in here and there. Their humor is witty and stimulating at its best, puerile and disappointing at its worst, but after you reach a certain point it just stops mattering because of how much of a fucking slog this album turns into. Seriously, like a good 70% of the 22 songs in here are straight up filler, repeating instances of their true-and-tested formula that I wouldn’t miss for one second if they were chopped out. There’s just so many silly obscene (and sexist, of course) raps I can power through before I want to end it all.
Skits are par for the course, of course. L.A.S.M. (which stands for League Against Sexist Motherfuckers), for example, is this thing where they’re being interviewed by a feminist who tries to put them against the wall for being sexist motherfuckers, to which they respond with condescendence, dismissal and mockery. Apart from the obvious, painfully eye-rolling cringiness of it all, this is one moment where I was kinda left guessing just how ironic they were being. At first it sounded like they were being 100% earnest, but then I started second guessing myself over how serious in they unseriousness they were being. I mean, their persona in that specific skit is just too damn scummy, but maybe that’s the point? Maybe they’re parodying others and themselves at the same time? But then they go and straight up do the things they might be criticizing in the very next track?
This investigation of the multi layered trolling they do, however, is mostly useless and uninteresting, and adds nothing to the experience. Don’t get me wrong, I quite appreciate comedy in rap and there is a lot of potential in their sarcastic demeanor, but ultimately they’re just so infatuated with their own edgy jokes that even the most potentially memorable or highly interesting tracks fail at building themselves up to it.
Of course, it’s not like there isn’t a good number of redeeming qualities to this, such as some tracks that are pretty great and definitely stand up on their own, and I can most definitely respect, if not necessarily admire, a rap group who makes it their sole mission to be as obscene, silly and unserious as possible, most of all when they’re surrounded by their highbrow intellectual Native Tongue colleagues. However, A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing does ultimately fall short both as a work of comedy and as a display of artistry and technique, perhaps by focusing too much on trying to be both at the same time. As RateYourMusic user nikhil_kk1996 so eloquently put it: “Irreverent kids besotted with sex and not a whole lot more that truly matters. The beats are par for the course. And length is in fact an issue. Almost befuddled as to what makes this such a revered album beyond nostalgia and a weak period for rap”. And that’s all I have to say about it.
Favorite tracks
The Choice Is Yours: Apparently the most famous track out of this whole affair, this does sound pretty iconic, beat and chorus most of all. It’s a braggy track about nothing in particular, as are most hip-hop tracks in history if you think about it, but it’s a pretty good one at that.
Flavor Of The Month: One of the only songs in here about a specific theme, this one is about how the music industry has a need for an ever-changing roster of voices and faces, complete with well though-out metaphors, witty retorts and jabs at artists who where at that time struggling to stay relevant, such as Kane, or soulless industry automatons such as Vanilla Ice. If you ask me it’s sort of ironic if you stop to think about who is best remembered today, thirty years later, Kane and Ice or Dres and Lawnge.
Black With N.V.: N.V. stands for No Vision, and this is the only openly political track in here. Honestly it’s not even that good, even though it’s got one of the best beats in here, but it was such a relief when it came on that I can’t help but like it better than most other ones.
