#45: Freestyle Fellowship — Innercity Griots (1993)

Los Angeles, CA — 4th & B’way/ Island/ Polygram

For our next installment on this illustrious series, we got the sophomore effort from LA-based posse Freestyle Fellowship, Innercity Griots. This album is seemingly regarded as one of the seminal records for the alternative hip-hop subgenre, a classification I do have my doubts about¹, even though it’s not the first foray into it we’re coming across — De La Soul’s, Brand Nubian’s and Main Source’s debuts come to mind, not to speak of Divine Styler’s absolutely balls-to-the-wall insane sophomore release. Composed of Aceyalone, Myka 9, Self Jupiter and P.E.A.C.E., the Freestyle Fellowship had already been running their notoriously independent, free-spirited thang, based mostly on the illustrious Good Life Cafe, a very important hub for the early west coast indie scene.

This record is very much more daring and experimental than To Whom It May Concern…, their 1991 release, which came off to me as a pretty solid but fairly run-of-the-mill and inoffensive early 90s conscious hip-hop record. The production on Griots, however, is simply incredible, in a very literal sense of the word, and some of the stuff in here is honestly mindblowing. For an example, look no further than track six, Six Tray, whose opening section features a famously confusing odd time signature — 99,999% of everything hip-hop is firmly in 4/4, what little non-4/4 stuff there is is in almost as common 6/8, and we’re still a fair amount of years away from cLOUDDEAD’s polyrhytmic experiments. Of course, I picked an especially mindblowing moment, but there are many more parts on Griots where they momentarily escape a traditional approach to production and instead tread a considerably swampier terrain — quite literally too, seeing as a fair amount of beats in here feel positively hazy, with muddy, borderline confusing looping and mixing; I’d say that Bomb Zombies, a short track about the point of view of a rambling zombie in the city or something, is the foremost example of this experimentalism of theirs, both beat and lyrically wise.

Still on that note, I’d like to draw some attention to this album’s sequencing and structure in general, which is quite honestly some of the best we’ve seen so far. It’s not like it doesn’t have its fair share of filler songs, as most rap albums still do, but the general flow of it is so good that it is only noticeable upon closer inspection (which does raise some questions regarding whether it can really be considered filler). Their compromise to building a uniquely fun, meandering and unpredictable experience is patent, which can be seen in the suddenly extremely mid-80s TR-808-heavy minimalistic ignorance that is Cornbread, for example, which would usually be a major turnoff for me, but is just so jarring and unexpected that I couldn’t help but be amused by it. Of course, this gimmickyness of theirs does not always work, as will be discussed later, but is nevertheless, for better or for worse, a major defining characteristic of this album. Overall, the production in here is positively jazzy — not just positively, but literally so: there are tracks such as Inner City Boundaries that consist of a literal jazz backing track, complete with sick solos and scatting.

Moving on to the lyricism, I guess it’s pretty safe to say that their creativity and whimsy is their biggest strength and undoing at the same time. It’s evident that they didn’t care one bit for the lyrical going-ons of the west coast at the time and instead adopted a free, meandering, tongue-in-cheek tone more reminiscent of, say, the Native Tongues, with a healthy dose of their own thing nevertheless. A personal favorite of mine is the single verse from Heat Mizer:

Well, I-za, heat mizer, and I’m wiser
Than any other rapper no matter the size of
Girl or guys-a, they all dies-a
I ship ’em up and take ’em up to Kaiser
Third floor, hospital ward
Doctor, his spinal cord’s tore
His final words roared:
“I don’t want no more, I don’t want no more, lord, life”
Infrared chipper, one for the gipper
Dead like a doorknob, killed in a slipper
While rolling in my rollerblades, fell and broke my shoulder blade
Laid and I prayed
Then I grabbed a razorblade stayed and I played
Then I broke a mental barricade
Don’t you hate it when your ice pick sticks right in the skull
And you gotta pull it out with two hands?
Don’t you hate it when your chainsaw’s out of gasoline
And you gotta use a butcher’s knife on a man
Yucky, yucky, yes, yes
Huckleberry, wet flesh
There’s a couple necking in the woods by the trees
Could it be the prince and the princess?
Getting undressed, having sex in the moonlight, freeze

Isn’t it so unique? That very specific mix of east coast alternative whimsy and free-flowing imagery, west coast swagger and irony, plus a healthy helping of proto-horrorcore writing, all tied up with their very unique sense of humor. It’s not very technical or precise, and there are more than a few moment overall where the loose ends are more than visible, but I’d say that is kind of the point sometimes. See, this is one of those records where the point is to have fun, to embark on a voyage, to let the beats and raps take you with them on a trip — all seasoned with a good dose of Freestyle Fellowship’s own homemade spice blend, of course.

There is some good chemistry going on between the four members, with but a moment or two where it feels janky and awkward, and even then it doesn’t really matter that much due to the extravagant and intriguing production choices. A standout exception would be Heavyweight, a boxing match-themed freestyley posse cut that starts out OK, I suppose, but is quickly dragged down due to an excess of mediocre guest verses, disjointed structuring (or lack thereof), and the fact that it simply drags on for too fucking long with not a lot of notable moments all throughout. Another notorious characteristic about this joint is how effortlessly funny it is — differently from the repetitive, cringy, puerile tryhard-ness of Black Sheep, for example, their stuff feels just so… natural? It’s kinda like they’re not really trying to be funny guys, but it just comes naturally among a few shared joints and brews at someone’s place.

That does, though, remind me of that thing I was saying about their gimmick-ness. See, my main complaint about this album is how excessively gimmicky it is at times, and while they do a pretty good job at avoiding it for the most part, you can’t help but feel a little jarred at more than just a single moment. Don’t get me wrong, it is a perfectly enjoyable album — hell, it’s by far one of the most replayable ones I’ve reviewed so far — but at some point you just wish they’d be a little more serious with it, and you almost miss a little flexy spiritual-lyrical-individual tryhardness at times. You can almost say this is too crazy and free for its own good, but those shortcomings are really not hard to ignore, and, as said before, this really is an album with great flow and pacing, so even its less-than-optimal parts do fit in quite appropriately. All in all, this is certainly one of the most intriguing records we’ve seen so far, and definitely worth a spin or two, be it in a context of careful examination or just for good old fun, which this certainly is.

Favorite tracks

Bullies of the Block: the album’s bona fide intro track, Bullies of the Block counts with a classic-sounding but also somewhat weird, unsettling beat whereupon a solid, braggy posse cut sits comfortably. To me it’s the best of both worlds: it does feel cohesive and the lead single energy is off the charts to say the least, but that doesn’t mean each individual artist isn’t able to fully develop his personal style. “As a kid I hardly ever played basketball/ I never ever sat up in the casting call/ I was making the kind of music that will outlast you all/ So I ask you all: why should I pass the ball?/ Now you wanna know about the world I finally see what I saw/ Well I hang around downtown at the pool hall/ I ain’t a nigga named Peter, see, or a nigga named Paul/ But am Aceyalon-e, stoney, homie, yes y’all”

Six Tray: the aforementioned track with the intro in that crazy time sig polymeter whatever thing, I am not exaggerating when I say this shit is really mindblowing. It’s all rapped by P.E.A.C.E., which might be my favorite rapper out of this whole lot, and what a pen he has. “Six tray, well hey, what do you say today?/ Some ol’ silly ass fools I’ll spray/ Now I wanna cruise some schools/ Like what you can, be cool/ Fast up Texas teen fool
Blue-eyed devil killer/ Black man, a nine millimeter/ In a president’s residence, false evidence is evident/ Black six tray, who/ Out of shape, out of date girls/ Nigga’s way cool/ Six tray, well hey, what do you say today?”

Park Bench People: it’s pretty hard to decide on a personal favorite on this joint, but this might as well be it. Quite simply one of the most intriguing songs we’ve seen so far, this consists of an exceedingly loungy and laid-back beat layered with some frankly outlandish lyrics about, I don’t know, being a hobo on the street and just experiencing a day under the sun. I can’t overstate how well written this is: it’s like Joyce’s Ulysses under a colloquial hip-hop masquerade, complete with strong hints of Last Poets-era spoken word, beat poetry and american folk storytelling. Truly a masterpiece, and I’m not exaggerating.

There’s a park bench that’s painted black and white
And when you sleep there
It won’t get wet when you wake up
Because the trees are withered
And so you dry in the sunlight
You sit there and you prepare to make a move
And so you go through each and every can
Lookin’ inside tryin’ to see somethin’ that you didn’t
[…]
On the bench in the park
Where you lay when it’s dark
And it’s wet ’cause it’s raining on you
You have newspapers and you’d like to go home
But you can’t ’cause you just got put out on your own
[…]
Perched on the edge of all time
And yet they search for drums imperial dreams
Similarly so barred
Can’t buy my soul, won’t sell my soul to the Devil
On the other level
Never with another rebel under trouble
Aw no, I’ll never see you go down
My people can’t go down, no no

¹ To clarify, I feel like “alternative hip-hop” is more of a somewhat lazy grouping of songs and artists due to them not conforming to one or another mainstream genre and less of a category in itself, and thus doesn’t really do a good job at being, you know, descriptive. Of course, it is a well-established category by now, and it does congregate a variety of movements around itself, but I still feel like a categorisation based on exclusion rather than the defining of each particular movement’s core characteristics is not a good thing as a whole.