#23: Above The Law — Livin’ Like Hustlers (1990)
Pomona, CA — Ruthless Records
For today’s review we have yet another west coast classic, Livin’ Like Hustlers, the first out of seven records released by Above The Law. Composed of Cold 187um, KMG the Illustrator (R.I.P.), Go Mack and DJ Total K-Oss, the group had Dr. Dre and Laylaw help them with most of the production, as well as the one and only Eazy-E as executive producer. Now this is an album I’ve heard about before but never properly jammed until now, and thusly it is with great pleasure that I inform you that it mostly belts. It’s hard to fuck up with such a production team, of course, but the songwriting and emceeing are just as great, and it all made for some very pleasant listens, regardless if I was attentively keeping up with the lyrics or just jammin’ and feelin’ da vibe.
Now, as one could expect from the place of origin and general aesthetics of this opus, it is a gangsta rap album through and through. I always think back to something I saw on this little video with Ice-T, where he divides gangsta rap in two main categories: murder rap, the particularly violent and menacing variety, popularized both in the west and east coast by the likes of himself and many others, and the earlier, still considerably more in-the-pocket stuff found in records such as NWA’s and The D.O.C’s debuts, etc. This record would be more of that earlier, tamer thing, but with a strong feel of transition towards the murda shit, with some scandalous, if few and far-between all throughout, bars and verses. The rapping performance itself is pretty OK, if not terribly impressive, but the writing and rhyming is where it’s mostly at for me: it’s intricate in a subtle way, just as pleasant and sophisticate but without rubbing it in your face. Plenty of interesting rhyme structures here and there, none excessively egregious or flexy, just the right amount.
Something that constantly impresses regarding the rhyming is how Cold’s and KMG’s parts easily and smoothly flow in and out of each other. Not just on back-to-back verses, but they very often between and even inside bars, and they somehow manage to never make it annoying or repetitive. There’s some great chemistry going on between these dudes and that much is undeniable. Theme-wise it’s fairly varied, touching on a reasonable amount of subjects in a creative, if not very experimental, manner. The constant bragging that’s found in here, be it as a given track’s main theme or in between the lines, is pretty creative and rarely gets old. All in all, what I liked the most about their writing is how it manages to stand firmly within the early gangsta rap tradition, but at the same time allow itself to divagate and ramble a little, going into evocative little tangents here and there; it’s something I find to, not just in this case but in general, make the music overall lighter and more stimulating.
Finally, I just got to talk about the production in here. If I’m not mistaken this is the third joint with production by Dr. Dre that we see so far (itself an undeniable testament to his importance), and it sure sounds to me like he’s only getting better and better. If in Straight Outta Compton he was still developing the base for his style and in No One Can Do It Better he had mostly gotten it, in Livin’ Like Hustlers he’s pretty much fully figured it out and is now allowing himself to go all out and even experiment, creating unexpected, wildly structured songs with all sorts of little sections, which is something I usually love. Not to disrespect Laylaw, of course, whose joints featured in here are at least as good as Dre’s; similarly, Eazy-E’s artistic sense seems to have pushed this to a notch above in terms of cohesiveness — I’d even say, with all due caution, that this is the second record out of all which we’ve seen so far that properly feels like an album and not just a more or less organised sequence of tracks (De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising being the first).
All in all this was a very pleasant listen, that works both as fun background music to spin while doing whatever and as an opus worth looking into and poring over. I’m much more familiar with the later west coast gangsta rap shizzle, but this has surely shed a new light over the earlier years for me, which I now want to get more into. Not really a whole lot of dealbreakers all throughout, and it’s mostly solid in pretty much all fronts, most of in all the absolutely destructive sequence of the first three tracks, my absolute favorites. Good shit!
Favorite tracks:
Murder Rap — Absolute door buster of an opener: hyped up but sinister at the same time, with a wide variety of references and jabs that are nevertheless firmly tied to the central theme of bragging and threatening. It’s mostly rapped by Cold 187um, with some occasional intriguing, ominous interjections by KMG the Illustrator, such as “Criminals don’t use lyrics and define themselves as notorious/ Brothers gotta learn Hip Hop anger rages inside themselves/ Your freedom will never resist to my contact K-Oss and the homie G […] They on a mission/ They keep wishin you can’t come off/ 187, you’re a menace in your own mind/ So take heed and proceed with caution/ When he rhymes”
Untouchable — Surprisingly intricate and evocative verses over a luscious, busy, juicy beat. It’s where most of that subtly technical rhyming I was talking about is found, and it was with good reason that it was one of this album’s singles. The production is less complex and varied, but it’s ok because this one is all about straight up spittin’ bars, and goddamn do they do that. “Untouchable, on the Cali streets/ On the corner where the dope and destruction meets/ Where a cool young brother could never be soft/ On a top-dollar street where shit jumps off”.
Livin’ Like Hustlers — Perhaps my favorite all throughout, this one has a veritable amount of little skits and scenes worked into it, which is often a guaranteed way to win me over. Particularly funny is the little white boy commercial about acquiring locs for the amazingly low price of $4,99 in order to look cool lmao. Beat and raps, of course, are nothing short of legendary, even though it is thematically a brag track through and through; it’s just soooo deliciously smooth and groovy. “See, the law has provided me, the KM.G/ That’s complex with the style but done easily/ Pitch a bitch if I have to, you know why?/ I’m undercover doing dirt, I’m a hell of a spy/ Now numero 187 is a detonator, deadly than a hand grenade/ Much harder than a fool to fade/ Not a Forty, not a Quart or a Six-pack/ Me, K.M.G, Total Kaos, and Go-Mack/ Cause I unload my weapon with force/ Yeah, I’m never detected, I leave respected/ As a baller, a player or a pimp/ Yo, pass me the forty, I commence to dent”.
Least favorite track:
Just Kickin’ Lyrics — Beat is badass but has very little variation and sophistication, which in turn definitely doesn’t do the patently less refined, sometimes deadass awkward writing and sluggish, stiff flow a whole lotta favors.
