No Gas Face for Professor Prince Paul: De La Soul vs. Third Bass

What up y'all?

I was watching some Ultimate Warrior clips on YouTube, which put me in sort of a retro mood. I decided to run with that and do a little tribute to one of my favourite hip-hop producers, Prince Paul, and have two of his proteges square off.

THE MAIN EVENT

From Amityville, Long Island, New York, representing Da Inner Sound, Y'all, DE LA SOUL!

De La Soul was founded in 1987 by high school buddies Kelvin "Posdnous" Mercer, Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur and Vince "Maceo" Mason. They first started to get noticed in 1988 when a demo version of a song called "Plug Tunin'" landed in the hands of Prince Paul, then the DJ for the group Stetasonic. Paul was impressed enough with Trugoy and Posdnous' offbeat rhymes that he arranged for them to be signed by Def Jam. In 1989, they released their Prince Paul produced debut 3 Feet High and Rising.

3 Feet High was a massive commercial and critical hit and, almost 20 years later, is still De La's best selling album. It also spawned some anti-De La backlash. In a genre where street cred is king, some saw De La as soft. While all three members were born in New York, they were raised in the mixed race, middle class suburbs of Long Island. That, mixed with their unusual style and love of '60s pop samples got them labelled "hippies" in the hip-hop community, a label that continued to piss them off for most of a decade.

Their next album, De La Soul is Dead, was much darker and angrier. They lashed out at critics and took shots at fairweather friends trying to launch their own careers off of De La's new found fame on "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" and wrote a downright disturbing song about child molestation ("Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa.")

Their third album Buhloone Mindstate would wind up being their last collaboration with Prince Paul. Despite getting great reviews, Mindstate wound up being a commercial failure, getting swept aside by the growing popularity of West Coast gangsta rap. For their fourth album, Stakes is High, De La would go it alone, looking for a new identity.

Still, Chris Rock called Mindstate one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time in a list he wrote for Rolling Stone, so that has to count for something.

Here's the video for "Ego Trippin' (Part Two)" off Mindstate. This video really pissed off Tupac, as he was pretty sure he was the shirtless rapper being referenced in the video. The female MC in the video is Posdnuos' cousin Shorty No Mas.

As an aside, seeing De La live still ranks as one of my greatest concert experiences of all time.


THE COMPETITION

From Queens, New York, the group that gave hope to white hip-hop heads everywhere, 3RD BASS!

3rd Bass where probably the first white rappers to get a real Hood Pass. Sure, the Beastie Boys were down with LL Cool J and Run DMC, but everybody knew they were essentially a white frat boy's take on hip-hop. 3rd Bass was different. They made a point of not sampling rock songs, were almost obnoxiously conscious of race politics and made a point of mentioning that MC Serch (aka Michael Berrin) came from the mostly black Far Rockaway neighbourhood. They also had one black guy in the group (DJ Richie Rich, aka Richard Lawson), which undoubtedly made the other two look a little more down.

The group was founded in 1987 when a mutual acquaintance introduced the three. Serch was already recording as a solo artist, Rich was DJing in local clubs and Pete Nice (aka Pete Nash) was hosting a hip-hop show on Columbia's campus radio station. The three starting working together under the name Three the Hard Way, which would later get changed to 3rd Bass.

In 1989, shortly after the Beasties unceremoniously left Def Jam for Capitol, the mighty Jam signed 3rd Bass to a recording contract. 3rd Bass inherited their label's feud with the Beastie Boys, calling them out in the press and on wax.

Their debut album, The Cactus Album, was a critical success and produced a moderately commercially successful single, "The Gas Face."

Their second album, Derelicts of Dialect, has the Bass boys replacing the Beasties with the much more deserving Vanilla Ice as their object of mockery. The single "Pop Goes the Weasel" achieved crossover commercial success based largely on the video, where the band kicks the shit out of an Ice lookalike (actually Henry Rollins in costume).

Sadly, the party had to come to an end for 3rd Bass, and they split up in 1992, citing creative differences. Neither Serch's solo album (Return of the Product) nor Pete Nice and Richie Rich's debut (Dust to Dust) managed to achieve anything close to the commercial and critical success they had enjoyed as part of 3rd Bass.

MC Serch was last seen on Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show. He also has a show on a Detroit hip-hop station, and briefly ran his own record label, Serchlite. He also does a little acting. (He was hilarious in Bamboozled as the white Mau Mau.) Pete Nice splits his time between a baseball memorabilia shop in Cooperstown, NY and a baseball-themed bar in Boston. He also wrote a book about baseball. Richie Rich attempted a comeback in 1999. No one's heard from him since.

Here's the video for "The Gas Face." I enjoy it for two reasons. One, they make fun of MC Hammer. Two, it features guest vocals from KMD's Zev Love X, who would later re-invent himself as MF Doom.

3rd.Bass - Gas Face Ft.Zev.Love.X
Uploaded by discodisc

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