Wascals - Greatest Hits Review
Posted by Phil Watts, Jr on 09.10.2007
The Wascals in...“14 YEARS OF DETENTION!!”
(Delicious Vinyl, recorded in 1994; released 2007)
Everyone is demanding more balance in the Hip-Hop game these days, but not many of today’s Hip-Hop fans were around to witness the days when Hip-Hop had lots of variety on the airwaves.
A brilliant example of ‘balance’ was the West Coast during the early to mid 90’s. When most people think of the West, they automatically think of Dre, Snoop, and 2Pac. Yeah, you’d be completely ignorant for not acknowledging the contributions made by those three men, but there was so much more going on. Not only did you have the Gangsta shit from NWA, Compton’s Most Wanted, South Central Cartel (the OTHER Havoc & Protégé), and Spice 1, you had the pimp shit like Too $hort, AMG, Ice T, and E-40. You had the ‘Party N Bullshit’ antics of the Alkaholiks, the Top-40 pop of Hammer, Young MC, Tone Loc, and Coolio, super-lyricists like Saafir, the Souls of Mischief, and the Freestyle Fellowship, the original Latino invasion with Mellowman Ace, Kid Frost, and Cypress Hill, and Left-field thinking artists like Digital Underground, Del the Funk Homosapien, and the Pharcyde.
During the making of THE BIZARRE RIDE II THE PHARCYDE, Fatlip put on some kid by the name of Bucwheed for the song, “In Charge”. They were so impressed at how this fool ripped it that they decided to bring the whole crew to enhance the Delicious Vinyl roster. So they brought in Bucwheed, St. Imey, Spit-Anky, and Alfalfa and formed the group DA WASCALS, in hopes that one day, they will join the ranks of all those other groups that made that period so live. With joints like “Class Clown”, “The Dips”, and “Hard Rhymes” getting some airplay, it looked like all their dreams of being in the rap game are about to come true…
…then those dreams turned into a NIGHTMARE. After several false starts and several false promises, it looked unlikely that the Wascals album would ever come out. The dissolution and subsequent break-up of their parent group, The Pharcyde, didn’t help. All of the industry bullshit took a toll on the young group, causing them to split as well, with Bucwheed being the sole survivor, performing under the names Buc 50 and Bucwheed.
14 years later, the wonderful people at Traffic Entertainment, a distribution company that has access to Delicious Vinyl’s catalogue, does what Delicious Vinyl should’ve done years ago while the iron was hot: They chiseled the dust off of it, and they RELEASED IT (and giving it the deluxe treatment to boot!)
So, is this album worth the trouble of reissuing it?
YES.
Listening to this album immediately shoots me back to that early-to-mid 90’s period in Hip-Hop. This was the era of the Jazzy beats. J-Swift was one of the most underrated producers of his time, as his work on the Pharcyde’s BIZARRE RIDE definitely showed. In a time where everybody and their grandmother was putting horn stabs in their beats just because Pete Rock did it, J-Swift added a more whimsical approach to it, which definitely went well with the lighthearted, comical subject matter that the Pharcyde had in their debut (who’da thought that a song with a verse about JACKING OFF could be so dope!) For the Wascals debut, he brought more where that came from, only this time, he punches it up a bit to go along with their battle-ready lyrics.
Lyrically, you could hear so much potential in these fools, you can’t help but think of what would’ve become of them if they stayed together. St. Imey reminds me a lot of Keith Murray, especially with his gruff voice, only without the wordplay. Spit-Anky pretty much sounds like Imani of the Pharcyde. You have Alfalfa, with his squirrelly voice, who adds to the whole Lil’ Rascals/Our Gang theme, and is good for some comedy value. And Buc? That kid’s just ferocious. When he’s in battle mode, he sounds like he’s about to rip some unlucky sap’s heads off.
They start the whole set off with “Big Shit”, inviting you to the Wascal Castle to get slaughtered! Then, it’s just another case of that ol’ PTA, as they spend their hit, “Class Clown”, talking about those scrubby teachers getting on their case (“OH MAN-OH MAN-OH PLEASE DON’T LET THIS BITCH CALL MY FATHER!!”) Then there’s “Hard Rhymes”, one of the album’s highlights, where J-Swift switches the beat up halfway through the song, complimenting the 4 MC’s. This song also starts of with one of the most hilarious verses of all time, as Alfalfa gets so carried away that there’s no telling whether the comedy is intentional or not. Try reading the following lyrics while using your most high-pitched, cartoonish voice you can muster: “I’ll flip that ass over/and spank you like I was your momma/I’ma slice that ass like Jeffery Dahmer…I pop my glock--QUEEEK--POP--and you dead quick/Knocking ’em out like Tyson with a title belt/letting you know without a doubt--I’M HARDCORE!” The lunchroom takeout sessions continue with “F.U.N.” and “Stole The Show”, which is definitely one of J-Swift’s finest beats. And when they aren’t battling some sap on the cafeteria, they’re out trying to get their mack on with songs like “Doggy Style”, “The Bootie Rap” (“I dig dips that got the hips that are gigantic!”), and “The Dips”.
As dope as these kids were, there’s lots of room for improvement. For one, the meandering “Dream & Imaginate”, which featured Fatlip, doesn’t really work as well as the other songs. Maybe if they had just kept the first beat and let the ’Lip have the last verse, it wouldn’t be much of a problem. On top of that, the various remixes don’t really do much to improve on the original versions. While the “F.U.N.” remix is pretty decent (they pretty much replaced the horns with pianos), but doesn’t do much to improve on the original. Meanwhile, the remixes to the “The Dips” (which J-Swift turned into a synthesized mess) and “Class Clown” (which is a P-Diddy-style hijack of the Tom Tom Club hit “Genius Of Love”) both should’ve never been tried. And for all the talent this group has, they lack the lyrical interaction that made some of their competitors dope (Souls Of Mischief, Freestyle Fellowship, Lords of The Underground, etc.) However, if this group would’ve stayed together, I’m pretty sure they would’ve worked on that shortcoming. It also would’ve helped if there were some detailed liner notes chronicling how this group came together and how they broke apart.
THE GOOD (SCHOOLS OUT!!): “Class Clown”, “Hard Rhymes”, “F.U.N.”, “The Dips”, “Stole the Show” and the addition of INSTRUMENTAL versions of most of the songs
THE BAD (That’s it--go straight to the Principal’s office! NOW!): “Dream & Imaginate”, the remixes to both “Class Clown” and “The Dips”.
The 411: An album that would’ve joined the ranks of such classics like Souls Of Mischief’s 93 ’TIL INFINITY and the Pharcyde’s BIZARRE RIDE has now wound up joining the ranks of albums like J-Live’s THE BEST PART and InI’s CENTER OF ATTENTION: Dope albums that got released years after it should’ve been. Who knows how this foursome would’ve turned out if they had stayed together and Delicious Vinyl went the extra mile to push them. It’s sad that the same label that killed the Pharcyde would kill this group too. It’s obvious that these guys had dreams about making dope music and clocking mad dough--and that enthusiasm can be heard throughout this album---only to find out that they were used as pawns in the game. This is both a really good album and a sad reminder of how things can go wrong in an aspiring rapper’s career.
