Smif-n-Wesson: Hellucination

A PatoisThe relatively tight knit Duck Down crew has its roots dating back to the early '90s. With Black Moon's first disc, Enta Da Stage, an early East Coast rap pillar, the group, in addition to unleashing a massive deluge of dirty beats and sound raps, introduced the world to Smif-n-Wesson. On a few tracks both Tek and Steele enlivened an already densely adorned collection of verses touching on everything from violence to boasting and back again. The younger duo worked well with the production represented on that disc and when entering the studio to record their own disc, da Beatminerz were tapped to handle production duties.

While da Beatminerz themselves have and always will be a loosely affiliated group of freelance producers, the fact that they'd worked with Black Moon and now the younger Smif-n-Wesson served to unify an already splintering genre. But in these sparse productions, much of the violence associated with this act's lyrical content is underscored by these sometimes airy and horn laden productions.

It's the Duckdown way. And even today as the label persists, the aural traditions found on not just Enta Da Stage, but on Dah Shinin' continue. This early disc from not just these rappers, but this production crew did cement a certain style unique to the East Coast even if eventually these trappings would become pretty pervasive in rap music.

The most unique thing about the delivery of these stories is the fact that Steele tosses in some patois stylee in his raps. It might not match the overt inclusion of island culture that Boogie Down Prodcution's sample of the Skatalites on the title track of Edutaiment from a few years prior to this release, but while KRS One on occasion utilized that accent to diversify his flow, the emcees in Smif-n-Wesson more liberally pepper their songs with that approach.

Of course, focusing on the delivery as opposed to the overall effect of these tracks doesn't do Dah Shinin' justice. Taken as a whole, the album is able to work with situations related on
"Stand Strong" as well as the realism from Enta da Stage. But again, to simply understand this disc as some sort of urban newspaper - or Black CNN, if you will - is to partially dismiss its artistic merits.

Surely, some of the work here is far more thuggish than anything from the D.A.I.S.Y. Age stuff coming from De La Soul or other more intensely positive groups, but this 1995 disc reflects the years prior when the group was still figuring out how to approach an album. Forming in '93 it's safe to assume that while Nas was out on the town, these folks were as aware of him as he was of them. The fact that Illmatic was released a half a year before this is startling as well.

And even if one figures that Nas' release is more focused, the immense amount of music on here - as well as on Enta da Stage - points to the fact that Duckdown has been an integral part of East Coast stylee for almost two decades.