There weren’t ever too many groups that possessed the ability to approximate the sound that De La Soul worked with. The compounding of funk, soul and goofiness is a combination that made De La a phenomenon and rendered the group international stars. It wasn’t for lack of effort that other ensembles weren’t able to achieve the same sort of acclaim. Brand Nubian, minus most of the jokes, though, found themselves working roughly the same territory as its Native Tongued cohort.

Not a proper part of that collective, seeing as Brand Nubian (Grand Puba, Sadat X, Lord Jamar and DJ Alamo) came together a bit too late, the group was still able to put out one classic disc and a few other passable efforts. The crew’s 1990 debut, One For All, wasn’t capable of pushing into the top of the charts, although it appeared in both the R&B as well as Billboard listings. It did, however, give the genre a true classic.

Much has been made of the group’s dogmatic attitudes towards white folks and the mass of black folks that it perceived as living in ignorance. With Islamic religious views remaining important throughout the group’s career, the discourse was actually ratcheted up after the departure of Grand Puba subsequent to this first album. Even on this release, though, “Drop the Bomb” caused some problems at Elektra Records, the group’s label.

The song, bolstered by an old school drum pattern and only briefly augmented with a burst of horns, finds both Sadat X and Grand Puba alluding to devils and the like throughout the duration of the song – “Now the way devil got us is the way the devil want it/He try to hold us back and he overly floss it.” There’s really not too much that can be construed as overtly negative – it’s just perception. And in fact, it seems that there’s more talk of ignorant black folks (here referred to as Uncle Toms) than getting screwed by white people.

More important that all of this political stuff, though, is the music and whatever else the group wanted to talk about – even if most of the lyrical stuff is pointed towards issues of racism. On tracks like “Concerto In X Minor,” the situation is related in positive terms. And even if some of police problems works itself in pretty early on, there’s enough talk about figuring out solutions as to make the entire affair a positive listen. The amiable keyboard set over top of a lazy drum beat doesn’t make it any more difficult to get through either.

There’s not really a bummer included in the lot. A few times, lyrically at least, listeners might want to hear a bit more diversity. But Brand Nubian isn’t about explaining a trip to the grocery store. It has an agenda. With problems persisting from the time that the disc was released, twenty years ago, until today, though, it should make folks reconsider whether or not causing a fuss over a few lines was worth it in the first place. Probably not.