Doug E. Fresh: An Entertainer

Teaching high school in the inner city allowed me some shocking insights. Most memorable, though, is the that some kid was given the nick name of Doug E. Fresh due to his resemblance to the rapper and beat box champ. Whoever dubbed that student had not only a keen eye, but a better grasp on the history of rap music than I might have guessed at.

Regardless, the fact that a star from the mid ‘80s was relatively easily recalled by a thirteen year old points to the legacy that Fresh was able to create for himself based solely on four albums, two of which could be argued to be nothing more than attempts to make it back to the charts.

Beginning in the early ‘80s Fresh guested on a few tracks and made an appearance in Beat Street where he backed up the Treacherous Three. The performances led the emcee and beat boxer to a recording contract along side his crew – the Get Fresh Crew, which included a young Slick Rick, who at the time was working under the name MC Ricky D.

With his collected cohort, Fresh entered into a deal with Fantasy Records’ subsidiary Reality Records for the 1986 album Oh, My God!. The disc, which included “La Di Da Di” and “The Show,” didn’t hit the top of the charts and only really made it near the top quarter of the hundred best selling discs at the time. The inclusion of that pair of tracks, though, was enough to cement Fresh’s importance in the nascent hip hop culture.

“La Di Da Di,” where Fresh primarily beat boxes, finds Slick Rick commenting on his various talents and physical attributes. The emcee details preparing to go out for a good portion of the track before he finally encounters a woman who laments their break up. There’s already an element of narrative here, but the track doesn’t compare to latter day Slick Rick efforts that possess a beginning, middle and end.

Even more important to the legacy of Oh, My God! and Fresh himself, is a track called “The Show.”  Yeah, there’s some Inspector Gadget rip off key line, but there’s more to recall about the offering than just that. Slick Rick still makes his presence known, but on this track Doug E. Fresh gets a larger feature not just on the mic, but as he beat boxes sporadically, which functions as a sort of instrumental solo portion to the track.

It all sounds pretty dated at this point. And even as Fresh would return just two years later with The World's Greatest Entertainer the eventual departure of Slick Rick would be a detriment to future recordings. Subsequent to that 1988 released album, Fresh put out a pair of albums during the ‘90s that didn’t hurt his legacy and probably even made him a few dollars. Neither is a must listen. Luckily Fresh was aware of that and has since spent his time contributing work to other’s recordings and functioning as a raptastic figurehead.