Happy 30th Anniversary to 3rd Bass’ second & final studio album Derelicts of Dialect, originally released June 18, 1991.
3rd Bass’ Derelicts of Dialect is one of hip-hop’s most underappreciated sophomore releases. Released 30 years ago, it showcased the group’s continuing maturation and artistic growth. It’s a personal favorite and one of the best albums released during the early 1990s era.
3rd Bass is best known as one of the earliest “credible” groups to feature white emcees. Peter “Pete Nice” Nash and Michael “MC Serch” Berrin had come up in the ultra-competitive New York City scene, and each approached Def Jam separately in pursuit of a record deal. Serch and Pete came together to create 3rd Bass, eventually adding Richard “DJ Richie Rich” Lawson to the crew after two other DJs, White Nite and Word, didn’t work out.
3rd Bass was a pretty damn successful group, both commercially and artistically. While their first album The Cactus Album (1989) was a solid introduction, 3rd Bass recorded Derelicts of Dialect with a sense of purpose and focus. I personally prefer the latter release, as I appreciate its ambition and creativity, along with its rock-solid conviction.
Much like The Cactus Album, musically the album feels like a mix of Public Enemy and De La Soul, but with the producers digging deeper in the crates, and getting darker and jazzier where necessary. Serch and Pete both improved their mic skills between albums as well, sounding more refined and battle tested. Besides the T La Rock and Rakim influences that initially shaped their rhyme styles, Serch and Pete incorporate more EPMD-like tag team lyricism in their tracks, making things even more interesting.
With the album’s production, the group also takes a more active role, frequently working with the roster of familiar beat-makers that they enlisted. The lineup includes Sam Sever, who produced much of The Cactus Album, as well as Prince Paul and the Stimulated Dummies/SD50s.
As a whole, Derelicts of Dialect is an aggressively non-commercial album, and its message is staunchly anti-pop. It was one of the earliest hip-hop releases which found artists centering their thematic focus on rap’s growing presence in the mainstream. And both members of 3rd Bass seemed pretty annoyed with the state of affairs circa the early 1990s. In some ways, Derelicts is like the Wrath of the Math (1996) of its time, as the group targeted trends that they believed were threatening the sanctity of hip-hop music, much like Jeru the Damaja did five years later with his sophomore release. Most listeners these days roll their eyes at the idea of any rapper or group actively working to “save” hip-hop music, but it really was something that artists used to give a shit about.
These days, so much of music is wrapped up in streaming, “brands,” and licensing deals, it’s easy to forget that 30 years ago, many hip-hop artists were uncomfortable with rap’s representation in the mainstream. The ideas of “selling out” and “crossing over” were anathema to the most respected luminaries in the genre.
It didn’t help that much of what passed for mainstream rap music in 1991, was, frankly, wack as fuck. The world was barely a year removed from the release of MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em and Vanilla Ice’s To the Extreme. Both albums had been released just months apart in 1990 and were massive pop music sensations. Please Hammer would stand as the best-selling rap album for years (it’s sold over 10 million copies to date), while To the Extreme sold mountains of units as well.
Three decades later, there’s a decent amount of revisionist history when it comes to both of these albums, but best believe that they were and are very, very, VERY bad. They were considered wack when they dropped, and their artistic stature has not grown in the more than 30 years since.
So, it stuck in the craw of many artists, critics, and long-time fans of the genre that the artists that were enjoying this enormous pop success didn’t accurately represent the best that hip-hop had to offer, musically and culturally. MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice presented a glossy, slick, and safe version of what hip-hop could be. And both were pop darlings based on mega-hit singles that sampled well-known pop hits: “U Can’t Touch This” prominently used Rick James’ “Superfreak,” while “Ice Ice Baby” featured a sample of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure.”
Within this broader context, 3rd Bass decided that they were going to kick a little ass. The group had of course knocked Hammer multiple times on The Cactus Album, ostensibly in defense of Run-DMC, who Hammer had dissed on his first album. According to Serch and Pete, this led to some precarious situations while they were touring in Los Angeles; you can go ahead and Google the story, as Serch has detailed the saga numerous times. Given the bad blood, they certainly had no issue disparaging the music that Hammer continued to record.
But it’s Vanilla Ice who bears the brunt of the group’s fury on Derelicts, which makes sense. Three decades ago, MC Serch and Pete Nice were correctly regarded as the best white rappers in hip-hop when it came to pure skill. And they’d earned their respect the hard way, forged in the confrontational New York City club scene and the product of ultra-competitive freestyle battles. They’d paid their dues, earned a record deal with the renowned label synonymous with hip-hop music, and recorded an incredibly dope album that honored their influences and showed respect to the architects of hip-hop culture as a whole.
And they’d refused to sell out. They turned down a potential endorsement deal for Sprite. They rejected a chance to appear on Beverly Hills 90210, despite pleas from both Def Jam and its parent company, Sony. 3rd Bass asserted that they wanted to respect the core tenets of hip-hop culture and not use them for cheap material gain.
So, when Vanilla Ice traipsed on the scene not a year later, he seemed to fly in the face of everything that they’d worked hard to represent. He was a rapper of, shall we say, extremely questionable skill, better known for his “look” and dancing ability. Serch and Pete had worked hard to make sure that their whiteness wasn’t the selling point of their music, and here came a blow-dried pretty boy with a blonde pompadour and an American-flag jacket who was offering a “safe,” easily consumable version of rap music, tailor-made to sell soft-drinks.
Concerning their own whiteness, 3rd Bass certainly took their own share of heat between albums. Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers called them “slave-masters’ sons” during his verse of “The Gods Are Taking Heads” by King Sun, while Brother J of X Clan labeled them “caveboys” throughout To the East, Blackwards (1990). The latter example proved a bit awkward, as X Clan’s Professor X once managed Pete Nice pre-3rd Bass. Serch and Pete each responded to these disses on Derelicts, but saved most of their venom for Robert Van Winkle.
“Pop Goes the Weasel” is a blistering screed against Vanilla Ice and other rappers of his ilk. To prove a point, the SD50s built the track around a sample of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” as ubiquitous a pop-hit as you’d find in the mid to late 1980s. The catchy beat also incorporates samples from The Who’s “Eminence Front,” Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” and Maceo Parker’s “Damn Right I’m Somebody,” making it as dense of a pop hit as hip-hop would see during this era.
Pete and Serch’s verses are still remarkably applicable three decades later, as they lambast the lack of creativity found in much of mainstream hip-hop. While Serch laments, “I guess it’s the fact that you can’t be artistic / Intricate raps, becoming so simplistic,” Pete Nice raps, “Stop vexing on the skills ya ain’t originate / The thin ice you skate upon will break and set ya straight” and berates commercial rappers for “run[ning] through the doors some left open.”
Of course, it’s not without irony that “Pop Goes the Weasel” became one of the biggest commercial hits 3rd Bass ever recorded. It garnered airplay from radio stations that were normally loathe to play hip-hop, which of course misses the point of the track entirely. The song is also notable for its video, which features Henry Rollins dressed up as Vanilla Ice, and culminates with the stand-in catching a thorough beat-down from Serch and Pete.
As much as Derelicts is remembered for its mockery of Vanilla Ice, mostly 3rd Bass lead by example throughout the project. They record music that conjures the era that made them, while still sounding timeless. The album is a love letter to the days where spots like Latin Quarter and the Pallidum were the hubs of hip-hop music.
Sam Sever helps Serch and Pete recapture their roots, producing songs that celebrate their past, but are still forward-thinking. Tracks like “Portrait of the Artist as a Hood” and “Word to the Third” best convey this energy. The dark, pulsing beats capture the smoky, often sinister atmosphere of the famed night spots where not coming correct meant your ass might get robbed, stomped, or both.
Their verses on this pair of songs generate a vivid picture of the rough and tumble environment created in these venues. Pete Nice is surgical with his verse on “Portrait,” proclaiming “Some perp without skills and push a pen / I send surreal scenes where you’ve never been.” Meanwhile, Serch raps on “Word to the Third,” “P-E-T-E and me now step to the back / Tracks are stacked, the party dumb packed / The sweat off my brow is glistening / And in the dance hall not one kid missing.”
“Microphone Techniques” also evokes crowded nights at Union Square, as 3rd Bass teams with fellow club warriors Nice & Smooth. It’s a fun track, where all four flow over a sample of Al Green’s “All Because.” Greg Nice is his usual energized self, while Smooth B provides a laid-back balance. Pete and Serch deliver seemingly off-the-cuff, stream of consciousness raps that sound very much of 1991, as Serch name-checks Homey the Clown and Bud Bowl III.
Sever also produces Derelicts’ more serious-minded tracks, where the group provides some social commentary. “Problem Child,” the album’s third single, features Pete and Serch exploring the lives of the destitute and desperate youths in economically depressed areas throughout the country. They then comment on racial tensions and equality on “No Master Plan, No Master Race,” getting deep over murky flute loops and haunting horns.
Prince Paul produces the album’s title track, a laid-back track where both Pete and Serch speak on striving for greatness over samples from two 9th Creation tracks, “Bubble Gum” (one of its earliest uses) and “Rule Of the Mind.” On “Come In,” Paul executes a flawless flip of a sample from Otis Redding’s “Scratch My Back,” creating the album’s funkiest track, punctuated by multiple beat switches and breakdowns.
3rd Bass and Paul try to sort of recreate a bit of their “Gas Face” magic by way of De La Soul with “Herbalz In Your Mouth.” It’s a whimsical cut built around an acoustic guitar loop and knocking percussion, with Pete and Serch rhyming at their most lyrically impenetrable. I’d like to note that 30 years have passed and I can’t quite discern the meaning of the song’s title. Possibly it’s their esoteric way of labeling something as wack?
Prince Paul speeds things up a bit with “No Static At All,” hooking up a sped-up guitar and organ loop of Allen Toussaint’s “Shimmy.” The two emcees rapidly fire off lines on a high-energy sprint of a track that clocks in at nearly 120 beats per minute. In between each of their short verses, they give a few “solos” to DJ Richie Rich.
Rich had a much more prominent role in the crew on Derelicts. He became a part of the group after they’d already recorded the vast majority of The Cactus Album, appearing only on a brief instrumental track. For Derelicts, he goes a few extra miles in establishing his dominance behind the turntables. He flexes his skills at cutting and scratching often throughout the album and gives one of the best performances by a DJ on an album not named DJ Scratch. DJ Richie Rich marvels on cuts like “Come In,” “No Static At All,” “3 Strikes to 5,000,” working at blistering speeds. He even gets his own dedication, “Daddy Rich in the Land of 1210,” where Serch and Pete sing his praises, which they liken to a “brawl that’ll clear both teams off the benches.”
Working with Prince Paul must have inspired 3rd Bass to expend extra energy in recording their skits for the albums. Most are pretty goofy, and mostly involve Richie Rich cracking jokes while doing funny voices. But the beats behind the weirdness are perfectly produced. I will also say that’s “Al'z A-B-Cee'z” is one of my favorite skits on a hip-hop album ever, and I spent an inordinate amount of time working to memorize it during the summer of 1991.
3rd Bass bring in then-proteges KMD on “Ace in the Hole.” The Long Island-based crew had gotten their start on record with 3rd Bass, Zev Love X (a.k.a. MF DOOM) dropping his memorable final verse on “The Gas Face.” A month earlier, KMD had released Mr. Hood, their stellar debut album, setting the stage for Zev Love X and Onyx the Birthstone Kid to again grace a 3rd Bass album.
Besides two brief but dope verses from the group’s two rappers, KMD also produced “Ace in the Hole,” freaking a sped-up sample from James Brown’s version of “The Night Time Is the Right Time.” Pete and Serch show even more contempt for Hammer and Vanilla Ice, belittling their endorsements deals. “I ain’t British, so my fetish ain’t knighthood,” Pete declares. “’Cause no one wears sequins in my neighborhood.”
Chubb Rock makes an energetic guest appearance on the SD50s produced “Kick ‘Em In the Grill.” The group has always maintained that this song always got a great reaction from the crowds, as it’s propelled by a funky bass and flute loop from Herbie Mann’s “Memphis Underground.” Vanilla Ice catches some shots yet again, this time from Chubb Rock, who invokes Muhammed Ali, noting that he’s “not conceited, I’m convinced of the fact / Vanilla sold seven million copies of some shit that was wack.”
It’s also of note that Serch would record “Back to the Grill”,” a sequel to this track, for his solo album. That song featured another great verse from Chubb, as well as Nas’ second major label appearance.
The group returns to slightly more serious material on “Green Eggs and Swine,” the final track on the album. It plays like a Prince Paul-produced version of “Don’t Believe the Hype,” as they lambast efforts by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and opportunistic politicians to use hip-hop as a scapegoat to justify their efforts to censor music. 3rd Bass lets loose on the headline chasers, with Pete noting that “snakes that got your vote would rather slit your throat” and Serch reminding listeners that “before Hitler killed Jews, he started with the arts.”
As it would turn out, Derelicts had something in common with another album released during that late spring/early summer, N.W.A’s Efil4zaggin, as it became the group’s unexpected final project. In early 1992, 3rd Bass went their separate ways. They recorded one last song together, “Gladiator,” the theme song for the long since forgotten film starring a post-Boyz n the Hood Cuba Gooding, Jr. In the end, 3rd Bass were another example of a group that burned bright and fast, then dissolved into the ether. Even Derelicts being certified Gold couldn’t convince everyone to give things another shot.
3rd Bass’ break-up came as a shock to hip-hop fans, especially since the members had so much chemistry together on record and on stage. But behind the scenes, they were torn asunder by “personal and creative differences.” These disagreements were exacerbated by a seemingly endless touring schedule; Pete, Serch, and Rich have all said over the years that spending so much time in such close proximity to each other generated a lot of tension.
All three members remained with Def Jam, as Serch released Return of the Product (1992) and Pete & Rich dropped Dust to Dust (1993), both to modest success. Ill will has simmered between particularly Pete and Serch on and off for years, as the two have spent long stretches of time not even on speaking terms. 3rd Bass attempted a couple of reunions, one in 2000 and another in 2013; the latter involved a planned European tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Cactus Album. The tour never materialized. A reunion for the 30th anniversary of Derelicts doesn’t seem likely; as I pointed out in The Cactus Album tribute, Pete and Serch were last heard shouting at each other on an episode of hip-hop personality Lord Sear’s radio show. For now, a reconciliation seems like a long shot.
Considering that 3rd Bass’ lifecycle was an ephemeral one, it’s impressive that their limited discography is as good as it is. Whatever personal and creative differences existed between them, they were able to temporarily set them aside and create two great records that still speak to relevant issues today. They fought hard to preserve hip-hop culture and fought against those who they believed were trying to dilute its power. Three decades later, that’s worth celebrating.
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