Happy 30th Anniversary to Naughty By Nature’s eponymous second studio album Naughty By Nature, originally released September 3, 1991.
When writing for this wonderful website, I’ve talked about how 1991 is my favorite year for hip-hop music. Some of it may indeed have to do with my age at the time (I was 16 and had just begun driving), but I really do believe that the quantity of quality hip-hop albums released that year is without equal. A good number of my favorite albums of all time were released 30 years ago, including Naughty By Nature’s self-titled album.
Even though subpar rappers like Hammer and Vanilla Ice garnered record sales vastly disproportionate to their skills around the same time, some highly gifted artists and groups moved considerable amounts of units in 1991. I’ve already paid tribute to arguably the most unlikely commercial success of the year—Cypress Hill’s self-titled debut LP, a dusted, gritty ode to life in Los Angeles and the joys of smoking weed. However, Naughty By Nature earned their place as a legitimate pop phenomenon with their own self-titled opus, going nearly double platinum with the support of a double platinum single. The group achieved this goal behind one of the most technically proficient emcees of the era and one of the most skilled producers of his time behind the boards.
Naughty By Nature is made up of lead rapper Anthony “Treach” Criss, producer and DJ Keir “Kay Gee” Gist, and hypeman/beatboxer Vinnie “Vin Rock” Brown. The East Orange, New Jersey based collective had been putting in work on the Jersey scene and had come under the tutelage of the legendary Mark the 45 King, Sha-Kim, and the entire Flavor Unit posse.
Naughty By Nature is technically not the group’s first release. Under the name The New Style, they’d recorded Independent Leaders (1989) through a “partnership” with Sugar Hill and MCA Records. I’ve never seen an actual copy of the album, which, according to members of the crew, received negligible promotion and support from their label. The album featured the sole single “Scuffin’ Those Knees,” which sounds like a first draft of what Naughty would grow into.
The group had signed to Sugar Hill during the label’s dying days and they’ve not had a lot of good things to say about the relationship. However, despite their negative experiences, working with Sugar Hill was a learning experience for the crew. As Treach told Brian Coleman in Check The Technique 2, “Let’s put it this way: we never would have come out like we did as Naughty if we hadn’t gone through all that other stuff first.”
What the group first learned was to be themselves. They traded in literal zoot suits and high-top fades for Carhartt gear and bubble gooses. Treach was known to brandish a machete during the group’s photo shoots. They looked and walked the part of bad motherfuckers and gained the respect of hip-hop audiences throughout the world.
Which is in no way to imply that the group was all image, as they had ample skills to back up their swagger. Treach is one of the most overlooked lyrical masters. On the mic, he possesses a commanding voice, delivering impressive wordplay while unleashing complex tongue-twisting flows. It’s frequently noted that he packed his bars with massive amounts of words while always remaining decipherable. His overall performance on Naughty By Nature is as strong as any that occurred in 1991 and helped him to become one of the most respected and well-regarded emcees of that time period. Kay Gee’s production ability is similarly underappreciated. He became adept at mixing sampled material with live instrumentation provided by session musicians.
In another year crowded with great hip-hop releases, Naughty By Nature stands shoulder to shoulder with the best. The songs feel authentic and expertly executed, and even the songs that seemed geared toward pop success don’t clash with the group’s sensibilities.
The album begins with “Yoke The Joker,” as Treach kicks in the door delivering three solid verses over a dark and foreboding piano track. He establishes his unique skill set early on, pummeling listeners with a barrage of alliteration. “See, silly-slapping suckers, sorry saps, and slouches,” he raps. “Straps slamming style, smacking, this man’s a savage / Least see so-so-songs and some shots, so / Snatch seven samples, start slowly, go solo.” Later, he transforms himself into a walking nightmare, boasting, “You ain’t ready for the Freddy of rap / You can’t kill me, I step into your dreams and you feel me / Slicing your life away, just like my mic today / I eat you the psycho way, I'm ripping shit right away.”
The song that the album is best known for is not completely indicative of the group’s overall sound and approach. However, it’s somewhat fitting that Naughty’s biggest hit is something as conceptually grimy as “O.P.P.” It’s one of the most light-hearted songs about infidelity this side of Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa,” as Treach gleefully lists the virtues of engaging in sexual congress with someone else’s girl. The women get their chance to step out on their significant others as well on the song’s second verse, making the song an equal opportunity endeavor. It’s anchored by the infectious call-and-response chorus and a sample from The Jackson 5’s “ABC,” the latter of which they paid for with 75% of the song’s publishing.
“Ghetto Bastard” (a.k.a. “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”) was released as Naughty By Nature’s second single, but didn’t yield the same amount of success as “O.P.P.” However, it’s the stronger and more incisive recording. Kay Gee hooks up the drum break from the Lafayette Afro Rock Band’s “Hihache” and blends them with live piano and vocals from Boney M’s version of “No Woman, No Cry.” Treach’s lyrical performance provides an effective contrast to the largely upbeat track, as he describes his upbringing without a father in his life. The track is unremittingly bleak, as Treach channels the hopelessness and feelings of worthlessness that he felt stalking the streets of East Orange without a father to guide him. I can think of few songs that are better at presenting a first-person account of despair and poverty.
But really, Naughty By Nature is at its best when the group engages in rough and rugged battle shit. “Guard Your Grill” hits with the power of a steel-tipped boot, with Treach kicking his rhymes over a hard-as-nails piano line. Throughout the song, Treach scoffs at other emcees seemingly infatuated with “peace,” instead choosing violence, as kids these days say. He first spits, “You tried to get cool and say peace, save that piece for a jigsaw / Sit back and watch a real emcee get raw” and later reiterates, “I was only three steps from a peace prize: / Piece of his leg, piece of his eye and his left thigh.”
Treach and Kay Gee were both incredibly versatile in their respective fields, as they both also excelled when things get smoother. Treach conducts a four-verse lyrical clinic on “Everyday All Day,” delivering his rapid rhymes over a sample from the Ohio Players’ “Pride and Vanity,” accompanied by a live saxophone. “I’m leaving ‘em evil and seeing ‘em being a torture with dull props,” Treach raps. “I won’t give up ‘til you had ‘nough of these skull shots.”
On “Rhyme’ll Shine On,” Kay Gee pairs the intro drum break from Funkadelic’s “You’ll Like It Too” with live piano and keys. Treach slightly slows down his delivery, as he espouses the power of his rhymes. “A switch tip, different from the last hit,” he raps. “Uniquely one key, groovy and graphic / A new rap? This is more than just that / When I’m back, you know I’m strapped with hot tracks.”
Treach holds down the vast majority of the album’s lyrical duties himself. Vinnie’s primary function at the time was the group’s hypeman and beat-boxer. Though he’d rapped in the group’s The New Style configuration, he was still learning the ropes of emceeing. Vinnie does drop a pair of verses on the appropriately aggressive “Strike A Nerve,” though reportedly Treach helped him write his verses.
Naughty brings in Queen Latifah to provide the chorus on “Wickedest Man Alive,” which first appeared as the B-side of the “O.P.P.” single. Latifah had been one of Naughty’s earliest advocates in the Flavor Unit and went on to tour and collaborate extensively with the group. Her dancehall-tinged stylings mesh well with an upbeat and appropriately Jamaican-influenced beat by Kay Gee. Treach’s ruthlessness on the mic only adds to the soundclash aesthetic, as he raps, “I have you every which way but loose, blowing your soundproof / Their statement to me is, ‘Thanks for giving a neck noose.’”
The Flavor Unit again makes its presence felt on the posse cut “1, 2, 3.” The track is produced by Luis “Louis Louis” Vega, one of the core producers associated with the collective, who hooks up a vintage late ’80s/early ’90s era Flavor Unit track featuring a dense concoction of flutes, percussion, and complex drum patterns.
The song features verses from Lakim Shabazz and Apache, two of the crew’s core members. Shabazz, one of the most talented and underappreciated emcees of the late 1980s/early 1990s, sets the track off perfectly. “I'm a Panther, I love fresh meat,” he raps. “After I kill you, Imma leave your body across 110th Street / My tactics are drastic and real fast / I tie a rope to a truck and cold drag your ass.” Apache continues the lyrical brutality, declaring, “Come and give me a test, whoever claims to be the best / Leaves with a forty-below footprint on his chest.”
Apache used his appearance to help catapult him into some amount of stardom. The next year, he’d go on to release his debut album Apache Ain’t Shit featuring the wildly successful “Gangsta Bitch.” Shabazz didn’t make many more appearances on record after this album, much to my chagrin. Regardless, the fact that Shabazz was part of this album continues to make me very happy.
Naughty By Nature ends with “Thankx For Sleepwalking,” which serves as the group’s middle finger to any and all of those who tried to get over on them. During the track’s lengthy intro, Treach and crew not only target Sylvia Robinson of Sugar Hill Records (she catches shots all through the album), but also others in the record industry who wrote them off. Throughout both of his verses, Treach casts a side-eye at those women who ignored him for much of his life, only to hop on his jock once he had a record deal.
Naughty By Nature never figured that they’d achieve the success that they did. As Treach said in Check the Technique 2, they expected to be one of those groups that would earn most of their respect in the streets, never quite achieving Gold and Platinum status. Instead, they became one of the feel-good successes throughout the ’90s: a crew beloved by their core audience and the wider market that sold millions of records without compromising their identity. Three decades after Naughty By Nature’s release, I have no idea why Treach and Kay Gee currently aren’t more revered in their respective fields, but they certainly took what was theirs with this album and kept pushing forward.
LISTEN: