Soldiering on through Bucktown
posted on Oct 08, 2005Smif N' Wessun - Next Shit (Link Expired)
Militia, Militia
On “NY State of Mind” (and the Illmatic LP as a whole) Nas exported a vividly paranoid depiction of NYC’s ghettoes as jungles patrolled but not contained by the blue-Chrysler-pushin’ beast. The deceptively deadpan reportage found on Illmatic would later evolve into a lucrative dramatization thanks to the cartoonish exaggeration of lesser artists and the radio-friendly stylization demanded by major labels. However influential, Nas’s New York – a chaotic extension of the sprawling Queensbridge housing projects where an imagined poet-journalist rises to all-city and global prominence – was not an uncontested narrative.
Smif N’ Wessun’s 1995 long-player Dah Shinin’ introduces us to a different city, just as perilous as Nas’s QB but in this instance efficiently patrolled by a faceless, synchronized five-oh. The counterpart to this paramilitary force is a newly organized Brooklyn hard-rock massif, itself an anonymous, uniform[ed] squad symbolized by the aptly titled Boot Camp Clik (which includes Black Moon, Heltah Skeltah, and OGC in addition to Smif N’ Wessun). The first full-length BCC effort, Black Moon’s era-defining 1993 Enta Da Stage, stars idiosyncratic rapper Buckshot as a freely roaming, remorseless public menace and features the moodiest, filthiest beats this side of 36 Chambers. Dah Shinin’, while boasting the same production team (Da Beatminerz) and repping the same central Medina wastelands, evokes a space that is not a guerilla ‘hood, but an occupied country under martial law.
The beats and rhymes of much of Shinin’ prop up a program that runs counter to unhindered individual expression. While Da Beatminerz blessed Enta with a nearly berzerk sound, their work on Shinin’ is surprisingly regimented. Stray chords and horns enter the fray on occasion but are kept harnessed and spare; the bright melodies of sample sources are chopped short before their syrupy free flows are betrayed. A nearly monotonous bassline lurks in almost every cut but ranks second-in-command beneath the concrete, ultra-precise drum programming.
The sound-alike and synonymously stage-named Tek and Steele speak in understated matter-of-fact baritones that adhere unflinchingly to the marching riddims. The understandable smooth steez of Illmatic is downright cryptic compared to Tek and Steele’s economical, clear-as-day science droppin’. The duo reins in local but disparate sources of abstracted language – West Indian patois, Five Percenter terminology, outer-borough rap slang – utilizing only those words and phrases that are necessary to plainly illustrate the mind-frame and ethos of a street soldier warring against the dehumanized but frighteningly organized pigz. This is not rhymin’ for the sake of riddlin’. These lyrics are explicit orders straight from the mouths of self-proclaimed generals. Intellect anchored by raw survivalism. Even the record’s numerous references to weed ciphers are squeezed into the army regimen; a buddha break is a regulated escapist pause intended to ready headz to carry out the next commands.
Where Brooklyn At?
The training manual begins with the chilling and cheerless “Timz N’ Hood Chek” in which the dress code, agenda, and overall tone of the first half of the album is fully, almost hyperbolically realized. Although the music is never quite as drab and exact as it is in the opener, “Wrektime,” “Wreckonize,” “Wontime,” and “Sound Bwoy Bureill” are all stark, wintery, tightly regulated, and impossibly ill affairs. On “Timz,” a reminder to “tie up your Timbs and make sure you don’t slip” further stresses the necessity of uniformity in thought, appearance, and action. When the duo warns potential hard-rocks that their blocks can be broken “down to rubble,” the metaphor of violence is established as the preferred means of analysis. The streets themselves, once confusing and confining, are rendered legible, usefully interpretable, and expansive spaces. A scratched-in “representin’ lovely” reminds us of that we’re on a mission of literal and figurative territorial reclamation. The hillbilly-deep flatfeet of “Wrektime” and the Kool-Aid-blooded snitches of “Wontime” blend together as one invasive enemy mass, to be dealt with on equal terms.
The neurotic hook of “Wontime” similarly suggests that the Brooklyn landscape of both external reality and individual psychology is a war zone of scheming characters. The cop, the snitch, the incarcerated con, the sucka emcee, and the stick-up kid act in accord even in battle, and can potentially stake a foothold in an unguarded mind. The appropriate response to such a state of emergency is p-noid pragmatism. Buckshot’s manic “killin’ every nigga in sight” becomes the chilling, nonchalant murda muzik of “Sound Bwoy Bureill,” the album’s second single and a minimalist, enduring hop classic. Surprisingly, but sensibly, one of the worst violations mentioned in these songs is leaking info. A true soldier makes himself understandable to his brothers but must speak in a code dense enough to elude the enemy.
Despite the gravity and urgency of the album’s first five cuts, the militant line does not hold tight over the whole LP. The crew’s all there for the super dope “Cession At Da Doghillee,” not half as buckwild as they were on Enta’s “U Da Man” but causing a ruckus nonetheless. The last three songs on the album, “Wipe Ya Mouf,” “Let’s Git It On,” and “P.N.C.” plod along like a battle-weary platoon. These tracks are simply too relaxed, too ethereal for their own good. Between the opening call-to-arms and the premature peace treaty of the closing, however, lies a long stretch within which the bold stances summarized on “Timz” are revisited and deeply analyzed.
On the smooth, melodic “K.I.M. (Keep It Movin’),” the soldierly work ethic is equated to the quest for spiritual refinement; the strategic, covert movement of the troops must be towards “constant elevation.” On “Bucktown,” the album’s first single, the beat is surely military but it’s also catchy as hell, and it is here that the most clever, and suggestive breakdown of the “us vs. them” conflict is dropped: “but keep a watch for the cops cuz they rock glocks/ comin’ on the block trying to rock knots/ pigz be acting like they bigger than us niggas/ from the streetz cuz we stalk mad deep and dem walk beats.” It is no wonder that partners Tek and Steele assume police-like authority over your perception as “one time for your mind” even as they acknowledge how hard it is to avoid breaking bread with the enemy. After all, the pigz share the same swagger, territoriality, lust for loot, and need for truncated language.
What’s Next?
“Bucktown” is much more than a summary of the album’s main ideas, however. When it is asked if the cops hate the average street cat “because I’m brown … or because I’m from Bucktown?” the ideal of elusive Black self-determination is pitted against misleading, unfair media representation and distortion. Following the lead of Illmatic, other ‘95 releases such as Mobb Deep’s The Infamous and Onyx’s All We Got Iz Us react to, and make productive use of, the news media’s unapologetically exploitative and absurdly reductionist take on inner-city life, molding the ghetto’s bad rap into a subversive stance. Dah Shinin’ does this but in smaller doses and adds an element of ambush to its commentary, camouflaging global consciousness and individual assertion in the familiar noise of hometown anthems. On “Stand Strong” Tek and Steele declare, with interchangeably powerful conviction “I do or die … and I never ran, never will.” These colloquial calls (which signify the BK neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy and Brownsville, respectively) suggest that individuals and neighborhoods can voluntarily stand strong in the face of oppression and develop a sense of self in direct opposition to the mainstream’s damning and stifling classifications.
This world view represents a sharp departure from Nas’s view of the individual as transcendent observer or for that matter, Biggie and Jay-Z’s narrative of the self-starting, self-proclaimed representative. Taking a cue from Five Percenter mathematical logic, the individual becomes the neighborhood incarnate, galactic in complexity. The constraining “Ghettoes of the Mind” described by CL Smooth and the maniac mental terrain made famous by the Geto Boys are rezoned and revitalized as a controlled extension of a calm, sober self, a wide space of protest and liberation.
On the creepy sounding “Home Sweet Home,” which expertly flips Roy Ayers’ “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby,” the larger-than-life but locally grounded individual gets a chance to shine. Cynical musings abound. It is observed that “empires need to be built, Macs 10s bought,” suggesting that dreds and baldheads on the corner maintainin’ are necessarily implicated not only in the NYPD’s eternal patrol but in the drama of neo-colonialism. This is a moment of insight reminiscent of “A Bird in the Hand” Ice Cube’s first-person epiphanies, for both the unexpected breadth of its scope and the ease of its execution. Brief attempts to sketch out the “ill political” alluded to in “Wrektime” like the eerily non-specific warning that “toward the east, something is going on” and the too casual “see you at the revolution in Crooklyn, troop” would seem shallow and ineffective if the words weren’t so compactly telling and the raps weren’t so fucking dope.
The skeletal but strangely intense visions of Armageddon on “Home Sweet Home” connects Shinin’ to contemporaneous Crooklynite gems such as Digable Planets’ Blowout Comb (which also samples that same Ayers song on “Borough Check”) and GZA’s Liquid Swords, in which the war motif is rendered apparent yet shadowy. Along with “Home” the piano-heavy, somber, and highly contemplative “Next Shit” carves out a space for the celebration of self and mind. “Next Shit” plays very much like a weekend leave from the rigor of Boot Camp life, in which self-reflection, doubt, despair, and cautious hope are allowed to breathe. It is no accident that both tracks feature a wily uncaged Buckshot on ad-libs, on “Home” interpolating Ayers’ whispery phrases of struggle and on “Next” riding the track to its close with the ghostly chant “stoned is the way of the walk.” On Dah Shinin’ one walks stoned but in step, in league with comrades to preserve self and team, yet wary of the very human flaw of selfishness.
Comments for "Soldiering on through Bucktown"
— Sankofa Oct 9, 11:18 AM
peace!
— jeff Oct 12, 06:49 PM
— "Moe Cheeks" Oct 14, 07:25 PM
Nice read. DAH SHININ’ is a classic album in a time when the quality of hip hop music was simply at it’s best. Thanks for breakin’ this album down. A true classic that will always get regular rotation in my player. Peace.
— Madvillain May 7, 02:49 AM
i had heard stand strong in a tommy boy’s mixtape n was searchin the web for info on the song, found this article. loved it, got me interested in the album n now i’m downloadin it. thanx man!
— Adriano Jun 10, 03:01 PM
For anyone who hasn’t had this shit in rotation for a year or two, pull it out. Bleek, bass heavy, West Indian influenced classic thats even better than I remembered. This is some of your best work R. “Stoned is the way of the walk.”
— Abe Beame Apr 17, 04:53 AM
Damn good article
— trainwithnodough Jun 12, 12:11 AM