Remember These Albums?

Das EFX
"Dead Serious"
East West

Das EFX "DEAD SERIOUS" was the first album I ever owned. I was roughly 10-years-old and my brother, who is four-years my senior, suggested it. From the day I bought it I was fascinated by their alternative rap-licks and energetic delivery. Das EFX, founded by EPMD, never made another album like this, but joints like "Mic Checka," "Dum Dums," and "They Want EFX" will echo in the halls of hip-hop for generations to come.


Young MC
"Stone Cold Rhymin'"
Island/Delicious Records

The intelligent and middle-class, rapper Marvin Young earned a degree in economics from USC, where he met Michael Ross and Matt Dike, co-founders of the Delicious Vinyl rap label. Marvin Young, AKA Young MC, dropped "Stone Cold Rhymin'" and practically invented every other cool phrase from the hip-hop era. With joints like "Bust A Move" and "Principal's Office," "I Come Off" and "I Let 'Em Know" Young M.C. failed to miss a chance to leave a hit behind. After dropping this album in 1989; Marvin Young would never enjoy the commerical succes that "S.C.R" had brought him. Also in 1989, Young collaborated with Tone-Loc on "Wild Thing," the original hip-hop top ten classic, and the follow-up smash "Funky Cold Medina. While Marvin never made it back on the charts, there is a famous episode of the Howard Stern radio show on KROCK where Young Marvin kicked hard game to Jamie Lee Curtis on the air.


Vanille Ice
"To The Extreme"
SBK Records

Love it, hate it, burn it, and the pictures you took with that haircut. No matter what, V-Ice is a permanent part of hip-hop culture for better or for worse. As the record companies first caucasion puppet in the commodification of hip-hop, Vanila Ice brought rap music into the house holds of 12-year-old suburbanites everywhere, but just 21-days after an apperance on the America Music Awards Ice would be exposed as a fraud in the Dallas Morning News as not being the street kid he was marketed as. In the aftermath of his multi-platinum album, a false 8-mile-like bio-pic, handful of homes, shit load of cars and wild nights with Madonna, Ice surfaces now to trash MTV sets, drop uninspired rap-metal albums and act like a junior high school star on reality television.