Pharcyde - Labcabincalifornia c/d?

This is an alltimer for me. I didn't love it immediately. But the more I played it the more I liked it. My introduction to J Dilla. I mean, no he didn't do the whole record but, besides "She Said", his songs were the highlights.

It is absolutely a less fun mood than the first album, but it also has the group members defining their own personalities much more distinctly. It was with this album that Fatlip really started to get folks attention as the best MC of them. It's a much more souful and introspective approach to the group's identity and the role each of them had in the group. It felt more unified to me.

The production is wonderful, even the non-Dilla tracks. And it fit the new material perfectly. Not as outright silly as Bizarre Ride, but also not the complete opposite either. I remember thinking that they were heading in a similar direction to Outkast and the Roots (and Tre Hardson ended up collaborating with the Roots in the year following Labcabin).

One of my favorite things from this era was the b-side of "Runnin":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBn_gli9xJw

"Emerald Butterfly" (1995)

Definitely classic material all around.

Skimming back through the album now— "Little D" has not aged well. Such is the fate of 97% of hiphop skits.

After my appreciation started to grow, I always used the album's beats as a road map for old records to check out. I know you could say the same thing for a lot of 90s hiphop, but if you go through and track down all the sample sources you're in for a good time. It made 16 year old me look in the Stan Getz section. I may have gotten there eventually, but it certainly would have been much later.

One of my favorite music connections is also because of this album. I already posted "Emerald Butterfly" but part of my fascination with that song has to do with what came after it. I always assumed it was a sample because everything else they were doing was sampled based. And they did sample the vocal that gets cut in at the end of the song, but the riff and everything else —to my knowledge— isn't a sample. They sing the main riff over "Moment in Time" on the album and that song is a sample. Maybe it inspired the riff on "Emerald Butterfly"? Then Tre Hardson showed up the following year in the credits for the Roots' illadelph halflife on the song "The Hypnotic" — which was basically the Roots and D'Angelo riffing on "Emerald Butterfly." And then the Roots did another variation the following year with D'Angelo and Erykah Badu (this one barely retains any of "Emerald Butterfly" and instead incorporates "Shining Star"). Just wild to think it might have all started with a Mass Production slow jam.

Anyway. Yes, I rate Labcabincalifornia pretty highly.

man i totally spaced on voting for "drop" in the music video poll, shit.

i could def get behind the "better than bizarre ride" take, the earlier album is all pops of color and punchline after punchline, while labcab is more effortlessly cool and more melodic. bizarre ride has "passin me by," though, which is probably still my favorite rap song ever.