Sunday, January 15, 2006
The Native Tongue #1
We're taking a journey back to the late 1980's now to focus on the work of The Native Tongues collective. The Jungle Brothers were the first of a selection of new skool artists at that time to embrace new concepts of sound, lyrics and style. Replacing gold chains with african pendants, lifting sound samples from less obvious recording artists and dropping conscious lyrics without militancy was the order of the day. Baby Bam, Mike G & Sammy B dropped their debut lp "Straight Out The Jungle" to a warm reception in 1988. The title track along with songs like "On The Run", "Behind The Bush" & "Black Is Black" were typical of their organic approach to rap. They also took time out from the consciousness and had fun in the studio with label mate Todd Terry, in order to create their worldwide dancefloor hit "I'll House You". This move won them as many fans as it did critics, but undetered they continued collaborating with other artists to raise there profile. Their UK label mates the Stereo MC's, remixed a number of their singles keeping the Native Tongue momentum going with killer versions of "Black Is Black" & "Because I Got It Like That". The JB's featured on a remix of De La Soul's "Buddy" along with Q Tip, who had also guested on the SOTJ lp. De La Soul & ATCQ mirrored the JB's with ground breaking debut albums, and Warner Brothers sought to capitalise on the Native Tongue popularity by funding the JB's sophomore lp "Done By The Forces Of Nature" in 1989.
This lp was a creative masterpiece but was unfortunately overshadowed by the worldwide popularity of "3 ft High & Rising". DBTFoN also suffered from a lack of obvious singles for the pop market. The profile of the Jungle Brothers begain to fade as they were considered less marketable than the other members of the Native Tongues. Queen Latifah, Monie Love and A Tribe Called Quest all had successful chart hits, while the JB's seemed unable to do the same. This lead to Warner mis-handling the JB's third lp, which was released about 2 years after it was recorded and fell on death ears in both the pop and underground market.
Mike & Bam were released from WB and decided to hook back up with their indie UK label Gee St. This led to a series of broken beat lp's which were more popular with the dance/club scene than traditional hip hop heads. A sad way to go out, but at least they were back in the business of selling units and making money.
Our featured song is "In Time", which is a b-side only track that can be found on the UK release of "Black Is Black". The track is a re-working of "The Promo", the latter being the close out track on there debut lp. Enjoy the videos too, it'll be a long time before you see them on TV again!
# posted by clawdada @ 6:05 pm 
