And I'm not so much talking about the similar flash of No Limit but the darker, nastier, more outwardly nihilistic acts that erupted in backlash, all politically incorrect and violent and in your face as a reaction to the perceived shallowness of culture at the time, especially in male-dominated media.

Or to put it another way, Internal Affairs is in a bit of a different lane in comparison with many of the underground projects that I've covered this year, and the sort of album I'm not sure would get the same reception should it be released today - very much of its time and era in the late 90s, and I think with twenty years of separation, while I still think it's pretty great, parts of it might not have held up as strongly as many want to admit.Īnd a huge part of this has to do with context in the last years of the twentieth century, namely that for as much as I described the pronounced split between the decadence of the shiny suit era and the grubby underground, even in the mainstream it was never just that simple, because for as much as the 'jiggy' era was a thing on the charts, it wasn't precisely dominant.

until I gave Internal Affairs a few more relistens, and came to the abrupt realization that the context for this album and why certain elements haven't really aged as well as you might think do demand some explanation, both relating to the album and in the era in which it came. So you'd think that given my familiarity with Pharoahe Monch and this album in specific that it'd a pretty easy project to discuss - it's a classic debut that Pharoahe hasn't quite topped, a landmark in the underground in 1999, it holds up to this day, let's just be happy it's reissued and available on streaming and go home happy.

And given that I've talked about this artist before and it's near the twentieth anniversary of its release - and the long-awaited re-release on streaming platforms long thought impossible thanks to sample clearance issues - it's time we go back to the source: this is Internal Affairs by Pharoahe Monch, and this is Resonators! It would take a relatively long time for member Prince Po to land his solo debut with The Slickness in 2004 to generally positive coverage, but the other rapper would receive immediate acclaim with his release in 1999 on Rawkus, featuring a murder's row of collaborators and later highlighted as one of the best hip-hop debuts of all time.

But three albums in and after a particularly ambitious but mostly failed 1997 project The Equinox, the duo decided to split amicably and go their separate ways to chase solo crossover - and when you consider both had been rapping and producing their own projects through the entire decade, it's not surprising they wanted to thin out their workload and narrow their focus. And while the critics adored them for forward-thinking content and a unique sound in the era of gangsta rap, their eclectic and varied delivery and lyricism meant they never really saw mainstream success - kind of a damn shame because they didn't skimp on hooks or catchiness either, but that happens more than it should in the underground even today. I think I'm in the quarter of Resonators entries where I'm just going to be reviewing acts that I otherwise know and and like a great deal already - a little different than the discovery and research that came from last year's genre, but when the albums are pretty consistently great, am I supposed to complain?Īnyway, the story of this artist begins in the late 80s with the duo with the very timely name Simply II Positive MCs - in a desire to remain more marketable in changing times they'd rename themselves to Organized Konfusion and begin releasing critically acclaimed cult albums throughout the the 90s.

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