Album: 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of... (Chrysalis)
Songwriters: Speech
Hit #1: July 11th, 1992 (1 Week)
Before you had The Fugees and Southern rap acts Outkast and Goodie Mob (and offshoot solo projects from Andre 3000 and Cee-Lo) pushing the boundaries of what hip hop could be, this ragtag assembly of spoken word poets, singers, emcees and musicians were awaking the industry to the march of a new kind of alternative rap. Blending a Native Tongues aesthetic with Sly & The Family Stone vision and a sound that crossed a gamut of classic musical genres, the rootsy group were instantly marked as the positive antithesis to the gangsta rap world and their arrival was met with much admiration from beyond the typical rap fan sect.
The group's biggest hit was found in their breakout debut, "Tennessee". The song was driven by frontman Speech's striking inner tribulations during a low point in his life ("Lord I've really been real stressed/ Down and out, losing ground/ Although I am Black and proud/ Problems got me pessimistic"). His soliloquy to the Man Above to offer him some guidance out of his depression leads him to "walk the roads my forefathers walked" in Tennessee. Through this spiritual connection with his ancestors, he finds some answers ("Now I see the importance of history/ Why people be in the mess that they be") but is left with even more questions ("The ultimate truth started to get blurry/ For some reasons it had to be").
The backing track alleviated the depth of the subject matter with a burly boom-bap beat and the infectious camaraderie of his troupe, not to mention the soulful yearnings of future solo act Dionne Farris ("I Know", "Hopeless") towards the end.
Arrested Development's engaging mix of conscious rap, folky soul-funk and and live/ sampled musical textures offered a hope to where the future of hip hop was leading. They were a critic's dream, and even more surprisingly a major pop success, awarded with numerous end-of-year accolades from the media alongside million-plus sales and even a couple Grammy Awards (Best Rap Album, Best New Artist). By their next studio effort, though, 1994's heavily jazz/ Afrocentric Zingalamaduni, their hold on the mass public and music critics had reached an end due to an abandonment of hooks to offset all the intellect. No longer able to compete with the gangsta rap dynasties of the day and internal drama forcing members off on their own path, AD officially split apart in the mid-90's (the group would eventually reunite, sans Speech, in the new millennium), but their promising, brief stay in the limelight remained one of the decade's most amazing musical success stories.
Best Moment: The memorable intro affections of the title line (0:00)
DL: "Tennessee" (YFH)
3 comments:
Even back then when this song came out, it was Dionne Farris' part that hit me the hardest. she made the most of her part in the song
i still have this album... and i'm still wondering what the old man did in this group.
one of the few hip hop songs allowed to sample prince. that's his "tennessee" from alphabet st.
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