Photo Credit: Apple Music
New Yorks vaunted golden age of hip-hop in the 90s was born from a can-do ethos that belied the exigencies of survival. Amid the imperilment of structural poverty, a generation of incidental musical icons took a blue-sky approach to overcoming their circumstances, and with it, recast the boundaries of global pop culture.
As part of the Boot Camp Clik supergroup, Brooklyn twosome Tek and Steele, known cooperatively as Smif-N-Wessun, were elemental in the East Coast rap renaissance that turned their borough into an internationally recognized sound. While sweeping commercial success may have eluded them, the duos acclaimed 1995 debut Dah Shinin became a perdurable New York classic.
An unblemished collection of street tales chronicled over Da Beatminerzsexemplary brand of boom bap, Dah Shinin encapsulated the spirit of the epoch. A New York where creativity outweighed opportunity, beats were prospects, and rhymes were therapy. Symbiotically, the Boot Camp Clik representatives captured the zeitgeist of a period that promised fortune, while simultaneously insulating its poorest neighborhoods from any associated trickle-down effects.
The largest and richest city in the US had entered the 1970s with a fully functioning welfare system. New York boasted the only municipal university system in the US offering free higher education. There were 19 public hospitals, state-run daycares, and subsidized drug programs. But come the summer of 1975, all that was to change. New York was in debt, crippling debt.
As every respectable financial catastrophe necessitates, responsibility for the crisis rested firmly at the feet of the poor. The problem, according to the mayor and governor, was that the needy were using too many of the public services offered to themand had tanked the citys economy. The solution? Budget cuts. First, a group of power brokers and financiers co-opted the citys economy. Then, the Federal Government stepped in with a loan, conditional to draconian cutscuts that would ensure generational poverty.
New Yorks public sector was systematically ravaged. Tens of thousandswere laid off; school budgets slashed; hospitals, libraries, and firehouses closed; and education now came with a price tag. Within a few short years, New York had become the fulcrum of a conservative movement that would set the stage for national supply-side Reaganomics. Life in the citys poverty-stricken communities became infinitely more precarious.
The Brownsville section of Brooklyn had long been New Yorks most impoverished area and bore the brunt of its fiscal ruin. Children born into the one square mile of municipal tenementsthe highest concentration of public housing in the USwereraised in poverty. Life expectancy was (and still is) the lowest in the city. It was in Brownsville where Smif-N-Wessun came to be. Infants during the citys takeover, Tek and Steele were born into monumental austerity and raised through the ensuing crack epidemic that cultivated crime and conviction at improbable rates.
The unsympathetic surroundings begot predictably hostile fruit. Before sporting fatigues in their videos, Tek and Steele were earning their stripes in the infamous New York street gang, the Decepticons. When General Steele began rapping as a teen, his childhood companion worked his security. When Steele suggested Tek join him as part of a group, he wrote his brother in arms first rhyme. The pair were barely out of high school when they seized upon the opportunityto create a cult classic that would define the experiences of a generation growing up in New Yorks Medina.
Debuting on Black Moons showpiece, Enta da Stage, in 1993, Tek and Steele preordained their entry into rap folklore six months later, when they flipped the woodwind swing of Jack Bruces Born to be Blue into an ode to the borough itself, Bucktown. A canorous dedication to their city within a city, Bucktown became an underground success, climbing to the top of the Billboard Hot Dance Singles Chart and setting the table for an impending long play.
However, the groups indelible contribution to the 90s hip-hop playlists wasnt even slated as Dah Shinins lead-in. The duo scheduled Nothing Move But the Money as the first single, but Rod Temperton wouldnt rock with the Heatwave sample clearance. Unable to decide between Bucktown and Lets Git it On as its replacement, the group took the offbeat step of releasing the two tracks as a Double A side. A roughhouse opera with a bassline that rumbles like the L over Van Sinderen, the baleful Lets Git it On still ranks among the parabolic golden ages finest compositions.
Emerging at the dawn of 95, Dah Shinin came on theheels of a boom bap year that had witnessed the Kings County leave its unfading imprint on the genre. Post Bucktown, Gang Starrs Hard to Earn, Jeru the Damajas The Sun Rises in the East, O.C.s Word...Life, Digable PlanetsBlowout Comb, and, of course, The Notorious B.I.G.s Ready to Die had already canonized Brooklyns contribution to hip-hops greatest year.
In the same D&D studios DJ Premier was squandering sampled crack on Group Home, producers Da Beatminerz and Smif-N-Wessun were working in synergy to cut 15 virulent tales of life in Brooklyn, before it was a brand. The architects of Black Moons Enta da Stage two years prior, DJ Evil Dee, Mr. Walt, Baby Paul, and Rich Blaks subterranean riddims would become the bedrock of Smif-N-Wessuns forbidding aura.
Filtering their seemly samples into ominous, low-end basslines and marrying them with radioactive percussion, Da Beatminerz undeniably advanced the decorum of the boom bap onomatopoeia on Dah Shinin. Fellow New Yorkers Pete Rock, Q-Tip, and Large Professor had filtered samples before them, but Evil Dee and Mr. Walt fine-tuned the technique into a profession. Coalescing the esteemed sine wave bass of Mr. Walts Akai S950 with Evil Dees illustrious SP-1200, Dah Shinins brooding sonata was scored with a precision that distinguished it from Enta da Stage.
The riddims, like the matter, were trenchant throughout; fulsome grooves set off with uppercut snares and unsparing stanzas. Evil Dee attributed the overarching menace of Dah Shinin to an attempt on his behalf to create a soundstripe to their nocturnal corner activities, a mood that wasnt best accompanied by early hour radio slow jams. Careless Whisper may have been ill-suited, but Wrekonize could score a beatdown. If music for mal-intent was the grail, Sound Bwoy Bureill was the records apogee, a harbinger of villainy that goaded Tek and Steeles most calculated, patois peppered strophes.
The albums cover was purloined from Roy Ayers Ubiquitys Hes Coming. From the LPs crest, We Live in Brooklyn, Baby, came Home Sweet Home, a spiritual sequel to Digable Planets Borough Check. Baby Pauls orchestrated tour of Crooklyn was a lucid tale of turf wars and local pride, in spite of the unpredictable surroundings (We cant afford to take shorts or be playing sports/Empires need to be built, mack 10s bought.)
Immersed in a studio haze of sleep deprivation and lye, the vibrant pulse of Wrektime and Isaac Hayes imbued Stay Strongwerecontact high psalms for soupy night stoopcotching. Robbery, Timbs,and teenage resiliencerolled into a blunt assessment of success relative to circumstance. The album also harkenedthe arrival ofO.G.C. and Heltah Skeltah and marked the official formation of the Boot Camp Clik on the minatory posse cut,Cessionat daDoghillee.
Despite displaying all the trappings of a classic, The Source bestowed a miserly three mics on Dah Shinin. Rightfully aggrieved, the Clik wrote a letter to the steadily depreciating publication, calling their incredulous rating a blow to the head of every individual who lives for hip-hop. The review may have tempered expectations, but Dah Shinin would still go on tosell over 300,000 copies, a significant achievement for the humble Nervous imprint, Wreck Records.
Though a quintessentially New York record, Dah Shinin unwittingly offered an olive branch to the west in the middle of the ruinous Coast Wars. Hidden in the linear notes of the album was a dedication that flew in the face of rallying war cries towards California, a message to an incarcerated 2Pac, keep ya head up. The gesture was not taken lightly. Upon his release, 2Pac flew Smif-N-Wessun and Buckshot to LA in an attemptto bridge the gap between the East and West Coastwith an ultimately ill-fated collaborative album.
While 2Pac would pass before hisOne Nationvision could be realized, the preternatural marriage between Smif-N-Wessun and Da Beatminerz would play a seminal role in a Brooklyn behavioral cusp with universal significance. As one of an ineffable collection of albums that thrust the boroughs name into the vocabulary of millions across the globe, Dah Shinin gave rise to an international standard of what hip-hop should sound like, that endures to this day.
A quarter of a century removed, Smif-N-Wessuns triumph abides as a testament to an era that defined a genre. All heads realize.
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25 Years Later: Smif-N-Wessuns Dah Shinin Is a Testament to an Era That Defined Hip-Hop - DJBooth