Onyx is hardcore hip hop group from South Jamaica, Queens, New York. The group consists of East Coast rappers Sticky Fingaz, Fredro Starr and Sonny Seeza. They were one of the biggest hip-hop groups of the year back in 1993 when they had a massive hit called “Slam” from their album Bacdafucup. The song was all over radio and MTV, as MTV was still playing a great deal of music videos back then. I became a fan when they did the song “Judgment Night” with the band Biohazard on the soundtrack of the movie of the same name. The whole Judgment Night soundtrack featured collaborations between rock acts and hip-hop artists and remains somewhat popular today. If you ask most people of my generation what their favorite movie soundtracks are, chances are Judgment Night would be on their lists. (That’s Generation X, if you must know. We were the generation portrayed — for better or worse — in the movies Reality Bites and Singles. Although, just for the record, most of us grew up listening to heavy metal and hair bands and only got into grunge later when it finally killed off the hair band scene, which most of us were none too happy about at the time.) As the first half of the ’90’s went on, Onyx were in high demand and had songs on more than a few other movie soundtracks, including Clockers (1995) , Sunset Park (1996) and Dead Presidents (1995). They also won a Soul Train album of the year award for Bacdafucup. The group followed the album up with 1998’s Shut ‘Em Down and 2003’s Bacdafucup 2. Then they apparently disbanded because nobody heard from them for years until now.
Well, let me be among the first to say “welcome” back to the guys. “We Don’t Fucking Care” is a fantastic, instant classic. Produced by Snowgoons, a German underground hip hop producer duo consisting of DJ Illegal (Manuu Rückert) and Det (D. Keller), the song splits the difference between early ’90’s hip-hop and the hip-hop of today perfectly. To my ears, it sounds an awful lot like not only classic Onyx but vintage Cypress Hill and House of Pain and I imagine that’s something they were going for because, musically, it sounds like it could have been a song on Cypress Hill’s breakthrough album Black Sunday. Which is a very, very good thing. If you ask me, the stuff Onyx and Cypress Hill — and 2 Pac and House of Pain — were doing back then kicks the shit out of a lot of today’s rap. I’m not going to sit here and diss any of today’s artists, but back then there was generally a bigger emphasis on writing hip-hop songs with killer hooks. Today, a lot of artists turn to pop and R&B singers to perform the choruses of their songs, but none of the artists I’ve just named ever needed to do that. Maybe some of them did so at some point, but even if they did the fact remains that they had huge hits without doing that, which is to their credit, as it shows what talented songwriters they were. And, in the case of Onyx, what talented songwriters they still are. Hopefully, having A$AP Ferg and Sean Price on “We Don’t Fucking Care” will help get today’s hip-hop fans to embrace it because it’s spot-on in every way possible with wise lyrics, a great rebellious attitude and superb production. Welcome back, guys, indeed. I can’t wait to hear the new album.
Soundcloud info:
Tags – WAKEDAFUCUP available on iTunes worldwide March.09.2014
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