taken hold. She had a great combination of being able
to get down and rough, and being able to sing. She was
versatile."
The versatility comes across in the contrast between
the hip-hop/garage feel of "Come Into My House",
the tough vocal interplay between Latifah and Monie
Love on "Ladies First", underpinned by rugged
45 King breakbeats, or the fast, fierce lyrical flow
and mellow Naughty By Nature production of "Latifah's
Had It Up 2 Here", taken from her 1991 Nature Of
a Sista' album.
Naughty By Nature - Treach, KayGee and Vinnie - also
came to Tommy Boy via the Flavour Unit connection. "Latifah
was their mentor," recalls Monica. "They were
originally called New Style and they were wearing zoot
suits. It didn't feel like things had really gelled
in terms of their image and what they were about so
we passed. Subsequently they regrouped and did some
fine tuning."
Finely tuned, the renamed Naughty By Nature were signed
to Warner Brothers but offered to Tommy Boy because
of the company's proven track record with credible hip-hop
acts. "A lot of things were the result of renegotiating
our deal with Warner Brothers," says Tom, "which
happened just before De La Soul. Naughty By Nature came
from them. Benny Medina signed them, which we'll be
always grateful for."
As well as pioneering the maxi-cassette single in America,
Tommy Boy had been working low key campaigns based on
hitting street knowledge rather than relying on big
budgets. For Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P.",
for example, they plastered New York with black and
white stickers, simply printed 'Down With O.P.P'. Quick
to respond, bootleggers produced t-shirts and hats with
the same slogan. As a consequence, New Yorkers were
asking themselves what O.P.P. meant even before the
track broke. The single was released in 1991 and quickly
became an anthem and a massive hit record.
"Treach just completely took off as a major, major
star," says Monica. "He's an interesting guy
because he had enormous sex appeal for women and he
was really rough. He'd always wear prison type outfits,
a chain around his neck, and he was really hard looking
so the guys respected him. His lyrical flow was also
very influential and Kaygee was a mastermind at coming
up with anthemic tracks - 'O.P.P.' and 'Hip Hop Hooray'
being the two biggest ones."
Naughty By Nature's style, another new direction for
hip-hop, had the versatility of Latifah, mixing smooth
R&B, pumping beats, chanted choruses and serious
lyrics on "Uptown Anthem" and "Feel Me
Flow" but showing a more poignant side with the
Bob Marley hookline of "Everything's Going To Be
Alright", Treach's lament for his own lost childhood.
From the very beginning, one of Tommy Boy's strongest
suits has been this combination of B-boy reality and
commercial acumen. The late Eighties and early Nineties
were turbulent years for hip-hop: a militant mood in
the air, rap on trial for obscenity, ultra-commercial
rap breaking big on MTV and a struggle for hearts and
minds taking place between gangstas and conscious rappers.
With its Black Panther samples and driving energy, "Break
the Grip of Shame" by Paris, a native of San Francisco,
was one of the defining moments of the period.
A more typical signing for Tommy Boy was House Of Pain.
"Jump Around" (with its intro sample taken
from Bob and Earl's "Harlem Shuffle") and
the metal-rap of "Shamrocks and Shenanigans (Boom
Shalock Lock Boom)" were full-on testosterone records
with immediate appeal. Irish-Americans from Los Angeles,
Everlast, Danny Boy and Lithuanian DJ Lethal were closely
associated with Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, their mentor
and producer. "Both of those groups broke down
the racial barriers and the bi-coastal barriers,"
says Monica. "Cypress Hill were murky in terms
of their ethnicity. House of Pain, it was straight up
Irish kids. With Everlast, I think a lot of white kids
felt like they had found an artist that they could call
their own. There's a lot of fiefdoms and tribes in rap.
Every white kid from Queens who grew up listening to
Run-D.M.C. and loved Public Enemy but never felt like
they could be truly down, by virtue of the fact they
were white, House of Pain was the answer to their dreams."
House Of Pain's first album sold over 1.5 million.
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