UMC'S one to grow on

one of my favorite songs back in the day.

On their debut album, Fruits of Nature, the UMC's -- Hass G and Kool Kim -- are endlessly imaginative, witty, and effervescent by disposition and lyrical flow, and always intelligent. When it came to the music, co-producers Hass G and RNS decked it out in vintage soul and old Blue Note-styled tracks, with reams of obscure, idiosyncratic vocal samples tossed in as hooks, breaks, and bridges. The resulting effort is yet another vastly underrated rap album out of those banner years in hip-hop, 1991 and 1992, when commercial and economic instincts had yet to turn the music formulaic. The ironic thing is that nearly everything on Fruits of Nature is sing-along catchy and so ebullient that it would have sounded great bounding out of radios or from MTV. Unfortunately, it is also the sort of hip-hop that is too idiosyncratic and brainy to garner a widespread audience. Instead of alchemizing their jazz-tinged sensibility into a more earnest and reverent underground hip-hop extension of the jazz tradition, UMC's twist their jazzy inclinations into what are essentially pop songs that, even while generating a singular style all their own, cover the full range of the catchiness spectrum: ingratiating melodic tunes ("One to Grow On"), carbonated word play ("Blue Cheese"), cleverly disguised boasts and straight rhyming ("Kraftworks," "Swing It to the Area," "Any Way the Wind Blows"), loping urban anthems ("You Got My Back," "Jive Talk"), and more serious-minded cuts ("Morals"). There's even an urban take on storybook tales ("Never Never Land") and a sort of ballad ("Feelings"). The commercial failure of the UMC's and groups like them opened up hip-hop to the same sort of Top 40-ready and cookie-cutter artistry in the latter part of the decade that had previously swallowed rock and pop music. For a brief couple years, though, rap as uniquely excellent as Fruits of Nature could be found around every urban corner

Category:

Music

Tags:

• umc
• wild
• pitch
• fruits
• of
• nature
• real
• hiphop
• grow
• hass
• g
• kool
• kim

[BigMike6131]

Hip hop use to be so gawd damn good for the soul.

[kneegrowpls]

lmao compare this to the music today... haha

[streeaka]

@nyoil cant argue with that! and hood treason is hot!!!!

[aworriedshoe]

was this video recorded from VHS?

[projektcancer]

lol..as a kid I thot they said Roll on this!! aww man...

[Orlando2Vegas]

thumbs up :)

[bluto312]

lol compare this to lil wayne and drake. if you actually think this doesnt destroy all the crap today like lil wayne and nicki minaj... you are a frickin idiot. get ur brain checked seriously

[AlHayta]

The UMC's came out in 1990. They were the first group from Staten Island to mention Wu-Tang (Any Way The Wind Blows - The B-Side of Blue Cheese) on record as well as the first group to score TWO # billboard singles with Blue Cheese and One to Grow One. They defintely would have had three in a row if they ever dropped Never Never Land...but they never did.

[Truer22]

thanks for posting. this is one of those songs and videos that got down in your soul and subliminal early on and set a standard for what you expected of hip hop music and creative art in terms of music videos. then time went on and you saw stuff that wasn't quite like this and you had an attitude and you didn't know why.

[633390]

OLD school NYOIL

[KINGSED99]

These niggaz was like L.O.N.S., De La, and Tribe all mixed in one.

[KINGSED99]

Apprehend my method, my method is apparent, I see clearly.. this world is transparent. So I reach down deep, deliver salvation to the hands of the weak...

the meek, the mild,... then tame the wild, cuz' that's how I'm styled!

See.. if you couldn't flow like Ra (Rakim) back then, yo' ass couldn't even cop a record deal. Whatever happened to the lyricist?