Great Lost Albums
Hardknocks
School Of Hardknocks (Wild Pitch, 1991)
The freshest forgotten albums of yesteryear. Not the usual fawned over suspects but albums that ‘net-trawlers and second hand record shop aficionados may come across and should snap up now.
This month Blackbelt Jonez digs into the hip hop archives for…
The late 80’s and early 90’s wasn’t too bad a time to begin discovering the finer things in life, such as girls, alcohol and music. Distinctly unlike Fred Savage in ‘The Wonder Years’, I discovered thus: a bottle of Thunderbird Blue would get two or three of you nicely pissed. Woolworth’s and Boots store detectives didn’t seem overly concerned about their dwindling array of 90min TDK tapes (more about those later on) and female foreign exchange students were more accommodating than their English counterparts (especially when given some of the aforementioned Thunderbird).
With regards to music, it’s fair to say that many a teen’s musical education begins at home with the record collection of their parents and I was no different. Ashamed as I am to admit it, my formative years were spent listening to Dire Straits, Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton, as well as The Police (whom I’m not so ashamed of), but by the time I’d taken to filling the pockets of my baggy jeans (Mustard coloured, Pepe Jeans, 42” Waist – what was I thinking?) with stolen blank cassettes I’d made a re-discovery. The first record I ever bought was a Run DMC Christmas 7”, and I’d dabbled in break dancing (badly) on cardboard gathered from the skips of Texas Homecare, but since I was only 12 at the time I don’t think the concept of ‘genres’ was of any concern to me. However, once I’d hit the age where I’d actually ‘done a Frenchie (French kiss)’ with a ‘Frenchie (French girl)’, I was edging back towards the Hip Hop fold.
At the time it may have appeared that I was a bit of a kleptomaniac, addicted to stealing tapes wherever I went. Not quite, although they were an alternative currency to the pound if you didn’t have a job, but the truth is that my addiction was of course the music I was putting on them. It was fortunate for me (and equally unfortunate for my parents) that the other plus about the late ‘80s and early ‘90s is that the era is recognised by most as the golden age of Hip Hop.
By the time I got a Saturday job and could afford to start buying tapes and vinyl, the ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers that were splashed over practically every Hip Hop release (and curiously not on Cannibal Corpse albums…) were like a beacon. A guarantee of foul and abusive language and the promise of a slap round the head should any of it be heard by my younger sister. Much of the music I bought then is pretty much unlistenable now (2 Live Crew and Poison Clan spring to mind) but of course buying tawdry gangsta hip hop and smoking dirty hash was as close to rebellion as I could get to at 14 years old without getting a cheap looking tattoo of a ganja leaf on my arm or sellotaping myself to a politician. Fortunately, NWA clones made only a small percentage of the Hip Hop that was available at that time and, having gradually learned that the traditional Hip Hop misspellings (Nu Niggaz On Tha BloKKK – a shocking album) didn’t always guarantee a pleasurable listen, I ventured forth into uncharted territories where albums without warning stickers did lie: EPMD, Gangstarr, A Tribe Called Quest and Brand Nubian were all releasing classic material and label wise, Elektra and Def Jam were pretty much top of the tree, at least in financial terms. However with Wild Pitch Records there was always the guarantee of the good shit. Wild Pitch had more of an underground feel, possibly because it was strictly a Hip Hop label or possibly because they couldn’t afford to advertise or promote once studio costs and engineer fees had been covered, thus many albums seemed to come out of the blue. Affordable black sleeve with sticker/track listing covers eventually became synonymous with a single or album release on the label, perhaps because the logo was strong enough to encourage a purchase, though albums by Ultramagnetic MCs and OC would have sold by the shed-load had they been only available on the moon. However, many Wild Pitch releases did have picture covers – Main Source’s seminal ‘Breaking Atoms’, Lord Finesse’s ‘Funky Technician’ and UMC’s ‘Fruits Of Nature’ – again, all recognised as classics. One group fortunate enough to have a picture cover but not the marketing budget their talent deserved were Hardknocks, who dropped ‘School of Hardknocks’ in 1991.
Wild Pitch folded around 1995 and trawling the internet offers little in the way of information as to what happened to the group once the album was released. Their history is equally hard to trace. In 1990, Hardhead and Stoneface, MC and DJ respectively were known as 3 Da Hard Way and released ‘A Dirty Cop Named Harry’ on Noontime Records, the label’s only release. Sampling Bill Withers’ ‘Who Is He…’, the single was picked up by Wild Pitch who signed them up for an album deal and later reissued it, most likely as a last effort to generate money from the duo, fed up of their ties to a contract that couldn’t push them as far as their talent deserved.
The album was released following their first single for Wild Pitch, ‘Nigga For Hire’, and like the single, it targeted the typical subjects of Hip Hop in the early 90’s: The struggle of Africans in America (“First fired, last hired. Granny picked cotton till she died –what a way to retire”) and crooked cops (“He stashed a million in cash, two million of the white stuff. A hard days work without the use of his handcuffs”) as well as the obligatory braggadocios freestyle rhymes (“Lyrics made to engrave, amateurs whipped like slaves, take heed – as I ride the title like a wave!”).
Hardhead’s smooth, Rakim-like flow is complimented throughout by the funk and jazz-laden production courtesy of Stoneface. Apart from the Bill Withers loop and the obligatory ‘Funky Drummer’ beat, very few of the samples and drum breaks would be spotted except by the most anal of trainspotters. The only thing missing from this album is the standard posse cut that was also synonymous to the golden age. More often than not, a posse cut was the standout track on an album but the lack of one here as well as no outside production adds further to the ‘who the fuck were these guys?’ mystery. It’s like they didn’t know anyone and nor did they care to. All paths remain closed and I’m left feeling like Will Smith in rubbish old ‘Enemy Of The State’. For those that have heard it and know more than I do please educate me further and for those that haven’t, you should. It’s been bootlegged in Germany so chunky vinyl is available. I own 14 copies so my life is complete.
(Trainspotter Editorial Note – do not confuse with Lindy Layton and Steve Proctor’s big beat-goes-techno late ‘90s outfit Hardknox)
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35qXVh Very true! Makes a change to see someone spell it out like that.
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