Olas un Bekons

Too Bad It's Almost Good [Part 2] - Surf M.C.'s

Added 2020-12-22 18:09:29 +0000 UTC

Profile Records has had a fair share of artists signed for one single or one album deal that were discontinued after the debut failing to sell quantitatively... or to deliver qualitatively. Our today's protagonists did (''or didn't'' might more precise) both in my opinion.

Since I haven't quite followed these guys, I had to rely on the wiki information which I gotta say is very scarce. What we get is this: ''The Surf MC's were an American hip hop group from California. They were signed to Profile Records in 1987 and released their only album, Surf or Die, the same year. The album was a mix of rock, punk and hip hop and had one single, "Surf or Die," which peaked at number 90 on the US Billboard R&B chart. They performed with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More on the The Uplift Mofo Party Tour."

I will get straight to the point - these guys is what I think about when I talk to someone about the worst rap albums of all time whose only quality is the nostalgia they have provided to us who were kids (and thus highly subjective and ignorant about the 'good hip-hop' and 'bad hip-hop') when those albums went out. Surf M.C.'s must have tried to incorporate many mid-80's fads that were popular. Those include surfing, popular catchphrases, full colour palette to give you feeling of those gulls in Surf Or Die video have eaten crayons and now they defecate rainbow. But I understand those were the times and now we are used to be more skeptical about the oversaturation of colours and everything. Or at least most of us..

Musically Surf M.C.'s must have been Profile label's experimentation project to grab some money on the Run-DMC, Beastie Boys Def Jam hype with rocky samples and hard lyrics that had been extremely popular for the last 2 or 3 years. So why not, let's mix some guys that can replicate Run DMC and Beastie Boys together and make dope tracks. Well, it might work on paper, but in reality - you get what you get. Guys that could not rap and whose thematic narrative was far off when linked to those hard rock beats. I mean, who mixes surfing and hard rock? Fat Boys already mixed the surfing with raps and did it without creating new formulae. They simply took what was known and granted from both sides of this collaboration. That other side of it were legendary Beach Boys who were far from hard rock, and thus have helped to shift our perceptions of surfing, sunny beaches and easy pop-rock music blending together, and hard rock being for something else. Heck, there's even a music style associated with this, called surf-rock.

I am not against experimentation myself. I love to dive into new hip-hop genres, to filer them later into ones I like and the ones I prefer not to include in my playlist. Apparently, Surf M.C.'s were not into those playlist for many. Nowadays most of the people know them just because that track one played on MTV and they heard it as kids. I don't know how good were the sales for their album but I trust they were not the best. Somebody on youtube comments for that video even ironically replied to someone's comment about buying himself a copy with '' I think you are the only one who bought the record.''.. Ouch...

Still, we live in the digital internet era when you can relive those childhood memories even when reminiscing rather shitty albums whose only advantage is that nostalgia.

Both their releases can be found in these folders, along with today's batch of other rekkidz.