If you’ve been frequenting this site since the early part of the year, you might recall a post or two about Analog Brothers, a short-lived recording project that featured Ice-T, Pimp Rex, Kool Keith, Marc Live and Black Silver. As the story goes, the emcee and producer collective recorded a little-known — and in turn, extremely rare — album together Pimp To East. Unfortunately, according to Ice-T, the original and fully complete master of the album was delayed when Kool Keith’s vocal masters were reportedly stolen during the melee that followed the Indiana Pacers vs. Los Angeles Lakers NBA Finals game on June 19, 2000. Interestingly, whether or not the event actually happened or not or if it was fabricated to build up buzz for the album has yet to be determined — or proven; however, the final files were eventually rediscovered and Mello Music Group re-released the album last month.
The re-release’s first single “We Sleep Days” feat. Jacky Jasper, was comprised of an acid-tinged and futuristic production that paired shimmering and oscillating synths and stuttering boom-bap beats with some of the most talented emcees out there trading fiery bars about pimping, hustling and drug dealing. Sonically, the song sounds as though it evoked a hip-hop alternate universe in which Outkast and Too Short managed to collaborate together in a super group. The re-release’s second single “Country Girl” was a swooning and strutting, R&B and soul-inspired hip-hop song with a production consisting of wah wah-pedalled bass and guitar, crooned vocals around the hook and an emcee rhyming about how he found the love of his life — a country girl that’s made him give up the life of drugs, sex, partying and pimping for good. And while seemingly charming and sweet, the song possesses a sleazy undercurrent. The third and latest single “More Freaks” features a collective of emcees rhyming about pimping, hustling, being a bigger badass than anyone else, complete with ridiculous pop culture references, surreal imagery and punch lines that are both hilarious and morally bankrupt over a sample that features a looped horn sample and enormous, old school-leaning boom bap drum programming reminiscent of a sleazier version of Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love.”
Produced by Gorillaman, the recently released music video features masked men and women behaving in a debaucherous and surreal fashion, which is fitting for the song.