Happy 35th Anniversary to Chubb Rock’s third studio album The One, originally released May 21, 1991.
The year 1991 was an early peak during my musical development. If I ever made a proper list, I’d imagine a pretty disproportionate amount of my 50-100 favorite albums came out in 1991. Often it seemed like a new great album (sometimes even three or four) would drop every week, and I tried to immerse myself in all of them. When I think back on it, things really started to get good around May, ostensibly with the release of Terminator X and the Valley of the Jeep Beats. However, barely a week later, I made way for a new release that had just as much staying power. Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing Chubb Rock’s The One.
Released 35 years ago, The One is a great and oft-overlooked album, just as Richard “Chubb Rock” Simpson is a great and oft-overlooked emcee. The career of the Jamaican born, Brooklyn-raised rapper stretches back to the mid to late 1980s, as he collaborated with his cousin and well-respected producer Howard “Hitman Howie Tee” Anthony Thompson (R.I.P.) to release albums worth of amazing music. The pair put together Chubb’s eponymous debut in 1988 as well as their follow-up And the Winner Is… (1989), before following it up with The One.
The One is the best album in his catalogue and one where he utilizes all of the weapons in his arsenal. He was known for his commanding stature on the mic, both in vocal tone and overall presence, closely mirroring his 6’3” (“maybe a quarter of an inch bigger”) height and imposing frame. As a lyricist he delivered complex styles with minimal effort, at times firing off waves of syllable-bending rhymes. He competently covered a wide array of subject matters, always knowing when to inject a little humor into the most serious tracks.
Hitman Howie Tee is about as underappreciated behind the boards as Chubb Rock is on the mic. Though he produced timeless jams for Whistle, The Real Roxanne, Special Ed, and Color Me Badd, he did much of his best work with his cousin. He had an ear for samples and could build tracks that were straightforward in their simplicity or heavily layered. His beats were soulful and hard-hitting, when necessary, but he knew how to slow things down to convey the groove. On this album, he brings in the then-fledgling Trackmasterz production team to help out a little, contributing production to a pair of tracks.
The One surfaced just months after the release of Treat ’Em Right (1990). The six-song extended play is best known for the title track, which is among Chubb’s signature songs and makes an appearance on The One. Rappers don’t make songs like “Treat ’Em Right” these days. For one thing, the track hits 116 BPM, which is anathema to most current rappers. It’s a high energy romp and a helluva dance floor track, as Howie Tee lifts the drums and bassline from Dee Felice Trio’s “Do You Remember the Time” and strings and vocals from First Choice’s “Love Thang.” With his four verses, Chubb pledges respect for others and encourages his fellow peers to interact respectfully with their fans.
“Treat ’Em Right” shows one of Chubb Rock’s underappreciated strengths: Though he is often regarded as a serious minded, skills-oriented emcee, he’s excellent at creating entertaining, crowd-pleasing music without dumbing down his lyrical content. Furthermore, his rhymes convey a wry, occasionally absurdist sense of humor, even when delivering more solemn content.
Chubb touches on a variety of topics throughout The One. He boasts about his lyrical ability on the album’s title track, but often his braggadocio-based songs offer more than ego-inflation. On the “The Chubbster,” the project’s first proper single, he urges his audience to follow his example by pursuing their ambitions, but to be responsible once they achieve success. He stresses the importance of staying grounded and avoiding the pursuit of empty material gains.
Listen to the Album:
“The Big Man” features Chubb detailing his history as an artist and laying out his future plans as an artist. He also throws a few lyrical haymakers with a tongue-twisting flow to a sample of Redd Holt Unlimited’s version of “Do It Baby.” “Bad Boyz” is much more low-key, with Howie Tee creating a reggae influenced atmosphere. Backed by dancehall artist/affiliate Robin Hood, Chubb delivers a winding stream of rhymes to layers of percussion and stuttering drums. “Chubb doesn't like to be hyper,” he raps. “I wait for my prey and then I react like a tiger.”
Reggae/dancehall influences are also apparent on “Just the Two of Us,” the album’s second single and overall best track. It’s also one of the better singles of the early 1990s, as Chubb and Howie Tee combine to record an ode to their unique chemistry when they collaborate. The song has a palpable sense of fun, with Chubb using a rolling delivery for each of his two verses. It’s also the best hip-hop track to sample Albert King’s “Cold Feet,” as Howie Tee uses the loop to create another highly danceable track.
“Enjoy Yourself,” Chubb’s other stab at a dance-oriented track, is decent enough. Chubb encourages his audience to cut loose and have a good time to a track the samples Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” and Sly and The Family Stone’s “Love City.” “Another Statistic” is a tale of infidelity, played for grim humor. Chubb describes his not-as-secret-as-it-should-be affair with a woman, who supplies him with goods and funds courtesy of her cuckhold boyfriend, before things take a deadly turn.
Chubb flexes his skill as a street reporter on the dense “The Night Scene.” He paints a foreboding picture of inner-city residents populating neighborhood street corners during the evening and early morning hours. Some are wracked with drug addiction, others selling their own bodies as a means of release, and still others are robbing and stealing as a means to put food on the table. The song plays like an even more dire and profane version of Prince’s “Sign o’ the Times.”
Though Chubb carries most of the rapping duties on his own throughout, he brings in some outside assistance on a pair of tracks. He’s joined by his extended crew on “The Five Deadly Venoms,” each rocking a verse to a rolling bassline. Road manager Rob Swinga and back-up dancer Hot Dog each deliver solid enough verses. The pair would go on to become two-thirds of The A.T.E.E.M., a Chubb Rock-affiliated offshoot crew that would drop the album Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich (1992).
“Bring ’Em Home Safely” is a posse cut built around a protest of the first Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm. The song was recorded during the “Desert Shield” build-up but wouldn’t be released until after the war was over. Still, the sentiments are in the right place, as Chubb and others voice their opposition to one of the first “war for oil” conflicts during the last four decades. Looking back, the track’s line-up is one of the oddest of the 1990s, as Chubb is joined by 3rd Bass, Red Hot Lover Lover Tone, Rockin’ Robin, and Danish rapper Lucas. Lucas would have a minor hit a few years later with “Lucas With the Lid Off,” while Tone would release a pair of albums and find even greater success as a member of the Trackmasterz production team (who co-produced two songs on The One). And Robin is now better known as The Lady of Rage, the fierce emcee who made her name with Death Row Records.
The One features other forays into social commentary, both of which were originally featured on the Treat ’Em Right EP. Chubb rails against South Africa’s apartheid regime on “What’s the Word,” assembling residents “from Brooklyn to Teaneck New Jersey” to get behind the then recently freed Nelson Mandela. “Organizer” is another full-throated call to action, as he works to rally the Black population against the oppressive US Government. Though the track is mostly serious, Chubb describing a potential race war in terms of an NBA game is a moment of levity.
Chubb ends the project with two more songs from the aforementioned EP, with both stressing the importance of respecting the building blocks of hip-hop culture. On the old school-flavored “Keep It Street” he encourages audience members and peers to respect and adhere to the foundational values of the music. Chubb then stresses the importance of mic skills on “The Regiments of Steel,” checking fake emcees who rely on gimmicks and dancing skills to achieve pop success. The Source awarded the song’s final verse the then-coveted “Rhyme of the Month” award, with Chubb foreseeing hip-hop’s domination of mainstream music as he raps, “The art was passed on from generation to generation / Developed in the mind cause the rhyme / The track is just a cosmetic background / Cause we all need some kind of sound.”
The One stayed in heavy rotation in my Walkman through the late spring and summer, even as De La Soul Is Dead and Mr. Hood found their way into my life. It’s an ideal album to play as the weather gets warmer, so it made sense that it got major play as the school year ended and summer began. I’ve revisited it often over the last three plus decades since that first late spring. I very much miss rappers with the ability to both educate the masses and have a blast enjoying life. When it came to basking in the glow of their success, few were better than Chubb Rock.
Listen: