Happy 20th Anniversary to DJ Muggs & Soul Assassins’ second studio album Soul Assassins II, originally released October 3, 2000.
[Note: An authorized stream of Soul Assassins II is not currently available via major streaming platforms, hence the absence of embedded audio below.]
DJ Muggs is one of the most accomplished music producers in the industry, but most people outside of hip-hop have probably never even heard of him. The name might not be familiar to everybody, but I guarantee that everyone knows some of his music. House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and “Insane in the Brain” by Cypress Hill, of which DJ Muggs is a member, are both ubiquitous mega hits masterminded by the veteran producer, and there are plenty more.
Keen to branch out and nurture new talent, DJ Muggs created the Soul Assassins crew in the early ‘90s as a loose collective of artists in and around the Cypress Hill universe. The first album released under the brand, 1997’s Soul Assassins, Chapter 1, was fully produced by DJ Muggs and featured vocals from rappers across the full spectrum of hip-hop.
By the second Soul Assassins album, Soul Assassins II, DJ Muggs was happy to let some of the artists he had developed get a hand on the reins. Top of the class of DJ Muggs’ protégés was Alchemist. His name as a producer had already gathered some impressive clout by the time Soul Assassins II came out in 2000, but DJ Muggs had been mentoring him since the early ‘90s when Alchemist was just a teenager and one half of The Whooliganz, who toured with the Soul Assassins. DJ Muggs taught Alchemist how to use a sampler and ignited in him a passion for beatmaking that has since helped Alchemist grow to become one of rap music’s all-time best producers.
Alchemist’s contributions to Soul Assassins II include “Victory & Defeat” featuring vocals from Hostyle of the group Screwball. It’s standard stuff that didn’t yet reveal the full levels of creativity Alchemist would soon be known for, but it did showcase his skill at digging for samples from records others might have overlooked, like here where he takes a wailing sound from a 1970 Tom Jones song and flips it into something rugged and sinister. For “Suckers Are Hidin,” Alchemist brings though his crew Dilated Peoples, where Evidence and Rakaa Iriscience destroy the mic over an Alchemist beat that honors his mentor by sampling a line from another of DJ Muggs’ most famous songs, Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man.”
Aside from the Alchemist production and the one beat from DJ Khalil (“Millennium Thrust”), the rest of Soul Assassins II is all produced by DJ Muggs himself, and he’s fully in control. DJ Muggs has an incredible range that allows him to make music to fit every type of emcee: from hard, New York street rappers like Kool G Rap (“Real Life”) and Godfather Pt. III (“We Will Survive”) to artists from the west coast with varied and unique styles, including King T and Xzibit (“You Better Believe It”), Kurupt (“When The Pain Inflict”) and Krondon and Ras Kass (“Heart of the Assassin”). He even ventures to the dirty south to Atlanta on “This Some’n To” where DJ Muggs provides Goodie Mob with a simple but effective string-based soundtrack over which to drop their distinctive southern slang. DJ Muggs gels particularly well with Wu-Tang Clan wordsmith the GZA, and his appearance on “When The Fat Lady Sings” laid the groundwork for a Muggs x GZA full-length project, 2005’s very good Grandmasters album.
Elsewhere on Soul Assassins II, DJ Muggs reconnects with some old friends. “Don’t Trip” is a Cypress Hill song, where B-Real does what he does best and reminds us that few other rappers know how to work a DJ Muggs beat like he does. For “Razor to Your Throat,” DJ Muggs features guest raps from Everlast. It’s an understandably different sound to the work they did together with House of Pain years before, but despite Soul Assassins II being recorded while Everlast was still fresh off the success of Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, he proved on “Razor to Your Throat” that he could still rip a mic.
DJ Muggs relinquished more creative control to Alchemist and other producers on the next, and thus far last, Soul Assassins album, 2009’s Soul Assassins: Intermission. Today DJ Muggs is enjoying one of the most prolific and creatively fertile periods of his career, creating music for artists like Roc Marciano and a new generation of emcees cut from Marciano’s cloth. His sound today is stripped down and sparse compared to the rambunctious, drum-heavy boom bap of his ‘90s output, but it’s still just as powerful.
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