Happy 25th Anniversary to DJ Muggs’ Muggs Presents... The Soul Assassins: Chapter I, originally released March 4, 1997.
Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud occupied a unique position during the early to mid-1990s. He was regarded as one of the best beatmakers around, earning his rep as the DJ/producer for Cypress Hill and the unofficial overlord of the Soul Assassins camp, which also included groups like House of Pain, Funkdoobiest, and Whooliganz.
But while these days most hot producers work with anyone and everyone who offers them a check, Muggs spent the beginning of his career keeping things close to the vest. He’d occasionally do spot production for artists outside his camp, but he spent most of his time creating the musical backdrops for his immediate crew.
This is why Muggs Presents... The Soul Assassins: Chapter I was a departure from Muggs’ frequent M.O. Over 12 tracks, he works with a mix of both established partners as well as artists from his professional wish-list. The album is remarkably dope, as Muggs shows abundant chemistry with all who grace his tracks. The project reportedly took two years to put together, as Muggs had to balance Cypress Hill’s extensive touring schedule as well as the schedules of possible collaborators. But the results demonstrate that the wait was worth it.
Muggs employs a different production style on Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 than the approach he had become known for. Albums like Cypress Hill (1991) and other Soul Assassins projects had been known for their mix of dusted soul and funk. On this compilation, he opts for decidedly darker, almost gothic sounds, utilizing samples of classical records. The shift doesn’t come completely out of left field, as Muggs had begun working with a darker palette on Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday (1993) and even more so on Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom (1995).
Furthermore, Muggs’ early 1990s production work was known for its Bomb Squad-like density and an almost palpable layer of grit that seemed to coat every track. His production on Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 isn’t necessarily “clean,” but he often utilizes a more austere approach. There’s still the knocking drum-breaks, but the tracks aren’t crowded. Though a couple of the entries here were originally intended as Cypress Hill tracks, overall they suit the wide of array of talent that Muggs gathered for this project.
Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 is best known for its lead-off single “Puppet Master,” a pairing featuring B-Real and Dr. Dre. The track was designed as a statement of dominance by Muggs and Dre, who were “controlling” the West Coast with their music, the super-producer and B-Real and Dre trading verses over the sinister piano-sample from Isaac Hayes’ “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic.” According to Muggs in an interview with Rap Pages, he originally created the beat for Snoop Dogg, but he had gotten caught up an increasingly ugly separation with Death Row Records, so it never came to be.
Bringing in Goodie Mob for “Decisions, Decisions” proves to be an astute move, as the group gives one of the best performances of its career. The track shows Muggs’ foray into minimalism, pairing a five-note harp sample with a neck-snapping drum break. All four members of the Atlanta-based collective are in a zone, pondering the choices that one has to make in order to survive. In particular, Cee-Lo reminds us why he was one of the best emcees are the era, delivering a winding marathon verse concerning the rise and fall of rappers who choose to compromise their values in order to achieve record sales. The effort earned him “Rhyme of the Month” in The Source.
Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 functions well when Muggs captures this sparse aesthetic. The musical simplicity featured on tracks like “Heavyweights” featuring MC Eiht and “It Could Happen To You” featuring Mobb Deep places increased emphasis on the lyrical performances. Eiht in particular is in rare form, forgoing his laid-back delivery in favor of bouncing his flow from bar to bar. Over muted piano and string samples, he asserts his dominant position, rapping, “For the money I do's the evilest things / Keeps my work going nicely to the happy fiends.”
The chaotic “Third World,” featuring Wu-Tang Clan artists GZA and RZA, is one of the album’s most interesting creations. Muggs creates sonic bedlam, as the two Wu members conduct a flat-out lyrical assault. GZA delivers one of the more underappreciated verses of his career, spitting armor-piercing rhymes through a drunken slur. “There’s no escaping, once my blade starts scraping,” he boasts. “N****s flaking, wannabe emcees is shaking / My sword indeed make more n****s bleed / So swift naked eye couldn’t record the speed.”
Meanwhile, RZA assumes the role of the field general, coordinating an all-assault against efforts by “Yakub” and “Dr. Titus” to conquer the United States. He also drops some venomous lines of his own, rapping, “Poisonous gas released from my track is odorless and tasteless / Like Ghost is face-less / Which allowed the God to break backs and beat a hundred cases / Emcees heads weave like trees, in a breeze to rhymes like these.”
The track transitions to “Battle of 2001,” where B-Real and Cypress Hill receive RZA’s urgent warning about the invading forces. In between snippets of vintage war films, a classical piano sample, and crashing snares, B-Real describes fighting valiantly, and ultimately futilely, on the Western Front in hopes of preventing themselves from being overrun. It’s an imaginative bit of storytelling that fits well into the flow of the album without halting its progress.
The Blastmaster KRS-One makes a solid statement on “Move Ahead.” He implores rappers to move beyond ridiculous coastal beefs and shallow subject matter in order to further the progress of hip-hop as an artform. “Chest-to-chest, lyrical confrontation is dope,” he raps. “For the hip-hop nation, yet our hope, your scope / Is broader than who can kill who and who got the biggest crew? / That's why Black people cannot seem to break through.”
Muggs also work with some up-and-coming artists on Soul Assassins: Chapter 1. Wu-Tang Clan disciple La the Darkman blesses “Devil With a Blue Dress,” bringing listeners on an “underworld mission,” threatening all those who cross him that he will “push rap spikes through your heart.” Call O’ Da Wild, a duo of emcees that came up under Muggs’ wing, contribute “New York Undercover,” a vivid look at the filthy underbelly that continued to thrive even as the city’s Disneyfication unrelentingly proceeded.
“New York Undercover” would unfortunately be among the last songs that Call O’ Da Wild released together. Though Muggs had helped the group get signed to Ruffhouse, the label shelved the crew’s completed album soon after Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 was released. The group broke up soon afterwards.
The compilation ends strong with “John 3:16,” featuring Muggs’ Ruffhouse labelmate Wyclef Jean. The song, technically Wyclef’s first solo endeavor, is a personal favorite. Wyclef fills his raps with a wide array of both mob and Biblical imagery, contemplating the purpose of crime and the nature of sin, flowing over a sample of Elton John’s “It’s Me That You Need.” The track serves as a progression of where Clef was as an emcee post-The Score and serves as an entrée to his debut solo album The Carnival (1997), which he’d release only months later.
It’s a shame that Muggs was not able to connect with Scarface at the time, who he’d originally hoped would appear on the project. Regardless, the project demonstrated how adaptable his production style was to a variety of emcees. In quite a few cases, Soul Assassins: Chapter 1 laid the groundwork for future partnerships between Muggs and artists who appeared on the album.
DJ Muggs would continue to release Soul Assassins-related compilations sporadically over the next decade-plus that followed, also handling spot production. By the mid ’00s, he began committing himself to team with one emcee and producing his/her album in its entirety. These days, he’s more prolific than he’s ever been, beginning his own modern production renaissance with Dia del Asesinato (2018). Since then, he’s helmed 15 more projects, compilations, and instrumental endeavors, including seven in 2021 alone.
But as much as Muggs sound has progressed in the last three decades, the seeds of his current production style can be found in Soul Assassins: Chapter 1. It shaped his path forward as much as his early works with Cypress Hill. It’s grim subject matter and production proved to be as timeless as the best of Muggs’ production masterpieces.
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