Happy 30th Anniversary to Freddie Foxxx’s debut album Freddie Foxxx Is Here, originally released October 31, 1989.
For all the big talk in hip-hop, there aren’t many rappers genuinely as tough as Freddie Foxxx (a.k.a. Bumpy Knuckles). His appearance on several ‘90s boom bap classics and his 2000 album Industry Shakedown assured the Long Island emcee’s reputation as someone not to be fucked with on the mic, and definitely not in the streets.
I’ve therefore often wondered if Freddie Foxxx looks back at his 1989 debut album Freddie Foxxx Is Here with some embarrassment. Not because it is a bad album. It isn’t. But it is vastly different to what came later from the same man who spit that vicious verse on Gang Starr’s “The Militia” and who, according to DJ Premier, would sometimes record verses while toting guns in the recording booth.
For instance, Freddie Foxxx Is Here includes “Forever,” a syrupy love song that has Foxxx cuddling up to his woman and writing her romantic letters. To be fair to Foxxx, “Forever” was probably a record label demand at a time when, thanks to the success of LL Cool J’s “I Need Love” in 1987, it was obligatory for even the most hardened rapper to include a love song on their album.
Plus, Freddie Foxxx Is Here also includes a satirical love song, “The Ladies Jam.” In a similar fashion to how The Beautiful South subverted the romantic pop ballad with “Song For Whoever” in the same year as Freddie Foxxx Is Here, “The Ladies Jam” cynically addresses the need to even have a song “for the ladies.” Side note: The fact that I just compared a song by hardcore rapper Freddie Foxxx to one written by a couple of middle-class white men from northern England is in itself further proof of how different Freddie Foxxx Is Here is to Foxxx’s ‘90s material.
Away from the love songs there is actually a lot on Freddie Foxxx Is Here that is hard, notably the opening track, “The Master.” There’s lots of suggested violence and street mentality here, with Foxxx offering up some imaginative ways in which he’ll take revenge on anyone who disrespects or tries to challenge him on the mic. It’s classic rap braggadocios posturing and most of the album’s second half follows a very similar format.
The liner notes of Freddie Foxxx Is Here reveal production credits for one Eric Barrier a.k.a. Eric B., a.k.a. one half of the iconic duo Eric B. & Rakim. It has since been disputed what, if anything, Eric B. actually contributed to the production of the classic albums he and Rakim released. Freddie Foxxx has himself stated it was in fact he who produced Freddie Foxxx Is Here, again questioning the validity of Eric B.’s production credentials.
In all honesty, it’s a surprise that either would want to chase the credit because the production on Freddie Foxxx Is Here isn’t great. If it was Eric B. that made the beats on Freddie Foxxx Is Here, they are nowhere near to the same standard as anything he claimed to have produced for Rakim on the albums they released before and after Freddie Foxxx Is Here. If it was indeed Freddie Foxxx who produced the record, we should be thankful he decided to focus the rest of his career on rapping.
Foxxx’s transition to the much more harder-edged emcee we know today began in the early ‘90s with featured appearances on records by Kool G Rap, Boogie Down Productions and more, and fully manifested towards the end of the decade on songs with O.C., Gang Starr and M.O.P. He kicked off the new millennium with the release of Industry Shakedown under the Bumpy Knuckles name, essentially making it his second debut album. Foxxx still produced a lot of this album himself, but contributions from DJ Premier, Alchemist, Diamond D and Pete Rock completed the sound that fans of the ‘90s Freddie Foxxx were now accustomed to.
Freddie Foxxx Is Here is now filed in the annals of rap history alongside Mobb Deep’s Juvenile Hell, Prince Rakeem’s Ooh, I Love You, Rakeem and The Genius’ Words from the Genius as forgettable debut albums by artists who afterwards went on to reinvent themselves and finally find their feet.
In 2019 you can find the seasoned rhyme vet dropping jewels of industry wisdom on Twitter, and still sometimes making quality music.