Happy 25th Anniversary to Naughty By Nature’s fourth studio album Poverty’s Paradise, originally released May 30, 1995.
I absolutely fucking loved Naughty By Nature for at least the first half of the 1990s, “Hip Hop Hooray” being one of the pivotal songs that got me into rap music in the first place circa 1992. They had it all at the time: fun, commercial crossover jams, rowdy club anthems, and rugged and raw album cuts. The baseball bat logo and chainsaw-wielding album covers made them look menacing, and indeed they were, but they also had enough style to appeal to every other demographic. Rita Wilson’s recent lockdown viral video doing “Hip Hop Hooray” karaoke proves this point nicely.
Naughty By Nature’s leader, Anthony “Treach” Criss, was (and still is) a powerhouse emcee with a speedy flow and sharp writing skills. His partner, Vincent “Vin Rock” Brown, while not as technical as Treach, was still great on the mic. In Keir “Kay Gee” Gist the group also had one of the best producers of the nineties. Together they made a formidable team that put out two very good albums in the early ‘90s: their self-titled breakthrough LP in 1991 (actually their second album if you include 1989’s little-remembered Independent Leaders, released under the name The New Style), and 1993’s 19 Naughty III.
1995’s Poverty’s Paradise arrived at a moment when east coast hip-hop had entered a grittier phase, when Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep and the Wu-Tang Clan were championing darker, wintery street-level music that sounded quite different to what you’d typically find on a Naughty By Nature record. The group responded with the single “Craziest,” in my view one of the greatest rap records of all time. Over a thick, head-nodding instrumental from Kay Gee, Treach and Vin Rock created an anthemic tribute to ghettos across America, with a video very far removed from the light-hearted hijinks of some older Naughty By Nature promos. Oh, and if anyone has ever wondered who Treach was talking about with this “Craziest” line: “I’m hitting Jermaine in Atlanta because he owes me loot for the Jump shit,” that would be famed producer Jermaine Dupri, who Treach claimed never paid him for writing work on a certain very popular Kris Kross song.
This is not to say that Poverty’s Paradise doesn’t have plenty of party moments, like the popular singles “Feel Me Flow” and “Clap Yo Hands.” Never one to shy away from using very well-known sample material—Naughty By Nature’s biggest hit “O.P.P.” uses elements of The Jackson 5’s “ABC”—Kay Gee does it again here for some of the lighter-weight tracks on Poverty’s Paradise. “Sunshine” samples Roy Ayers’ “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” for instance, while “Slang Bang” takes from Minnie Riperton’s “Inside My Love.” It works every time though, because Kay Gee’s ability to flip very familiar samples often borders on genius, and his production deserves to be held in the same high regard shown to his ‘90s peers.
A highlight on Poverty’s Paradise I remember being particularly fascinated by is “Chain Remains.” Treach takes this one solo and unloads with some of his best writing, with three dense verses about the prison system, the disproportionate number of black men caught up in it, and the parallels between that and the slave trade. What captivated me most when I listed to this song over and over again as a 14-year-old kid in the UK, were the vocal clips of real prisoners doing long stretches in prisons on the other side of the world from my safe, comfy bedroom. Some of their release dates seemed like the distant future at the time, and even now when I revisit “Chain Remains,” it makes me wonder about what became of Mook Daddy, Jay Boogie, Big J, Lil Steve, Lil Parris and the other men included in the song.
The album ends on a bit of confusing note. First, we get “Shout Out,” which is essentially a performed version of a liner notes special thanks section. It rambles, and the album should have ended here, but instead we then get “Outro” (back when they were a thing). But then we get another full song. Fortunately, this last track (“Connections”) is a decent posse cut featuring various artists Naughty By Nature were trying to develop.
Poverty’s Paradise proved to be the last truly great album Naughty By Nature have dropped so far. More albums came after, including some without any contribution at all from Kay Gee, but they are lackluster, relative to the group’s early to mid ‘90s fare. The group still tours on the rap legends circuit, maintaining a legacy on the strength of nostalgia we all feel for hits like “O.P.P.” and “Hip Hop Hooray.”
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