Happy 15th Anniversary to People Under The Stairs’ seventh studio album Carried Away, originally released October 13, 2009.
I’ve made it no secret that People Under The Stairs is one of my favorite hip-hop groups ever. The Los Angeles-based duo of Chris “Thes One” Portugal and the late Michael “Double K” Turner made music together as a group for over two decades before eventually calling it quits in 2019. Before their retirement, they released nearly a dozen projects, many of them among my favorites of the ’00s and the ’10s.
While the group definitely favored rapping about certain subjects, like Los Angeles or smoking weed or barbecuing, their execution continually evolved and improved. Records by People Under the Stairs are among the best produced of the era, capturing a particular mood and feel. And when it came to rapping about the aforementioned preferred subject matter, the duo always found a way to make it sounds fresh each time out. Carried Away, PUTS’ seventh full-length, is no exception.
Carried Away came pretty soon on the heels of Fun DMC (2008). That album was about the joy that comes from the creation of music, while Carried Away is about the joy of having a good time. They celebrate partying hard throughout Carried Away, even making it an interactive experience—physical copies of the album include a board game-based drinking game, designed to get players blackout drunk.
The album is also centered on Thes One and Double K digging deep within their crates, mining increasingly obscure records and sample sources to create their beats. However, more than any of their other albums, Carried Away is an overt tribute to the group’s influences, and the music of the ’80s and ’90s. Underneath it all, there’s also a subtle stream of aggravation with the current state of hip-hop and a growing sense of discontent.
But much of the album centers on the group wilding out. “Trippin’ At the Disco,” the album’s first single, is powered by a disco heavy groove, complete with strings and soaring horns, as Thes and Double K pass the mic back and forth, keeping things fun for the crew’s most danceable song in their catalogue. While Thes One raps, “Last pint (Last night!) changed it all / You keep moving like your wedding night,” Double K proclaims, “Well, here’s a round of brandy, for those feeling randy / The P go with disco, like Marvin and Tammi.”
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The album’s second single “Beer” features the group wallowing in its drunken debauchery. Drawing its inspiration from early ’80s rap and Licensed To Ill era Beastie Boys, Thes and Double K romp through the track, boozing it up and throwing disses at Ed Hardy clothing, Twitter, and TMZ.
PUTS then indulge in some good smoke on “Come On Let’s Get High,” one of their best odes to blazing the cannabis that they recorded. Double K revels in “smelling like Otto’s jacket” and compares himself to “Nixon with the victory signs when I score.” Meanwhile, Thes marvels at smoking a blunt that’s like “Big Pun’s finger.” Double K ends the track by listing all the celebrities he can out-smoke, including Snoop Dogg, B-Legit, and Phish’s Trey Anastasio.
It wouldn’t be a PUTS album without multiple dedications to the crew’s place of birth. Both “80 Blocks To Silverlake” and “Down In LA” feature the pair chronicling the days in the life of a Southern California resident, rolling through neighborhoods and hitting up local spots. “80 Blocks…” is the slightly better of the two great songs, if for no other reason than it’s a tribute to The Beatnuts, a prominent influence for PUTS’ sound and personas. The keyboard-heavy groove, complete with cowbell accents, sounds like it could have been lifted from The Beatnuts’ Street Level (1994).
“Check The Vibe” is an homage to the music of A Tribe Called Quest. Although the organ-filled track most directly evokes “Check The Rhime,” Thes and Double K lace their rhymes with references to many of their other songs. For the hook, Double K shouts out many late ’80s/early ’90s popular cultural icons, from Arsenio Hall to Bo Jackson to Bart Simpson.
PUTS later pay respect to the works of Ice-T with the song “My Boy D.” The song chronicles a young man with dreams of being a basketball star who gets led astray into narcotics distribution after not receiving a sports scholarship. But like all these types of songs by Ice-T, it ends very badly for the young man.
Other songs are a bit ridiculous, but still entertaining. “Letter From The Old School” is a sequel to “Letter C/O The Bronx” from Fun DMC. In the first installment, Double K wrote a letter to the old school rappers of the early ’80s, asking them how they “rocked, shocked, and amazed.” For the sequel, Double K, doing his best Melle Mel and Duke Bootee impressions, writes back, sounding grumpy and not particularly appreciative for the correspondence. Thes One has said that the song was inspired by the group’s real rough interactions with various rappers from previous generations.
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“DQMOT” is Thes One’s rather silly solo track, with the rapper littering his rhyming with countless acronyms, goofing on the rampant use of abbreviations used on the Internet and through text, and the overall ludicrousness of online communication. It’s also the only hip-hop song that I know of that features a breakdown by the Keyboard Cat.
Though the group was a good 10 years away from deciding to call it a day and retire, you can hear a growing dissatisfaction from the duo in pockets of the album. On “Much Too Much,” the pair rhyme over a jazzy guitar groove about wilding out on the road, while lamenting hip-hop’s “fall from grace” during the decades since it first blew up. Double K raps, “I miss the early ’90s with too much Zapp / And for some reason all my heroes smoked too much crack.”
The group airs more of their grievances on “Listen,” with Double K expressing annoyance at some of the b.s. that the group endures while waiting to perform, while Thes gripes about the group’s fair-weather fans. He raps, “I walk around with a stupid look on my face / I’m wondering how I got so many friends on MySpace / And still we underground, under-paid, and stay down to rock a house party / Hardly sounds like anything’s changed since day one.”
Listening to “All Good Things,” which appeared on the vinyl version of the album, it’s a surprise that the group waited a decade to call it quits, because they sound seriously over the late ’00s incarnation of the hip-hop industry. Since the song samples Radiohead’s “Reckoner” and Faith No More’s “Epic,” it wasn’t available on most pressings of Carried Away, but it’s much more despondent than the vast majority of the group’s catalogue.
But for all the song’s bitterness, it perfectly captures the doubt and occasional despair that many underground/independent artists can experience while on their grind in the throes of the free downloadable reality for many fans. Thes decries a reality for hip-hop where “there’s progress but no direction,” as he raps, “They say, ‘We won’t buy you’re music, you’ll get paid at the show / The shitty motel 20 miles down the road / Is so cheap, there’s no sleep, there’s bugs in the sheets / There’s no soap, there’s no hope, music is free.”
But even with the lingering ill will, PUTS still end Carried Away on a positive note with the title track. Over an ethereal keyboard track, played by the Crown City Rockers’ Kat Ouano, Double K and Thes contemplate their legacies and the importance of the music in the lives of their listeners. Double K raps, “What we doing saved a lot of brothers lives / Including my own and 11 years you watched us grow / So to you, I tip the LA fitted / We still get it, like an outfielder.” While comparing the two of them to Muno & Brobee (of Yo Gabba Gabba), Thes One ponders, “So many friends gone, some alive / Most drift like a leaf in a strong breeze / Catch a lift on the memories, you uplift / The good times were a gift, even enemies seem to have a purpose.”
I’d like to hope that PUTS didn’t make too many enemies during their two-decade career. Regardless, Carried Away carried the group into its second decade of existence. They continued for another 10 years, releasing some of their best material. If anything, they began to take firmer control of their musical destinies, launching their own record label, where they were responsible for all aspects of their products’ release. Maybe that sense of jadedness that they were beginning to express on Carried Away inspired them to take total control of their careers. So while they continued to enjoy the party, this album taught them how to do so on their own terms.
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Editor's note: this anniversary tribute was originally published in 2019 and has since been edited for accuracy and timeliness.