Happy 30th Anniversary to Too $hort’s sixth studio album Short Dog’s In The House, originally released September 11, 1990.
It can be a challenge for a rapper to make the transition from hometown hero to national superstar. Record labels often decide what worked on a “local” level won’t properly translate when you try to appeal to a wider audience. Todd “Too $hort” Shaw is one of the cases where the record label got it right be leaving well enough alone.
In the late ’80s, Jive Records signed Too $hort after he made some serious noise in the Bay Area, creating its scene and defining its early sound. He sold tapes out of his car, featuring tracks with bass heavy slaps and dirty raps delivered with an undeniable panache. He became infamous for songs like “Invasion of the Flat Booty Bitches” and “Freaky Tales.” Fortunately, Jive figured out that it was best not to mess with success and allowed Too $hort to be himself. The record sales and the accolades followed.
One of $hort’s important steps to national super-stardom was Short Dog’s In The House. Released 30 years ago, it was his sixth album, but technically only his third to secure national distribution. In my opinion, it’s also his best.
Short Dog’s In The House was the first album that Too $hort specifically recorded for Jive. The label re-issued Born To Mack (1987) and Life Is… Too $hort (1989) worldwide after signing the Oakland hero, and both long players had moved a lot of units, eventually going platinum and double platinum respectively.
Too $hort certainly doesn’t change his style up throughout the album. Yes, occasionally he branches out a bit in terms of subject matter, and at other times adopts what was considered a traditional “West Coast” sound in the early 1990s. However, $hort’s city of residence shines through on every track, making this still very much an Oakland album through and through.
Too $hort certainly sounds like he’s having a blast. With the exception of a few “serious” detours, he basks in his success, refusing to compromise his style. It’s probably his most outright “funny” album, as $hort Dog’s sense of humor is intrinsic to his character.
Musically, $hort Dog assumes most of the production duties himself, at times enlisting long-time producer Al Eaton, as well as other studio collaborators like Pierre James and Keenan Foster. He also works with Sir Jinx and DJ Pooh, two of the best Los Angeles-based producers working at the time.
This was also the last Too $hort album that was divided into “clean” and “dirty” halves. As had been always been the case up to this point, the first side of the album hosts the more radio-friendly material, while $hort saves his unique brand of XXX-rated rap for the back half. $hort doesn’t quite keep as strict to the division this time around: a couple of sexual references and curse words slip into some of the songs on Side A.
The title track, which opens the album, is sonically different than anything Short Dog had released before, but still feels like a quintessential Too $hort song. It’s anchored by an infectious and almost circus-like keyboard groove, bolstered by a funk-soaked guitar-riff and thumping drums. The song is one of the best and most overlooked songs about touring, as $hort Dog dedicates the track to describing his exploits touring across the nation, be it in a tour bus or a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham.
He celebrates his transition into a “nationwide” artist by not only shouting out cities within his state of birth, but also destinations in the South and Midwest that showed him love. However, always in true Too $hort fashion, he makes sure to throw a little shade at his groupies who get too attached. “I said ‘I love you’ cause you gave me head,” he raps. “I didn’t love you when we got out the bed / If I could love you, you know I would / But what you’re giving, it ain’t all that good.”
“Short But Funky,” the album’s second single, is a “PG-rated” introduction to Too $hort for those who might not have been familiar with him. Short’s struts over the stripped-down beat, with its bumping basslines, minimalist drums, and ethereal vocal samples. It serves as a basic entrée into Too $hort’s personality, as he delivers straightforward raps about his rise to prominence.
Perhaps influenced by label-mates Boogie Down Productions (the “Stop the Violence” imprint appears on the album’s back cover) and by the dire situations in inner cities across the country due to the crack epidemic, $hort delivers a pair of “socially responsible” tracks. On “It’s Your Life,” $hort directly addresses street hustlers and dealers, encouraging them to find an alternate way of making their living. He never talks at his target audience, but points to the perils of their chosen lifestyle in hopes of steering them away from illegal activities. Through strains of Parliament’s “Dr. Funkenstein,” he raps, “How you make it, it doesn't matter to me / Work at McDonald’s or just slang them ki’s / Or you can be like me and go straight legit / Drive a brand-new Benz and they can't say shit.” Nearly a year later, the song would appear on the Boyz N The Hood soundtrack (1991).
Short Dog’s In The House’s first single, “The Ghetto,” is an even stronger statement. Drawing musical inspiration from Donny Hathaway’s mostly instrumental song of the same name, $hort describes the urban blights that exist in inner cities throughout the country, wracked with death and despair due to the proliferation of crack cocaine. He paints a grim picture of life in the ghettoes of Oakland, where “the streets are bumpy, lights burned out / Dope fiends die with a pipe in their mouth.” Thoughts of death and survival haunt his psyche as he raps, “There's only one rule in the real world / And that's to take care of you, only you and yours.” He later lambasts how the city of Oakland favors a new stadium for the Raiders over the lives of its residents, rapping, “$600 million on a football team, and her baby died just like a dope fiend.” $hort has never been known primarily for his incisive critique of social issues, but it’s certainly impressive to hear him rap with such sharp insight.
After such a heavy entry, the lighthearted “In The Oaktown” is a welcome change of pace. The bouncy, keyboard and synth-driven song seems tailor-made to be bumped on summer days while riding around Oakland’s Lake Merritt. $hort Dog tackles what he perceives to be the continued disrespect of himself as a rapper. “Now could you be like me I hate to say, he raps. “It's like comparing Mickey D’s and Kwik Way / You only got 3 stores I got the whole wide world / I get beeps every day from your favorite girl.” He also dismisses those who didn’t take the West Coast seriously as a region for hip-hop music. “Some people say they don’t like Cali raps,” he declares. “People like that must be smoking that crack.”
“Dead Or Alive” was inspired by false rumors of Too $hort’s demise. During 1989/early 1990, rumors swirled that he’d been shot in the head after entering a crack house. In the pre-Internet days, there wasn’t an easy or quick way to debunk the rumor (besides it not being reported in any publication), so some Oakland residents took it for fact. I personally remember a girl in summer camp absolutely insisting that he had been killed, which I scoffed at with great incredulity.
For what it’s worth, $hort spends the song marveling at the ridiculousness of the rumor. He cracks jokes over sampled portions of Parliament’s “Aqua Boogie,” rapping “I'm not Casper, I mack all the ghosts” and “I bring a new meaning to ‘underground rap.’” The song does go on a bit too long (and is largely one note); at times $hort sounds like he’s freestyling in order to stretch things out.
As mentioned earlier, $hort gets suitably dirty on the album’s second half. He again somehow manages to straddle the line between kicking some of most offensive lyrics imaginable without sounding offensive. It may not be the most “enlightened” material, but everything on the B-side of Short Dog’s In The House sounds so fun that it’s impossible for me to disparage. For example, on “Punk Bitch,” $hort details his exploits with an extremely sexually promiscuous women from the neighborhood. At one point, he boasts about banging both the girl and her mother simultaneously, and I’m sorry, but $hort declaring that he’s “now the step-daddy and the son-in-law” is objectively hilarious.
On “Ain’t Nothin’ But A Word To Me,” Too $hort is joined by Ice Cube to deliver an extensive lyrical dissertation on the word “bitch.” Both certainly were known for their extensive use of the expletive on their records, making this song a collaboration of musical titans of a sort. Though it would be absolutely impossible to record this song today, it’s still an all-time great recording. $hort and Cube sound like they’re having a blast “spitting games to you mark-ass lames,” trading verses as they explain their many interpretations of the term. I’ve sung along with Cube calling someone a “straggler, struggler, straight salami smuggler” more times than I can count. And watching a joint performance of the song at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Center near the end of 1990 is one of my all-time favorite concert experiences.
The DJ Pooh-produced “Paula and Janet” is another sonically unique entry into $hort’s discography. The production is dense and busy, featuring a mash of vibraphones, horns, and guitars, as it mixes samples from Stanley Turrentine’s “Sister Sanctified” with the Chicago Gangster’s “Gangster Boogie” break. But in terms of subject matter, $hort Dog is in familiar territory, as the song is probably the most explicit entry on the album.
I’d guess “Paula and Janet” also has the maximum allowable amount of filth per minute. It’s the shortest song on the album by far (barely over two-and-a-half minutes in length), but it packs enough raunch in its brief run-time than most tracks could do in triple the duration. $hort delivers XXX-rated tales of his storied exploits with a pair of groupies. It’s certainly not a coincidence that the two women share the same name of two of the biggest pop singers at the time (Ms. Abdul and Ms. Jackson).
The leisurely, synth-driven and self-produced “Pimpology” features Too $hort kicking game about the Pimp lifestyle. A tribute to The Mack (a legendary 1970s Blaxploitation film set in Oakland), the song finds $hort Dog educating listeners about the pimping game, breaking down the “rules” step by step. “Hard On The Boulevard” is another self-produced entry, but has a darker more sinister feel. Over a slowed-down replaying of Ohio Players’ “Fopp,” $hort recreates the atmosphere of rolling in his Mercedes Benz down the sunny streets of Oakland, surrounded by fine women and vintage El Dorados and Maseratis.
The album ends with “Rap Like Me,” which plays like a slower, longer, and dirtier version of “Rhymes” from Life Is… Too Short. The song is over seven-and-a-half minutes of Too $hort talking shit, possibly freestyling at times. Battle raps have never exactly been his strongest suit, but there’s still an undeniable simple poetry in boasts like “Until you learn to speak, realize you're weak” and “Rappers like me make real hits / Rappers like you talk bullshit.” Later he raps, “Emcees like you, I've seen ’em before / You keep on saying ‘Fuck Too $hort!’ / But I’m a better emcee than you / And ain’t a damn thing you can do, but bitch.” He kicks the lines with such laid-back authority and conviction that I can’t help but smile.
Too $hort’s career has been defined by enjoying the spoils of the game while unflinchingly being himself, and Short Dog’s In The House is very much an album in that mold. It was another critical and commercial triumph for Too $hort, going platinum. It’s success certainly encouraged Too $hort to keep being himself, celebrating Oakland with every subsequent release, and always letting the word “bitch” escape his lips. It just wouldn’t feel right otherwise.
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