THE HARD 10: #1 Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

THE HARD 10: #2 Nas – Illmatic (1994)

THE HARD 10: #3 Iggy and the Stooges – Raw Power (1973)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.

The mark of a truly hard album is not just how unapologetically transgressive it is, but by how many imitators attempt to replicate its sound and fury. By that (and any other) measure, Iggy and the Stooges‘ seminal 1973 album Raw Power is one of the hardest records to ever grace vinyl.

Iggy Pop, nee James Newell Osterberg, Jr., may be on the Golden Years side of 60 now, but he was 26 years old when Raw Power was recorded and released. Under the wing of Ziggy-era David Bowie, Iggy and the Stooges (James Williamson and brothers Scott and Ron Asheton) were able to finish the album in under a month. Iggy will go down in history as a frontman without equal: he invented the stage dive, would alternately expose and cut himself, and was vicious with the audience.

In eight songs and little more than half an hour, the Stooges changed the course of rock music, with every punk, metal head, and alternative rocker paying tribute to Raw Power in some way. On it’s face, it meets the criteria for a hard album: Iggy’s lyrics are pure sex, drugs, and rock n roll – not the spandex-bound hair and makeup variety of the 80s – but the wake-up-with-a-needle-in-your-arm variety. Iggy’s drug use is so noted that it’s somewhere between cliche and myth, but one look at the glammed-out, pouting Godfather of Punk in his sinewy glory and you know there’s real darkness below the black eyeliner. And the music? Hard as it comes: riffs and solos that still sound vital, bass and drums that rumble like ominous clouds on the horizon.

Raw Power opens with one of the most memorable songs in rock music: Search and Destroy. Taking its name from one of the more brutal Vietnam War techniques, “Search and Destroy” starts strong and doesn’t stop. “I’m a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm / I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb,” Iggy sneers. Wave after wave of fuzzed out guitars and squealing licks are the perfect soundtrack for mayhem (a point proven by Wes Anderson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou).

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If “Search and Destroy” is the soundtrack for mayhem, songs like “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell,” “Penetration,” and “Shake Appeal” are the soundtrack for a night of hatefucking. “A pretty face and a dirty love / I knew right away that i’d have to get my hooks in you.” “I’ll stick it out, babe, I’ll stick it out / I’ll be all fine, every time, penetrate.” “Shake appeal / baby fits so tight / shake appeal / baby with your fists so tight.” Obviously, lyrics have gotten more explicit over time, but sometimes implying something is more dangerous and sexual than just flat out saying it. The way Iggy groans and moans on “Penetration” would make Lil’ Kim blush. Raw Power was released once the shine of the Summer of Love had worn off. This isn’t love; it’s lust, down and dirty.

Even the record label-mandated ballads are dark: no quarter given or asked. “Gimme Danger” turns down the distortion but keeps chugging along, building to a crescendo as Iggy croons: “Gimme danger little stranger / And I feel your disease / There’s nothing in my dreams / Just some ugly memories.” The garage blues of “I Need Somebody” are the backdrop for Iggy’s gnarled, twisted plea for somebody, anybody, to roll around in the muck with. Wonder if Marilyn Manson listened to this record?

The timelessness of Raw Power is constantly surprising. I could listen to the opening riff of “Death Trip” on infinite repeat; it wouldn’t be out of place on hard rock records in any decade since it was originally captured. The same can be said of the stuttering guitar and finger-in-the-eye piano on the title track. Sonically and emotionally abrasive music doesn’t go out of style.

While the band would dissolve two years after releasing Raw Power, they helped define hard for everyone from the Clash to Kurt Cobain. Fittingly, their last show (until a reunion 25 years later) involved getting in a fight with an audience full of bikers; Iggy taunted the crowd with “you can suck my ass / You biker faggot sissies,” sung to the tune of “Louie Louie.” Now that’s hard.

THE HARD 10: #4 NWA – Straight Outta Compton (1988)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.


“You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.” – Eazy E



With such a simple statement, the Compton, CA sextet rhyme syndicate revolutionized the nature of evil, hatred and pure violence in music. Hard lyrics of hard times borne from a frustration with the nature of living (and dying) in the gang and crime ravaged area of South Central LA were their calling card, and by opening the eyes of the universe to just how difficult it is to succeed when the morose nature of life crushes you, they became one of the hardest groups of all time. Their national debut album Straight Outta Compton makes no apologies, tells no lies and presents facts as true, real and as hard as the individuals reciting them. The principal elements on this record, in many ways literally just by being on this record alone, became instantaneous legends and icons of the hardcore street mentality. Dr. Dre, Eazy E, Ice Cube, The D.O.C., Arabian Prince, DJ Yella and MC Ren are all in the pantheon of hip hop, all because of the anthem of virulent angst this album has become in antiquity.


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Clocking in at 60 minutes, it only takes the album 15 to literally offend pretty much any person who would consider themselves right wing, non violent, conservative, white, or racist. In “Straight Outta Compton,” “Gangsta Gangsta” and “Fuck tha Police,” the message is clear. Like Howard Beale’s character in the film Network, the group’s “mad as hell, and not gonna take it anymore!” When Ice Cube kicks off album opener “Straight Outta Compton” with “Straight outta Compton/ a crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube/From the gang called Niggaz With Attitudes/When I’m called off I got a sawed off/Squeeze the trigger and bodies are hauled off,” you know that this is going to be raw, real and unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. Ice Cube really is the standout lyricist of the group, and further sets himself ahead of the pack with his gritty, urban portrayals in “Fuck tha Police” when he says, “Fuck tha police comin straight from the underground/a young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown/I’m not the other color so police think/They have the authority to kill a minority.” The vitriolic rhyme spree doesn’t end there, as on “Gangsta Gangsta,” Cube strikes again with “Here’s a little somethin’ bout a nigga like me/never shoulda been let out the penitentiary/Ice Cube would like to say/That I’m a crazy mutha fucka from around the way/Since I was a youth I smoked weed out/Now I’m the mutha fucka that ya read about/Takin’ a life or two/that’s what the hell I do/you don’t like how I’m livin well fuck you!” 


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It’s as if Ice Cube opens a lyrical can of whoop ass on society and everyone else in the group follows suit. Dr. Dre and DJ Yella come through in spades on the production tip creating a wall of epic sound for the album to be displayed upon. Dre’s classic soul samples and deft scratches of  DJ Yella couch the ultra antagonistic threats, hyper masochistic misogyny, braggadocio and bravado on the album. Eazy E is literally the “nigga America loves to hate,” his staccato and extremely nasal flow making him a star by having him be the most annoying frontman of a gang ever, but the guy you in no way want to aggravate as he’s absolutely backed by enough muscle to lyrically wipe out an entire city block. The gun toting and gun waving and aggressive stance of the group offended many, which at the same time made them pop cultural icons. Tipper Gore’s Parents Media Research Council pounced on NWA’s content, finding it to be vile filth that would poison the minds of America’s youth, whereas NWA always advocated they were just presenting the truth of their existence.



This hotly debated and groundbreaking rap album hit #37 on the Billboard Album chart and #9 on the rap charts in an era where Heavy D and the Boyz’s house flavored tunes and hard, but not overtly violent East coast hip hop was the expectation. Somewhere between the earnestness of and hysteria caused by the content on the album, it opened doors for rap music in the cultural and political mainstream that were absolutely necessary. Sometimes to make a step forward, someone has to take a fall. Unfortunately, NWA took that fall. Due to contractual issues, Ice Cube, the man most responsible for ALL of the lyrical content of the album left NWA after the record. The drop off is obvious as the insightful precision and politicized nature of the group left with him, and in subsequent releases that definitely did hit #1 on both the mainstream and rap charts, the collective was arguably not as gifted or potent, but achieved success due to the expectations set by Straight Outta Compton.


In final, the unrepentant truth of the expression of NWA is what makes this album SO hard. Possibly never again in hip hop will grit, grime and retribution have such a real and important voice, unafraid of the consequences of honesty. As Dr. Dre says to open “Express Yourself,” “I’m expressin’ with my full capabilities/And now I’m livin’ in correctional facilities/Cause some don’t agree with how I do this/I get straight, meditate like a Buddhist/I’m droppin’ flava, my behaviour is hereditary/But my technique is very necessary/Blame it on Ice Cube… Because he says it gets funky/When you got a subject and a predicate.”

THE HARD 10: #5 Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury (2007)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.

Virginia isn’t for lovers, it’s for hustlers – Clipse is proof. Malice and Pusha T’s babyfaces mask two of the bluntest minds and model two of the most cold-blooded mouths in the game. Hell hath no fury like a kingpin’s scorn, and Hell Hath No Fury is these kingpins’ scorn.

The Neptunes trademark intergalactic beats are the soft Cavalli furs to the Thornton brother’s hard Pyrex stirred product. Steel drums, Moet chimes, handclaps, are as much a backdrop of the album as the grunts, off-beat bass, and requiem-esque strings. Tracks like Wamp, Wamp (What It Do) and Mr. Me Too lyrically play off the proverbial “sweet” life of a Coke king “We don’t chase a duck, we only raise the bucks. Peel money rolls until our thumbs get the papercuts. Children totto, South Beach Gallardo Teals started up, go brr like it’s Nardo,” over tropical Caribbean beats. As any dope boy knows though: it’s Cocaine in the sweets, but Crack in the streets and Clipse brings the South Beach suites to street status on the sophomore release too.


The Clipse let you know full well that they grip the Gallardo grain in the gutter as much as they do in South Beach. Hard is hustling Rock at an age where your peers are still sucking on Rock Candy: “I listen to the beat, and the rhyme is wrote. See, I was 16, eyes full of hope. Bagging up grams at the higher dough. The news called it crack, I called it Diet Coke (Oh!)” Again, The Neptunes back the banter with solid beats – macabre bass heavier than the weight Malice and T push across state lines, so deep it envelops whole tracks.

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Like White Pony dove into the darkest parts of “love” to twist perception, Clipse’s Hell Hath is as much a street anthem as it is a soundtrack for Virgina’s lovers slogan. The Thorntons can take or leave women: “Keys in the floor, mistress in Dior; Bitch tell me she love me, but I know she’s a whore,” because Kis will forever hold the keys to Clipse’s hearts: “Bitch never cook my coke! Why? Never trust a ho with your child.” Keys open doors. That’s real talk. Virginia is for lovers – and Clipse loves the hustle. Lil’ Wayne goes hard when he wants, but people get hooked on his clever wordplay. Most southern rappers are witty wordsmiths, whereas most east coast rappers are as blunt as a Philly wrap – classic style versus substance. Clipse has the best of both worlds settling in the Mid-Atlantic, for all of their quick witted lines about the high life, they have stark stances on the dark heat of a hellacious urban environment: “The judge is sayin’ life like it ain’t someone’s life.”


At the end of the day Hell Hath No Fury comes hardest as a package, as opposed to individual tracks – like a brick to a ball. The hardest part of the album is that nothing escapes the ominous overcast of a nightmare veiled as a dream – which is the story of their lives. What is success? What is failure? The penthouse ends are only as glorious as their gutter Pyrex means: “The cars is big, the cribs is bigger. The kids are happy, the perfect picture/ Gem Star razor, the fruit of my labor/ And I walk with a glow, it’s like the Lord’s shown favor/ These bitches fake like the hoes on Flavor/ But I don’t mind spending, all it is is paper! Yes!”


A diamond is only coal with decades worth of pressure; crack is just cocaine with water and baking soda. Value is dependent on perceived worth – Clipse comes hard with Hell Hath because from the corner to the crown the most valued entity hasn’t created anything but a crop of paper gangstas.

The HARD 10: #6 Deftones – White Pony (2000)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.

Y’know what’s hard? School. Chino Moreno, Chi Cheng, Abe Cunningham, Stephen Carpenter, and DJ Frank Delgado – better known as Deftones – took Mean Girls to the Metal place 2000 with their epic White Pony. Who could’ve guessed that the boys from SoCal could be SoCold. White Pony soundtracks the bully, the bullied, burnout, the heartbreaker, and the heartbroken; difficult: maybe, hard: definitely.

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Ah, school daze… “So run… Right… Right back to school. Look back I sift through all the cliques. Roaming the halls all year making me sick. While everyone’s out trying to make the cut. What. When you think you know me, right, I switch it up. Cause back in school, we are the leaders of all.” White Pony is the proverbial black sheep in the pasture – sandbox, rather – of lions and lambs.

From Nelson Muntz to Marshall Mathers the Tones went to the depths – beyond darkness – of crazy… deranged with tracks like “Feiticiera,” “Touch the machine new murderer. First untie me, untie me for now. You said you would, right? And you were right. (soon I’ll let you go) Soon this will be all over. Well I hope soon; she sang, so she sang. (soon I’ll let you go).”

White Pony’s sonic aesthetic is the hardest core of the rock. Guitars, heavy bass, stiff snare to the point of lyrical inaudibility; the album reinforces distortion – from vocalizations to expressed vantages. The polarity of that darkness is the deep soul that under rides the entire project. The same group that brought the oft-slept on but uncannily on-point “No Ordinary Love” Sade cover, is the same group that brings you, “I’ll steal a carcass for you, then feed off the virus; cause you’re my girl, and that’s alright. If you sting me, I won’t mind.” The love is anything but ordinary, and the romance is worlds worst than bad – not only do they want the ugly and disease, they feed off of it.

A tracklisting that spans from “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” and “Teenager,” to “Street Carp” and “RX Queen” – because when life and love get as hard as the Deftones make it, the hardest girls become little pill-poppin’ princesses – White Pony comes across through the thematic demeanor of Graduation with the macabre delivery and gilded Stepford subtext of American Beauty. As no social-scholastic career is complete without a rager, welcome to White Pony’s get-together: “Knife Prty,” “My knife it’s sharp and chrome, Come see inside my bones. All of the fiends are on the block. I’m the new king, I taste the queen; In here we are all anemic, in here anemic and sweet.” Literally, Mean Girls gone metallic. Life is hard, love is rough; when you need a release: “Go get your knife and come in; go get your knife and lay down.” That’s my kind of party – then again, I party like I embrace music like I live like I work: so HARD.

THE HARD 10: #7 Lil Kim – Hard Core (1996)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.
 

4’11” Kimberly Jones from Brooklyn, NY grew up with daddy and Barbie issues. The blatant and explicit exploitation of these problems led to one of the finest albums ever created. The Notorious B.I.G. is one of the finest emcees or musical artists to EVER touch a microphone. However, let it be said that him, alongside Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs were and are masters of marketing, and that likely their finest marketing move ever was what they did with a little girl named Kim. They took her, her myriad of bizarre issues and obscene mental wanderings, and a heaping spoonful of violent female pimp swagger and turned her into the identity of Lil’ Kim, whose debut album Hard Core set a standard for hip hop that any other emcee, male or female can attempt to, but will never reach.

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The quotable and misogynistic lines on Lil’ Kim’s hardcore are numerous. The first bars we ever hear her spit on the album opener “Big Momma Thang” should’ve let us know what we were in for: “I used to be scared of the dick/Now I throw lips to the shit/Handle it like a real bitch/Heather Hunter, Janet Jacme/Take it in the butt, yah, yazz wha!” Oral sex, anal sex AND pornography. Impressive. On debut single “No Time,” she has “No time fake niggas, (she’s) gonna sip some Cristal with some real niggas.” On “Not Tonight,” she “don’t want dick tonight/Eat my pussy right.” In “Crush on You” she’s “not the one you sleep wit, to eat quick/Want a cheap trick? Better go down to FreakNik/You got to hit me off, buy this girl gifts of course/So I look slick, in my six, with my Christian LaCroix.” On Dreams, she recounts having sex with literally every top R & B group of the moment, including stating that “if I would fuck wit Mista they’d be lickin blackberry molasses out my asses.” Lil Kim rhymes like a woman with loose morals, but her loose morals have a purpose. If a man is ignorant enough to tie up wealth and sex, then why not be the beneficiary. Like a sex-starved Robin Hood, Lil Kim would rob the rich to give to herself. Prior to Hard Core, female emcees were fearful of vulgarity and overt sexuality. Lil Kim was draped in furs and bikins and wanton behavior. By having no fear and going harder than EVERYONE, she was an immediate and instantaneously iconic success.

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Lil Kim – Crush On You
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The aggression on this album is palpable, leaps out from the speakers, and strangles the listener, if male, unabashedly by the penis and refuses to let go. Superior production, sampling and songwriting are key to this album’s success. The album is a dizzying blend of sizzle and steak, as Puffy, his producers The Hitmen, and a crew of Lil Kim and ghostwriters including Biggie, Lil’ Cease, Puffy, Stevie J of the Hitmen and a young Cam’ron all contributed to the success of the release. Tracks like “Crush on You” and “Drugs” could’ve been rapped over by an atonal mute and hit the charts. Let a sexy girl with skills go in on those productions, and it’s a win all the way around.

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Hard Core hit #1 on the Rap and R & B Billboard charts and rested at #11 on the Top 200 Album Charts. But it’s impact was obvious. In paving the road for so many emcees afterwards to go hard and be unafraid to enumerate in verse their personal and sensual concerns, she fleshed out a truly dynamic role for female rappers and easily became one of the hardest rappers of all time.

THE HARD 10!: #8 Marilyn Manson – Antichrist Superstar (1996)

The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.
   
Mix a potent combination of overtly religious imagery with heaping spoonfuls of glam, serial killers, dark industrial production and lyrics that advocate violence, Marilyn Manson’s 1996 Antichrist Superstar is easily one of the hardest, most controversial and legendary albums in recent memory. The band, a very deliberate combination of very specific and combative, engaging style that examined the ill effects of sanitized, suburban life upon America’s youth. Debut album Portrait of an American Family is easily one of the most frightening and bizarre records of the 90s, as glammed up post-punk kids with serial killer surnames play blistering rock over Sid and Marty Kroft samples and bizarre snippets from Twin Peaks and Marlon Brando’s quote “Go and smile, you cunt” from Cake and Sodomy. In the era of wine and roses, there were worms and sludge everywhere, and by 1996, Marilyn Manson, armed with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor’s brilliance behind the boards were ready to assault the universe, and succeeded with Antichrist Superstar.

For those who found Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 1960s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar vaguely blasphemous, this record is a punch in the mouth to that notion. Separated into three parts, the single album chronicles the ascension and denigration of the “worm,” intended to be the souls of humans who deign to be accepted as holy, but are doomed to hell. In invoking the concepts of satanist Kenneth Anger in the names of the cycles “Inauguration of the Worm” and “Disintegrator Rising,” Manson’s playing in some heavy territory here, but doesn’t tread lightly at all. In fact, the album is so sonically excellent in being so heavy and tuneful that the mix of subject matter and expert song crafting lifted the album to #3 on Billboard’s Album chart.

Lead single “The Beautiful People” is shocking bombast wrapped in an unrepentantly mean-spirited nature. “And I don’t want you and I don’t need you/Don’t bother to resist, or I’ll beat you/It’s not your fault that you’re always wrong/The weak ones are there to justify the strong/The beautiful people, the beautiful people/It’s all relative to the size of your steeple/You can’t see the forest for the trees/You can’t smell your own shit on your knees/There’s no time to discriminate,/Hate every motherfucker/That’s in your way. Vile, cretinous and deviant, the song bespeaks a notion of distrust in the leaders of society both physical and spiritual in a manner not ever represented. Yes, we as a music listening public have always hated authority of all sorts, but “The Beautiful People’s” Bomb Squad production like assault on the senses mixed with Manson’s screaming really kicks the song into a different stratosphere.

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Hate was immediate and strong for the album as Christian protesters took issue with much of the imagery and packaging of the album, as well as the message, finding Manson’s Nietzche inspired ramblings on tracks like “Irresponsible Hate Anthem,” “Tourniquet” and “Angle With the Scabbed Wings” to be absolutely blasphemous and a danger to the goals and efforts of Christianity worldwide. In couching the album so completely in hysteria causing notions, it successfully allowed for the group to become celebrities. In going SO hard, Marilyn Manson became international celebrities. Yes, there is great intellectual worth to the album, but, to the mainstream, this band of “antichrists” successfully worked a system predicated on latching onto hate speech with venomous intent.

Antichrist Superstar is easily one of the hardest albums ever released because it assaults the twin edifices of complacency and lack of self-reflection that had come to be problematic in the world at that moment. Yes, attacking religion and using it as a guide to make a point may be slightly problematic to the average person, but, in looking at the post Antichrist Superstar universe, there may have been some worth and weight to the nature of Manson’s concerns. Trent Reznor’s job as a producer with the band cannot go without appreciation as well. The band is in many ways crafted in his image of being forward thinking, dark, bleak and having a terrifyingly powerful sound. This album celebrates everything right in being so “wrong,” and having the desire to believe in one’s creative instincts. The best are often the hardest, the ones not afraid of what their creativity hath wrought.

THE HARD 10!: #9: The Plasmatics – New Hope For the Wretched (1980)

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The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.

I’ll advise that any album containing material that leaves an awe-inspiringly beautiful mohawked woman beaten and assaulted by the Milwaukee police with bruises and a black eye, and inspires that type of live television performance is HARD. REAL HARD. The Plasmatics were a shock-punk outfit that was more sizzle than steak, but their sizzle more than forced open doors of expression and behavior that allowed punk rock music to completely frighten and alienate the universe, and allow for a freedom in style that created a more rounded and expansive definition of a style and genre.

At any given time there were any number of fifteen different people comprising the four playing roles in the Plasmatics. The key component being lead singer Wendy O. Williams. Stupefyingly sexy and willing to carry out the anti-art stance of Yale graduate and band founder Rod Swenson, she was the first discovered member of the band, and its star performer. Not exactly blessed with the most gifted range for singing, punk suited her, her screams and wails into the microphone when backed by the band are like a plea by an angry and hoarse woman being strangled with chicken wire. Iconic because of a desire to do what she wanted, when she wanted with a devil may care attitude and a definite appetite for destruction, it’s the Plasmatics debut New Hope for the Wretched that defined her and ultimately provided the lifestyle that led to her early demise.

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New Hope for the Wretched was originally produced by a heroin addict. Yes, Jimmy Miller, famed for his work with the Rolling Stones was tapped to work on the project, but didn’t even make it halfway through the process. An album so hard it drove a man to take higher quantities of extremely dangerous drugs? Absolutely. The album runs 47 minutes and has a definite yet extremely simple political agenda, songs like “Butcher Baby” describing a serial killer, possibly the “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz, “Monkey Suit” describing a disdain for corporate employees, and the first foray in all likelihood of a woman in punk going into the realm of sexual politics of the era, “Tight Black Pants,” discussing being bisexual, and seeing a hot man in “tight black pants,” and wanting to take him home to her and her girlfriend. There’s no stone left unturned and all of the songs have the expected punk urgency, but with a woman as the lead, there’s a very different energy to the music.

But what makes the album so hard is the performance. Exploding cars, sledgehammers smashing televisions, fellatio being performed on sledgehammers, chainsawing guitars, and wearing g-strings and electric tape, whipped cream or yes, clothespins over nipples. Any music that inspires that behavior, more than absolutely not just hard, but hardcore. Wendy was beaten and arrested in Milwaukee in 1981 for satiating her oral fixation with a sledgehammer. Wild. The band sold out CBGBs and allowed punk to move downtown, Irving Plaza and the Palladium Theater had no choice but to open their doors to such a brash, hard, exciting and dangerous sound.

There has never nor will never be another Wendy O. Williams or The Plasmatics. Enjoy their debut album and performances, and enjoy the loud, scary, frightened, wild, sexy and uncontrolled rage, fear and excitement of punk at its finest.

THE HARD 10!: #10 Onyx – Bacdafucup (1993)

 The HARD 10 are ten of the most graphic albums ever released that all left an indelible mark upon the listener and the industry as a whole. Do enjoy these tales and songs, and carry their power into your life, finding their unrepentant aggression to be as emotionally valuable as tears.

“Bring em up, bring em up, bring em up dead, shine em up, shine em up, shine a bald head, one gun, two guns, three guns, four, yours, mine, we all about crime…ONYX!” – “Throw Ya Gunz,” Onyx

If wanting to be an instant “hard” impact in music, the key is to a successful debut album that literally frightens the American populace into buying records and believing every ounce of your hype. The early 90s were a bizarre time for hip hop. The first wave of mainstream acceptance had come through, and the atmosphere welcomed bright, happy and cherubic west coast faces like MC Hammer, Tone Loc and Young MC, whose happier take on hip hop was commercially viable, but left much lacking in the sense of hardcore street credibility. But, as always, turn to Russell Simmons, Run-DMC and Def Jam to solve pretty much any issue in hip hop music.

In 1991, Onyx, as scouted by Jam Master Jay, signed to Def Jam. By 1993, the group had morphed from a jazz based lyrically strong act into the bald headed, Timberland boot wearing, gun waving, grimy, “mad face invasion.” Carved directly from Russell Simmons’ image of what hip hop music was missing, Onyx was crafted word for word, line by line into the answer for all of the supposed ills of the smiling faces and juvenile content of the era.

http://www.youtube.com/v/mQmfzGf9904&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

 
Bacdafucup is produced by Jam Master Jay with assistance from Chyskillz and is a stark landscape of boom bap and intense, aggressive sampling. It’s the prototype of East coast gangsta rap that barely (by literally eight months) predates the Wu Tang Clan, a large, commercially viable sound that sounded nothing like anything on radio at the time. “Throw Ya Gunz,” a track literally advocating a call to arms against anyone and everyone is the lead single. When Sticky Fingaz advocates that he wants someone’s “money or their life,” nobody’s really in the business of dancing to house and disco inspired beats or drinking “Funky Cold Medina” to that. The image is perceived in the context of the song as honest, and the video’s visuals, literally an army of aggressive, bald headed young black males waving guns and threatening violence, well, that’s taking NWA’s “Niggaz4Life” stance and amplifying it the the nth degree. For mainstream America, that mix of imagery and wordplay has never equated to acceptance or indifference, but it has caused fear. Apoplectic and palpable fear. And as NWA proved, fear, even without mainstream radio or video, sells records. Onyx, as if created f0r the explicit purpose of media manipulation and financial gain, soon would have the same.

http://www.youtube.com/v/7ADgCeYJMN4&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

Second single “Slam” is one of the hardest mainstream hit hip hop singles of all time. “Not watered down and dying of thirst,” grimy, ornery and bitter, and again featuring a video filled with a large mass of black males acting like unrestrained criminals. This works. “Slam dancing,” long a construct of predominately white punk rockers, when put into the hands of pistol waving African-American gangbangers and as Sticky Fingaz says, “b-boys, standing in a b-boy stance” is a completely different visual to the average person. There’s an enhanced perception of danger and violence at play. Advocating violent slam dancing with dudes drinking 40s sounds like a recipe for the violence contained on this record. “Slam” works because of the excellent lyricism of Onyx, as well as what they’re promising lyrically. Onyx “is the inspiration for a whole generation” Sticky Fingaz says as well, and if telling the youth of Generation X that taking an aggressive stance, not backing down, and battering anyone and everyone in your path with unrepentant violence isn’t hard, then I don’t know what is.

Throughout the rest of the album, the band advocates shooting bootleggers of their album (Bichasbootleguz), slapping the semen out of a cheating girlfriend’s mouth (Da Nex Niguz), stabbing bouncers at nightclubs (Da Bounca Nigga), violent and forced sexual acts (Blac Vagina Finda), and all sorts of various and sundry threats lobbied against anyone and everyone in their path. The album is a gritty path of rage against the universe levied by four maniacal emcees who were clearly tasked with scaring the shit out of the universe. In succeeding, the album went platinum, and “Slam” hit #4 on the Billboard Top 100 chart, which, at the time, hardcore rap singles just didn’t do.

In many ways, Bacdafucup opened the door up wide for “hard” content from East coast emcees.

Before Onyx:

http://www.youtube.com/v/bDT8OOkS_dc&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

After Onyx:

http://www.youtube.com/v/IwWWUsHRZ6k&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

Any questions? Onyx. Pioneers of “hard.”