Narrative, Game, Sound & Interactive Music Design

Welcome to the Official Pharcyde Channel

In the early 90’s, when gangsta’ rap consumed the airwaves, and the majority of West Coast rappers strapped on their Locs, Chuck Taylor’s & Ben Davis’, The Pharcyde decidedly maintained a willfully weird vision. 

Opting to stay true to themselves with their left field but still South-Central sensibility, rap had seen few groups so self-deprecating and so smart, a group of visionary rappers adroitly able to split the difference between helium-voiced and hard-core.

Listening to “Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde” two full decades after its release, its sense of timeliness is unmistakable. Every song on the album inverts a hoary hip-hop cliché. With classics like “Oh Shit,” “Otha Fish”, “Ya’ Mama,” and hit single, “Passing Me By,” it is not surprising that it shipped over a million units, garnered comparisons to De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest, and everyone from Pitchfork Media to The Source has hailed it as one of the greatest albums ever made. 

Speaking on the passage of time, their second release “LabCabInCalifornia” has revealed exactly how far-reaching The Pharcyde’s vision was. From enlisting a young and then unknown James Yancey aka J DILLA to produce beats, the classic “Runnin” to collaborating with director Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich” “Adaptation”) on the video for “Drop,” it has consistently reinforced their steadfast refusal to tread familiar artistic grounds.

Today, The Pharcyde is still performing and touring the globe. They continue to hone their individual abilities yet carry on the name & legacy in its original fashion. They still seduce their audience with the same boyish charm that founded them at the beginning. Now, it’s combined with the knowledge that has been bestowed upon them as men who have taken on, and rose to the challenge of the rap game. 

The end result of all this hard work is a band that’s still influencing the hip hop artists and sounds crowding our radio waves today and will continue to for many years to come.

In 1993, years before anyone told ya’ to “get up off them goddamn diamonds”, South Jamaica, Queens, craziest Bal-Hed sons, ONYX, were already busy takin’ some of the Golden Era’s loot and running with it to new heights, stamping the term “hardcore” in its darkest terms upside hip hop’s head with their seminal, trailblazing platinum debut, Bacdafucup.

 

The iconic cover image of four bald, angry-lookin’ niggas, their legendary “MadFace” logo, a shoulder-strapped automatic and a menacing boot-tread took rap to a world that could “Slam” in an era where even looking at someone wrong at a rap show could get you gone. Fredro Starr, Sticky Fingaz, SonSee and the late brother Big DS didn’t break the rules: they scared them the fuck away.

 

Twenty years and several full-length underground classics later, there is still nothing so raw in live rap as getting tossed into the barrier by the smiling, sweating, maniacal fans swarming the pit, to find yourself face-to-face with the ever-Mad Faced, ever Bal-Heded ‘Dro and Sticky (and this summer, on the Rock the Bells tour, Sonsee).

 

Face to face with loud, abrasive greatness, you might just find yourself lucky enough to embrace a boot to the temple when Sticky stage-dives, or swimming with the sharks to make waves for the crowd surfers while you “Throw Ya Gunz”.

 

ONYX made boom bap gangsta, gave metal street cred, and exposed the kinship of hip hop and punk rock cultures to a wider global audience on the strength of their delivery and the look in their eye that said this was no gimmick, motherfucker – all under the guidance of their mentor and producer, the departed architect Jam Master Jay.

 

With the Snowgoons-produced Cuzo LP hot on the way and the custom-built hybrid project Black Rock in the aisles and their newly-minted international “100Mad” click growing stronger, 2013 sees ONYX bring it back-da-fuck up in your mad face. Watch out, ‘cuz they’re coming for head-blood. 


Bio by Darcy MacDonald

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