FUGEES – "Ready Or Not"

The intro on this really sticks in the mind. It’s one of those snatches of music that often comes to me from out of nowhere. One of the better productions on a number 1 in the mid-nineties.

A Pub Fact about this is that it had the most expensive video ever because they hired an actual submarine for it.

Another Delfonics spot, from around this time: Notorious B.I.G. rewriting their otherworldly ‘Hey Love’ as ‘You’ve Been Robbed’ – a rare, if not totally welcome chance for the great man to show off his singing voice.

I clearly didn’t have ears to hear this in ’96 – I have no recollection of it, but it seems to me that even the weaker verses here are among the more fluent raps we have heard in the narrow confines of this tale so far. The Nina Simone/Microphone couplet is tremendous.

Coldest woodwinds? Those trilling flutes at the top line of Sinatra and Riddle’s version of ‘It Never Entered My Mind’ sound positively Antarctic to me, even if they are supposed to evoke a California morning.

A milestone: the first hip hop number 1 without even a hint of the novelty single about it.

I treated this, at the time all the way up until September last year, as a totally original Fugees song – I had no idea that the chorus was a Delfonics song until I heard the original on, of all places, GTAV whilst driving around listening to the Pam Grier DJ’d Classic Soul station. The shame of my ignorance. Of course, it is a totally original Fugees song – just because the chorus is a cover doesn’t negate that it’s got a totally different feel, as Tom points out in his opening paragraph, and loads of bits and pieces that have nothing to do with The Delfonics at all. The veil of ignorance having been lifted from me, it’s not really changed my opinion of this, which I reckon is really, really good.

In general, I am am wary of praising stuff just because it’s darker. It feels like a bit of lazy shorthand that people apply to works to mean weighty and not frivolous and therefore somehow more worthy and serious. I don’t think this is an either/or proposition – more frothy and frivolous stuff can be just as good as weighty stuff and similarly weighty stuff can be po-faced and boring. Nevertheless, this does seem to be darker and have more weight. I could be wrong but it feels a bit more serious than some of the other songs we have been considering over the last few Popular years and, for me, that is pretty welcome, as it still has memorable moments (the Nina Simone rhyme, the shout out of “Buffalo Solider, Dreadlock Rasta” in the middle of it) and a strong chorus. It also seems much more of a group thing than Killing Me Softly, which felt like a Lauryn showcase in some senses – not that that was bad but this seems to give more of an opportunity for the other members of the group to do stuff, whilst still having Lauryn Hill as the figurehead (given she’s responsible for the three bits I’ve called out).

All in all. I really like it. 9 for me.

This was an absolute cracker. (PS – Guantanamo was mostly known in the 1990s for its use as a transit camp for refugees from Haiti and elsewhere trying to reach the US. Hence both the band and the reference.)

#14: I think I would broadly agree with this. Just going “darker” is not enough, it has to be combined with something else. We’ll get onto other rappers* eventually that go dark (at least lyrically) and I found a lot of that annoying, as I didn’t feel like it was offering what you’ve described musically. Agreed on Massive Attack – though as a formula, it doesn’t always work for them, I think. 100th Window is probably as dark as their first 3 albums but I don’t think as good. Sounds a bit chilly. I like my dark warm, I guess.

*I’m thinking mostly about a bleached blonde – and possibly his album tracks more than his singles.

“Ready Or Not” is tougher than “Killing Me Softly”. It’s all raised fists and “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” attitude. I’d still say “Fu-Gee-La” is my personal favourite of theirs. Darker would be the default description of RON for sure. And yes, I agree with Cumbrian that “dark” doesn’t always mean weighty/worthy, and we’ll be sure to come across outwardly frivolous records that hide things more serious within them. We’ve encountered a few already. Let’s just say we’ll be discussing some doomier stuff in the not too distant future.

I have often been attracted to the foggy melancholia of trip-hop. Massive Attack, Portishead and DJ Shadow rubbed shoulders comfortably with everything else I was listening to in the mid 90’s, not least some upcoming bunnyable purveyors of electronica.

I’ve never knowingly heard The Delfonics’ RON. I’ll have to check that out.

This is obviously great but my Fugees pick, even above Fu-Gee-La is Manifest, particularly Lauren’s rap. The bit where she goees into hysterical overdrive channeling the RZA’s fast-rap style “Iwasblessedbutcouldn’tfeelitlikewhenIwascaressedclutchingmybreastoverwhelmedbygod’stestIwasgod’sbestcomtemplatingdeathwithagillette….” is absolutely heartstopping.

Interested in anyone’s take on Blunted by Reality. I’ve not listened to it in years and don’t think i ever really got a handle on it, but it had a whole ramshackle thing going on that I think pretty much stands unique as something tried, abondoned and never picked up by anyone else.

Didn’t really like Killing Me Softly as anything from the early weeks of 1973 is pretty sacrosanct to me but I quite like this for that overarching doomy feel.

Certainly a much harder edged and atmospheric song than their previous song. Strangely not a hit in America as it received little radio play (peaked at #69 on the airplay only chart) despite being the followup to a huge airplay hit from a #1 album. Perhaps the lack of single releases confused radio programmers who immediately moved onto “No Woman, No Cry” which I DO remember getting played, although even that only peaked at #38 airplay (again, no single release).

So then my only exposure to “Ready or Not” was via its video which did get some MTV play. The video and music go together perfectly. As I stated before, I’m not a hip hop fan but I’ll still give this a 6/10.

#27 Not entirely true (see 2 July 2006).

I absolutely love this – minimal instrumentation, on point vocals animated by simmering, righteous anger tempered by a sense of sorrow and loss – and yet still pop.
The Guantanamo reference and the experience of migrants still seem very relevant today – I find it encouraging that the UK public was willing to put this at the top

#31 Good question! I don’t watch X Factor so I haven’t picked the phrase up there – I suspect it comes from watching too many US TV shows and/or reading so many US Tumblr posters.
What I meant to say by using the phrase was that I love the ways that the rhythms of the vocal lines add a sense of syncopation and surprise to the recording – providing both music and meaning

8 maybe a [i]bit[/i] high for me but I really like this song. Moody and suggestive, and I think all three raps are great. Pras’s is maybe the least distinctive, but that last couplet – “I refugee from Guantanamo Bay / Dance around the border like I’m [i]Cassius[/i] Clay” is killer. The Guantanamo thing is clearly intended as a gesture of solidarity with Haitian refugees as suggested upthread, as well as with his bandmate: Wyclef Jean grew up in Haiti of course.

Since we discussed Hill thoroughly last time, maybe it’s fair to give the other two Fugees their due. Pras’s career stalled out rather strangely – “Ghetto Supastar” was enormous, and one of my favorite hip-hop hits of that era – but no one seemed to transfer their affection for the song onto its notionally lead performer. It would seem that the hook, ODB’s rap, and Wyclef’s production were all more memorable than Pras’s rap…. though again he delivered some great ones – “Strike with the forces of King Solomon / lettin’ bygones be bygones, and so on and so on.” He seemed to have a knack strident delivery of good-sounding words and some memorable images – maybe he just didn’t have enough to say, or a clear lyrical persona. The followup “Blue Angels” apparently did very well in the UK but I have no memory of it whatsoever, and he didn’t put out another album until 2005 (!), which went nowhere.

Wyclef, the seeming mastermind behind it all (although as I noted last time out, Hill turned out to be more than just a pretty voice), also hasn’t fared so well. [i]The Carnival[/i] is great (but could be six songs and several skits shorter), and was well-reviewed. The followup albums, oddly, charted higher even as their singles sank like stones and nobody cared. Perhaps his sense of humor was out of step with the times, or maybe he (like Hill) poured all his best material into one album. I remain irrationally fond of his ill-starred, jumpy comedy (?) duet with pro wrestler The Rock, “It Doesn’t Matter.”

Well this should’ve been #1 just for the video alone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZGi2lyQJQs (Ghostface ‘Daytona 500’)

A dance remake of this, by ‘The Course’ went top 5 in April 1997, pretty astonishingly quick given that this had only barely left the chart a few months earlier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUQeMvdvCPo They (actually an alias for dutch DJ Vincent Hendriks) followed it up with another cover of a bunnied early ’97 chart-topper, which got to #8.

As a sucker for 90s dance music anyway it’s surprisingly not as terrible as you’d perhaps initially assume, and does a fairly alright job of housing things up. Original all the way though as ever.

Amazon”s algorithm has decided for some reason – I suspect a 90s hip-hop binge in a sale a couple of years ago – that The Score is the album I would like more than any other in the history of recorded music. Every time I log in, it’s there at the top of my “Amazon recommends” list.

I have resisted until now, but having been reminded of these two cracking number ones – and Fu-gee-la, my own favourite, which also has cracking wintry woodwind / synth on it – I am wondering if I should give it a go. What’s the verdict? Has the AI got it right?

Yeah, the decline of the rap group is an interesting topic and one I don’t know a whole lot about (my historical grasp of hip-hop isn’t great in general) – at the chart level, the occasional boyband aside, we seem to be in an era of solo acts now anyhow.

There’s been a group decline generally (with “too many people to pay” the common excuse) so I don’t see it as anything specific to hip hop. There are still collectives (e.g. A$AP Mob, Odd Future) whose members all appear on each others solo records (and perform regularly at festivals worldwide). A more conventional group model succeeding again would be welcome though.

The ‘nostalgic’ market is probably bigger tho. OutKast are back to headline Coachella and I’m sure another FuGees reunion (they had one years back for Dave Chapelle’s Block Party film) would do good business. But a new album from Hill this year seems likelier than it has for a long time.

…and don’t forget his crowning, post-Fugees achievement; that photo of his on his birthday on a motorbike in his pants

http://m.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/picture-buff-wyclef-jean-poses-in-underwear-straddles-motorcycle-for-43rd-birthday-20121810
(if you missed it)

have to admit the ‘wuh?’ over gitmo ref here reminding me of kids on twitter wondering how biggie knew the wtc was gonna get bombed

Bizarrely, my recollection of a kid is that it made me want to make a piping hot cup of coffee during an unfathomably violent thunderstorm. I guess I mixed up the brilliant “doomy” intro with the one to, ahem, Africa by Toto – which I THINK must have been on SOME kind of coffee advert at least once in history – though I think there was a rap collective in the noughties who sampled that with a refrain of “I think the rain is coming back” to similarly slick and confident effect to this?

This is quite a belter – the “defecate on your microphone” bit really wasn’t necessary, but better a hip-hop group who sound like they’re slapping their palms in anticipation with baseball bats, rather than stuttering their way through the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, so extremely boringly, I fully agree with Tom’s 8.

The “least controversial” chart shows there’s been a very close consensus on the last three number ones! Methinks the next might smash it to pieces. You’ll say that we’ve got nothing in common..