1991 may have been “The Year Punk Broke” for many in America, but for my suburban household it was also very much the year that Hip Hop broke. The Low End Theory and Cypress Hill were on steady rotation in my Discman right alongside Nevermind and Ten and while it was another year until The Chronic broke Hip Hop into the mainstream rotation on MTV, there was “Yo! MTV Raps” and I had an older brother. I remember seeing the video for “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” and it felt different than the rest. It was a horror/hip hop hybrid and while it felt at home with the Gangsta Rap that was so prevalent at the time, it wasn’t braggadocious or sexy, it was tense, paranoid and regretful. It stood out at the time and stills feels like a weird anomaly, there were other Hip Hop performers speaking to the reality of the streets at that time (2Pac released his socially conscious “Brenda’s Got a Baby” the same year), but Geto Boys leaned hard into the horror elements. 

This is an exploitation album, from the album cover showing the graphic and very real gun shot wound of Bushwick Bill to the straight horrorcore of “Chuckie” and the sexploitation “The Other Level” to the tasteless odes to misogyny “Im Not a Gentleman” (Willie D’s response to “Ladies First”) and “Quickie.” Those are the tracks that stood out to me at the time, because of their queasy shock impact, but now I recognize that they’re also taking on censorship and the inherent racism in the record industry on the title track and “Trophy,” they have an anti-Iraq war song “Fuck a War” and poverty in “Aint with Being Broke.” Scarface, in particular, was on fire in 1991 and his track “Another N***a in the Morgue” is a highlight here and it would fit right on his excellent debut album Mr. Scarface is Back, which sadly didn’t qualify for this poll, he also wrote three of the four verses in “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” 

It all has to come back to “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” because it’s not only the best song and emotional core of the album but also one of the quintessential 90s Hip Hop tracks. It builds off the brash and confident tracks that precede it and undercuts some of the more misogynist tracks on the second half, because it’s letting you in on the reality of the troubled psyche underpinning the projected strength.  Reconciling the lyrics:

with the track that follows, “Im Not a Gentleman,” is difficult, but the dichotomy is between the external projections of strength and the confessional interior doubts that cannot be expressed.

-- @bentclouds