Lest We Forget: Hard 2 Obtain

Hard 2 Obtain: "LI Groove" (includes preceding skit)
Hard 2 Obtain: "Ghetto Diamond"
Hard 2 Obtain: "Street Dwellers"
from Ism & Blues, Atlantic, 1994

The year was 1994, and as classics fell from the rap heavens nearly every Tuesday, our Walkmans devoured double-As to power the new Nas, Biggie, Jeru, or Gang Starr. Meanwhile, damn good LPs were gathering dust in record bins, including the debut "Ism & Blues" from the SD50's-backed group Hard 2 Obtain. This was an era when major labels would actually sign dope rap groups who had little or no gimmick--practically the entire Heiro fam were on Jive, RCA was blowing up with Loud (Mobb Deep, Wu, Alkaholiks), and everyone else was seemingly on Elektra (Brand Nubian, LONS, Del, KMD, PR & CL, and Digable Planets).

The first single released, "L.I. Groove", set it off with sparse production. Heads around the tri-state instantly perked their ears up when that chorus kicked in, horns flowing, culminating with Rakim's "rough enough to break New York from Long Island." Lyrically, it was typical backpacker fare; humorous metaphors sprinkled between vast stretches of relatively meaningless wordplay, but it was fun music. DL and Taste, the vocalists, are competent but derivative--as Dante Ross described, "one of the dudes wasn't really an MC, the other dude sounded like Puba." The SD50s put a lot of heart into the production on this joint, and you just wonder what MC's of the caliber of Sadat X or Common Sense would have sounded like flowing over this type of flavor. From the sounds of it, Dante probably wonders the same thing.

Extrablogicular reading:
Oliver Wang interviews Dante Ross, who dismisses H2O outright: "...I never really liked [Hard 2 Obtain]...I thought they were kind of wack actually and I kept saying that the whole time."

The Broke BBoys covered this album last month with a few nuggets of trivia.