Tha Alkaholiks - 21 & Over (1993)

Tha Alkaholiks, despite being a hip-hop group from the West Coast in the early 90s, have a lot more in common with EPMD & A Tribe Called Quest than the whiny, whiny, whiny, whiny synth tones of G-Funk. I've really been on the straight and narrow for several months, so I don't even know what these guys are talking about with all their "drinking lingo." That is ok though, because I think that we both like partying. I mean, I don't actually like partying or meeting people or anything like that, even though I occasionally like to try to convince myself that I do. What are you guys doing tonight I don't have work tomorrow.

Tha Lik's debut also accomplishes something appallingly uncommon in rap music: this record is concise and consistent. There aren't five hundred annoying skits. There aren't filler tracks. Ten bangers for your mouth. Who'd like a banger in the mouth?

So, there's more to my EPMD comparison than the Tyrone Thomas sample used for both "It's my Thing" and "Only When I'm Drunk." J-Ro and Tash (and sometimes E-Swift) trade bars in their verses much like Erick and Parrish were doing a few years before. And both groups rely on lazy flows, their laid-back delivery almost masking the extreme cleverness of their rhymes. Although, the patterns on 21 & Over remind me a lot of Phife Dawg...

OH YEAH! I bought this CD on tour and I was putting it out on the merch table as a "conversation piece" along with The Righteous Brothers and Moondog and whatever else I had accumulated. In Cleveland, this guy who was of course very drunk really wanted to buy it, and became incensed upon being informed that it was not for sale. His offers for the CD increased linearly with his drunkeness, and he got to the point of offering me $30. I told him that if he would give me $40 for the CD, I would give it to him. Not because I felt like I needed $40 for a Liks CD that I paid $6.99 for. Rather, a man willing to pay $40 for a used Liks CD really really likes the Liks, and would enjoy the CD much more than me. Unfortunately, he didn't like music that much. However, he did fall over several times in the moshing pit.

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