![]() Even those who weren’t “smokin’, jokin’, rollin’ blunts” or cashing welfare checks could relate to “1st of Tha Month,” a smooth track predicated on a universal feeling of how new payday funded possibilities. The songs always felt grander than the specificity of the lyrics. The rhymes were quicker than most, the violence was more melodic than the best R&B, and they were repping a Midwestern city not known for hip-hop. Clair Avenue, where the group grew up and humanity lives in the dark conditions. 1999 Eternal, an engrossingly dark thrill ride through life living on the poverty-stricken Eastside neighborhood of Cleveland on East 99th Street and St. Just as soon as the chorus gets hypnotic enough where you’re instinctively humming “bloody murder mo,” the voices deepen to a demonic bellow and the elegant existentialism gives way to the vivid murder depictions on “Mo Murda.” Sublimely, the enjoyment only intensifies. Ouija 2” finds an Ouija board that everyone had been asked existential questions about mortality in the form of a chorus of singing enchanting enough to make constant gun cocking in the background sound almost integral to the harmony. The Cleveland rap quintet – Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone, Layzie Bone, Krayzie Bone, Flesh-N-Bone - were sirens more than rappers, leading listeners joyously through the most nefarious conditions of life using spellbinding harmonies to tap into what’s intrinsic in us all.
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