60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony—“Tha Crossroads”

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Rob explores Cleveland rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s hit “Tha Crossroads” by discussing the origins of the quintet, their innovative musical style, and the power of singing about grief. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Israel Daramola Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We got a lot of work to do no time for whimsical digressions, but I'm also sitting here trying to decide which 90s rapper would have made the best album called Surrealistic Pillow. I think it's Rayquan. Either Rayquan or Coolkeith. Or like which 90s rapper would sound the best just rapping the words, Surrealistic Pillow. Rayquan, Cool Keith, Missy Elliott, E40, and Divine Styler. That's my top five.

I think. Plus, Rakim. This is a bizarre train of thought. Sorry, recently I've been listening to Jefferson Airplane. This is not a stoned thought,

by the way. I got way too many dependents at this point to get stoned. I will get stoned vicariously through the Jefferson Airplane. This is a song called Today from their 1967 album, Surrealistic Pillow, Cameron.

Him too. Barry a psychedelia at its finest, this record, famous Jefferson Airplane record. It's the one with somebody to love and white rabbit on it, but also today. Lovely song. We got Marty Baylon, rest in peace, on lead vocals and tambourine. We got Jerry Garcia, rest in peace, guesting on lead guitar. I'm guessing you're not stoned right now either, unless I've greatly misunderstood the general podcast audience. But Marty and Jerry, of course, in this moment are most likely stoned enough for the both of us.

This song needs a saxophone solo, though. That's my opinion. And also the opinion of a guy named Tom Scott, an L.A. jazz dude who had just 18 years old covered today, that same year, 1967, on his album called The Honey Suckle Breeze. Devin the Dude. Just Devin the dude, wrapping the words, The Honeysuckle Breeze.

Lovely song Tom Scott's cover of today. This version is actually playing in that season one episode of The Boondocks, when Riley tags a mural of his parents under the side of Granddad's house and also the Bob Ross painter mentor guy gets into a shootout with the cops. Eventful episode, lovely song.

You want to just zone out to this version, whether you're stoned or not. Please don't zone out, though. To his infinite credit, to the incalculable benefit of rap music and really of society as a whole, Pete Rock did not zone out. Do you ever just sit around imagining Pete Rock hearing that riff for the first time?

Pete Rock, of course, one of the best hip-hop producers ever born, born in the Bronx, raised in Mount Vernon, East Coast rap royalty from the 90s forward, worked with Heavy D, Run DMC, Nas Common, and Myriad others, including Rayquan and Rakhan and Rakim. And of course, Pete made two fantastic full-length albums with the Mount Vernon rapper C.L. Smooth, the first of which, called Mecca and the Soul Brother, came out in 1992. Track 10 is called They Reminis Over You. That's Troy, for short. One of the best rap songs in history.

Driven by one of the best samples in rap history. Just a little piece of a sax solo on a Jefferson Airplane cover on a fairly obscure mid-60s West Coast jazz record. Tom Scott made it a hot line. Pete Rock made it a hot song. One of the best samples in rapists. history. I'm serious. I need to know everything about the moment when Pete Rock heard that riff for the first time, or the moment he heard in his head the incredible song he'd construct around that riff. He's told the story plenty of times, I suppose, back in 2011, he told Complex. He found that

Tom Scott record while crate digging with large professor, his fellow rapper producer, his fellow East Coast rap royalty. But I need detail. I need insignificant detail. Where does Beatt Pete Rock first hear that sax riff specifically. What time was it? Is this in the record store? In Pete's apartment? What's the furniture layout? How much dust is in the air?

Any dogs or cats present? Where is Pete physically with relation to the record player? Is he leaning over it with total concentration? Is he across the room distracted like cooking dinner? Does that sax solo's full potential hit him the first time he hears it? The tenth time? the 100th time. Tom Scott, the saxophone is, by the way, is on TikTok.

Tom's had a wild career. He's played with Steely Dan, Whitney Houston, Blondie, Rod Stewart, the Blues Brothers, blah, blah, blah, blah. He played this rad electric flute called a Lyricon on Billy Jean. Michael Jackson's Billy Gene. This thing looks like a Star Wars prop. It looks like the G.I. Joe stealth bomber I really wanted when I was 10. specifically the Hasbro

1988 G.I. Joe Phantom X-19 stealth fighter jet. You can buy it on eBay right now for $3,500. What the hell? I got to look into that. Anyway, yeah, the Lyricon. It's on Billy Jean. Beep, beep, bo, do to be. That's Tom. In fact,

Tom's TikTok presence mostly consists of videos where he plays along or pretends to play along to his old songs, and then it cuts to him saying, yeah, that was really me. Like so. Yeah, that was really me. Quite a charming TikTok presence.

Honestly, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth dedicated they reminisce over you to Trouble T. Roy, a dancer for Heavy D who died in a freak accident, a fall, while on tour in Indianapolis in 1990. But this song is about beginnings, not endings. T to the R-O-Y, how did you and I meet in front of big loose fighting in the street? But only you saw what took many. time to see. I dedicate this to you for believing in me. CL Smooth also raps about being raised by a single mother, and he shouts out various extended family members, aunts and uncles and so forth, who also helped raise him. This song is not

entirely or even mostly about mourning the dead. They reminisce over you as sentimental by definition, but also unsentimental in the sense that CL Smooth doesn't feel the need to saint or even sugarcoat any of the people he's honoring or thanking or morning. In 2008, while still blogging for the Atlantic, the writer Ta Nahazi Coates wrote, This song always hit me hard. It gives the sort of complete portrait of the black family that I so rarely see out in the world and always, always makes me think of my own flawed and incredibly beautiful family. Later, he says, all I wanted to do, all I've ever wanted to do, was write something that hit people the way Troy hit me.

call a man off the family tree my right hand papa doc i see took me from a boy to a man so i always had a father when my biological didn't bother but writing anything that hits this hard is nearly impossible troy still pops up on best rap songs of all time lists and even though it's not entirely or even mostly about grief the mellow ecstasy of that sax riff and the golden hour tenderness and c l smooth's voice the gratitude and the melancholy settled deep into troy's bones. That's why it's still rightly hailed as one of the best ever rap songs about grief. Here's one of the other ones. Same effect.

Triggers the same instant visceral reaction, in me at least, but I'm guessing in you also. A burst of sunlight breaking through the clouds if you're shivering. A bank of clouds valiantly swallowing up the sun. burning up. It's relief. It's joy. It's grief, but it's communal. It's shared. It's bearable. It's necessary. It's immediate and it's elemental. And it comes. It came pretty much out of nowhere. No decades-long backstory. No dusty sample needed. Just a bunch of guys from Cleveland, so preternaturally harmonious that they put the word harmony right in their name. Right next to the word thugs.

What you're going to do when it ain't nowhere to hide When judgment comes for you Because it's going to go for you My name is Rob Harvilla This is 60 songs that explain the 90s And this week we're talking about The Crossroads By Bone Thugs and Harmony From their 1995 album E-1999 Eternal

Number One song in America for eight straight weeks The Crossroads This song is pretty much entirely about mourning the dead It's about mourning the dead until you join them It's a song about how you're not alone when you die, and you're also not alone when you mourn those who've died already. Death is inevitable and grief, too, but that means everyone shares in it. Everyone bears the weight. These guys are the best case scenario for who you could get to reminisce over you.

All of which to say the most important part of this chorus is the line, so you won't be lonely. Bone Thugs in Harmony by 1995 consist of five dudes, five dudes, five. rappers slash singers. We got Crazy Bone, Lazy Bone, Busy Bone, Wishbone, and coming later, and in a somewhat less official capacity, Lazy's brother, Flesh and Bone. These stage names do not necessarily correspond to any of the guys offstage personalities. Busy Bone is not busier than Lazybone, etc. As Wishbone once put it, we all consider ourselves the Michael Jackson of our group. Nobody's bigger than nobody. Crazy, by the way, is K-R-A-Y-Z-I-E, lazy is L-A-Y-Z-I-E, busy is B-I-Z-Y, this is an audio format. I'm detail-oriented, speaking of which I need more insignificant detail.

I need a vivid, overwrought description of the office setup for a woman named Keisha Anderson. Wishbone, doing an interview in 2017, so roughly 25 years later, still remembers her name, calls her by her name, Keisha Anderson. Keisha was the secretary at Ruthless Records out in Los Angeles in the early 90s. Ruthless Records, of course, started by the rapper Eric Wright, aka EZE, formerly of Gangster Rap, icons NWA. EZE started ruthless with one Jerry Heller, former semi-nefarious manager of NWA.

The slow-motion breakup of NWA, Ice Cube left in 89, Dr. Dre, etc., left in 91, was quite acrimonious. They made a movie about it, if I recall correctly, but I do not recall. Kisha Anderson appearing in the movie. Kisha is the woman, the secretary, the dudes and bone thugs in harmony called every day for weeks trying to get a meeting with EZE in the hopes that he'd give them a record deal with ruthless records. I need a full accounting of Kisha's office situation. The furniture, her desk, her cubicle, or lack thereof, any plants the dust, her proximity

to any vending machines. We got Doritos in there or what. the peanut butter crackers, her proximity, I suppose, to EasyE's office slash desk slash whatever. I want to see what Keisha sees. As she twirls her phone cord and rolls her eyes and muddles through these daily cold calls from these unknown knuckleheads from Cleveland who bought one-way bus tickets from Cleveland all the way to California, just to call her on the phone from California and try to get her to hook them up with EZE.

This is one of my favorite origin stories in rap history. Because I find this story so chaotic and inept and therefore relatable. This is how I would have done it if I'd have done it. So we got longtime friends and family members. Lazy and Flesher actually wishes cousins in their late teens, early 20s, in Cleveland in the Glenville neighborhood, at or around the corner of East 99th Street and St. Clair Avenue. First, they call themselves the Band-Aid Boys, which is not very tough.

Then Bone Enterprise, which is tougher. Their first underground album comes out in 1993 called Faces of Death. That's super tough. Faces of Death is that notorious bootleg movie from the late 70s with footage of real people really dying, allegedly. What a chatter about that movie. In my junior high, there's a monkey brain involved. Also, keep that shit away from me.

I got enough problems. Let's meet the fellas on a song called Flow Motion. Lazy Paulin to the Hops, I'm getting started up, and make my poor to let you know. That the horror and that's a hard. I get the gaze and let it bless and do your shot And then you drop your pop so now I got to feed the block I'm brick As you may have observed

Bone Enterprise are into speed and melody Primarily Speed at this point That was lazy bone of course Let's see if Wishbone wraps any slower We never get caught whenever we run because we throw Bo-low I'm hopping them up and tracking them up to keep on me flow Moe you step of you stuck now winning the fuck is up with this dumbish

I'm back in a night most all of the time I back up Nope most of faces of death is musically murkier than this and qualifies, I guess, as horror core. It's bleak, it's menacing, it's violent. There is drug dealing type violence and hellish supernatural faces of death, the movie type violence. A brief feud will later erupt between Bone and Three Six Mafia down in Memphis who get pissed when they suspect that Bone are biting their style, the pentagrams, the backwards masked Satan talk.

What DJ Paul from Three Six Mafia calls the tongue twisting over. slow beats, the Halloween malevolence and so forth. But after a parking lot scuffle or two, that gets resolved pretty quickly. This is, of course, pre-internet. Regional rap scenes are developing with relatively little knowledge of each other. It's understandable. It's harmless. And the world will get some three-six bone thugs collaborations later. And really, on this record, bone are desperate to make any contact with the outside world. They are desperate to join the outside world. A phrase you can hear just a couple times on faces of death, but it sticks out to me. Someone will say bus tickets. I'm bus tickets, motherfucker. Praise the 12 gauge, etc. These guys want out.

These guys want bus tickets out. Anyway, here's Busy Bone. I tried to find a relatively calmer part. So these guys decide they want to work with EZE with Ruthless Records. Justin Sales, this show's intrepid producer and editor wrote a great piece about the Bone Thugs origin story for The Ringer a while back. Bone are all huge NWA fans, of course, and Ruthless Records is somewhat adrift after NWA's breakup. EZE is feuding with Shug Knight and Death Row Records. He's getting clown on Dr. Dre's blockbuster hit The Chronic. Ice Cube's a huge solo star as well.

Easy's looking for his own success on that scale, and Ruthless is signing Everybody. Just a profoundly chaotic record label roster. They've got the Great Above the Law, of course, but they've also got a Jewish rap group called Blood of Abraham. They got a Mexican rapper named Kid Frost. They've got two different all-female rap groups, one called Hose with Attitude, one called Menagerie Tuat.

Very intense alternate spelling of monagetois. Will I Am, a decidedly pre-fame, Will I Am, is skulking around somewhere and there, that kind of vibe. Ruthless is throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, and Bone Enterprise would like to be thrown at the wall as well. And so Flesh and Bone saves up his money from working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and he buys five one-way bus tickets, and they take the bus out to California. 2,000-plus miles this bus trip.

And so now the guys start off staying with a friend in Vesalia, California, about 200 miles north of ruthless headquarters in the San Fernando Valley, and Bones start calling the ruthless office every day trying to get EZE on the phone. They get the secretary instead. They get Keisha Anderson instead. They call Keisha Anderson every day, sitting there in her cubicle or not. not eating her Doritos or not and getting exasperated, but being patient also. She takes the calls. She indulges them to some extent. And after a few weeks, they finally get EZ on the phone. And depending on

who's telling the story, either crazy bone wraps over the phone or crazy and busy rap over the phone or everybody wraps over the phone. I do not ordinarily buy these I wrapped for him over the phone stories. We sang for her over the phone. I played our big hit song for them over the phone. I held the phone up to the radio. Like that genre of music biz origin story, that doesn't happen. Even back to the future. Everything and everybody sounds like shit over the phone, man, especially in 1993. But this story or the gist of it, I do buy, I think. I'm willing to believe that whatever and whoever EZ heard over the phone, he got it. He got close to it. Here's crazy Bone, by the way. Look out.

Did you get all that? Do you think Easy E hypothetically got all that? He got enough. But the punchline is, Bone, of course, want to meet up with Easy E in person now, but he can't meet up with them in person because he's very busy. For example, he's got a show coming up soon in Cleveland. And so, the bone guys still camped out in Vesalia, California, scrounge up the money for five one-way bus tickets back home, back to Cleveland. And they get backstage at Easy's Cleveland Show. And that's where they get signed. That's the relatable part to me. This is a level of terrible planning and logistics that I respect, that I personally understand, that I seek to emulate in my own life.

Take a bus from Cleveland to California, talk to a guy in California on the phone from California, then take the bus back to Cleveland and meet the guy visiting from California in person. Fantastic. No notes. Bone signed a ruthless. EasyE suggests the name Thugs in Harmony. Bone want to keep the bone in there somehow. Ergo Bone Thugs in Harmony.

They get bus tickets back to California, but at least now it's on Jerry Heller's Dime. They hit the studio. They record a handful of songs. Not enough for a full album yet, but EasyE won't wait. Bone Thugs and Harmony put out their Ruthless Records debut in 8. eight-song EP called Creeping on a Come Up in 1994, not even eight songs, two separate intros, five songs, and a bitch-in guitar solo. But you understand immediately EasyEase sense of urgency. It's not that nobody was rapping super fast in 1994. You got DOS effects. You got foo schnickens. You got Chris

Hell Twista made the Guinness Book of World Records in 92. It's not that nobody was rapping super melodically in 1994. Don't let Drake fans tell you that Drake invented melody. Do let fans of a specific era of Jay-Z tell you that raps shouldn't have melodies at all. But the speed and the melody and above all the camaraderie, the musical and extra-musical harmony of bone thugs and harmony. That was shocking. I think it's fair to say.

You wanted more of this. You wanted as much of these guys as possible, as fast as possible. Just a nonstop, luscious barrage of syllables. That's Lazy Bone on the song Thuggish Ruggish Bone, plus Shatasha Williams singing the hook. She says she didn't get any royalties for this song. Complex interviewed her once, and she said, I can see why they called it ruthless records. Thuggish, Ruggish Bone was a legitimate pop hit. number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, produced by DJ Unique.

That's capital U-hyphen capital N-E-E-E-K. Remember that name. How could you possibly forget that name? Ditto the name, thuggish, ruggish bone, for that matter. The opening shot of that video. And so by extension, the de facto visual introduction of bone thugs and harmony to the outside world is a shot of all five dudes wrapping around a burning trash can. Quite a striking image.

Did you know there's a Facebook group called? Flaming Garbage Cans in Hip Hop Videos? 200 followers. If the government does destroy Facebook one day, I hope they keep just this one Facebook page. Somebody asked Wishbone once. The Cleveland Free Times interviewed him and asked if he ever did the Flaming Garbage Canned thing.

And he said, quote, Hell yeah, it gets cold in Cleveland. You ain't got nowhere to go and you out there serving. So best thing to do is light up one of them barrels full of trash and wood. But you got to wait until late at night when the police ain't riding that hard. But once you got that barrel, you can stay out there all night. End quote. They had a barrel on East 99th and another one behind the liquor store on 101st or 102nd. This image, the five of them, shivering through another comically brutal Cleveland winter,

huddled around a burning trash can, but more importantly, huddled close together, harmonizing whether they're talking, singing, rapping, or not. This image explains a lot, I think. Cleveland was not and is not in the habit of churning out pop stars.

No offense to Eric Carmen or Michael Stanley or Machine Gun Kelly. But the creeping on a come-up record anointed bone thugs

in harmony as legitimate pop stars. It went four times platinum. Four million copies sold in America. This song's called No Surrender.

Syllibles. Seriously, the choruses on this thing are unreal. The vocal lines sound like chopped and screwed blues guitar solos. That's from the song Creepin' On a Come Up in which Crazy Bone makes a withdrawal.

Rain disarray, put your face to the baby. You can try to play brave. You can slay. Pull down them shades and thin your pockets. Watch just choosing and be safe. I snatched a clerk up by your neck with a gun in the mouth and said, And so on. Finally, there's For the Love of Money.

Another hit, just missed the top 40, another immaculate example of tongue twisting over slow beats, plus a guest verse from the man himself. Lazybone talking to double XL about this record once said, One of my fondest memories is EZE asking us to write his verse, and us telling him he was EZE, and he had to write his own verse.

verse and then he did. That's my fondest memory. Wishbone in that interview about the trash can fires, to my mind, there's another super striking image in there. He's talking about his mother in the early years, the Bone Enterprise years, the Band-Aid boys years. Wishbone says, when we were starting out, we used to sing for my mother all the time. She'd make us sing a song, I miss you, by a local Cleveland group called Men at large. That helped us develop our vocals, and then we got comfortable singing and rapping. Do you know this song? I believe he's referring to the song, So Alone, during which Men at Large sing the words, I miss you a lot. Men at Large put out their self-titled debut album in 1992, Cleveland R&B group,

two guys, Dave and Jason, called Men at Large because they're husky. The song So Alone is pretty incredible. Talk about ecstatic melancholy. Talk about a communal outpouring of grief. Don't read the comments on anything on the internet ever. I think we can agree on this, but I will say that so alone by men at large on YouTube, the comments are something else, just overwhelming, just about 4,000 people grieving for their wives, their husbands, their fathers, their mothers, their sons, their cousins, their cousins. their friends, you have never seen more completely sincere crying emojis in your whole life. Comment after comment after comment of people saying,

this song makes me cry and this is the person I'm crying over. It gets to you. It's truly overwhelming and it's truly lovely in its way. So Bone Thugs and Harmony, singing at Wishbone's Mother's Request, harmonizing for her, and harmonizing on this song specifically. That's a lot to process. That's an unbreakable bond, no matter how many lineup changes or how much personal turmoil or how much death they've got in front of them. When the Source magazine interviewed Bone Thugs in Harmony in late 1994 and asked, How do you develop your songs?

Wishbone said a lot of reefer. And Lazy Bone said, we sit down and get high as fuck and we damn near become the same motherfucker. That's my favorite description of the Bone Thugs creative process. That's my favorite description of anyone's creative process. We sit down and get high as fuck and we damn near become the same motherfucker. This process is evident throughout the first full. length Bone Thugs and Harmony record

E-1999 Eternal, which came out in July 1995 and went six times platinum. Six million copies. Cleveland is a complicated physical place, as a home you long to escape, but love enough to know you'll never truly escape. Cleveland is evidence, is physically

present throughout this record. There was another great ringer piece by Daniel Gray-Contar back in 2016, about Bone's neighborhood, about East 99th Street. about how to them, what this neighborhood meant was family. The guys tell stories about sitting around in the summer, writing the songs that would end up on E-1999 Eternal.

So Crazy Bone says, I remember we were sitting on my mother's porch one day, and we came up with a song right there. He means this song. First of the month, best song ever written about welfare checks, a pop hit two. Peaked at number 14.

This record's got 17 tracks, no intros, no guitar solos, and it holds the fuck up as a whole, if you don't mind my saying, I don't mean to gloss over it. I'm quite partial to a song called CREPT and We Came, which is a sequel, which is a neat shift from creeping on a come-up, from the hopeful present tense to the triumphant past tense, between which they sold millions of records, even more immaculate tongue-twisting over slow beats. Yeah, amazing. to gloss over the other 16 songs on this record, but I do think one song justifiably dominates

this record, and I do think Soul Alone by Men at Large is the single most important precedent to that one dominant song. Sorry, I keep coming back to So Alone. I keep coming back to the YouTube comments. Specifically, I keep coming back to the bizarre emotional state of feeling terrible for all these grieving people, but feeling heartened somewhat because they've found some solace in sharing their grief with one another and that's quite a powerful quite a necessary idea and that's the idea bone thugs and harmony are working with on a song that is in its original version just called Crossroad Crossroad was dedicated and slung slash wrapped directly to a close friend of the groups named Wallace Laird the 3rd aka Wally who'd been shot and killed

Really, Wally was a member of Bone Thugs, or at least a member of the group's larger collective called Mo Thugs. Lazy Bone, talking to hip-hop D-X, said, Wally was like the first security guard that I ever had, but he was really my best friend. Even when we was selling dope back in the day, we was brothers. We had our little operation and all that at 14, 15 years old, trying to be somebody. And now, here is Lazybone, rhyming eyes, cry, why, sigh, and die. This version of the This druggedish-rugged

I see the toasters cry And I'm asking a good-o-Wi-in-sign Signed, he told me we live to die Not a no This version of the song Crossroads Singular is a singular tribute to Wally. It's on the original version

of E-1999 Eternal. You can find people in the YouTube comments that prefer this version and I do not begrudge those commenters, though I will reiterate you should never read the comments on anything ever. Run out another round the day like you are.

I love you to death, but I wish I could have said through your troubles. But then EasyE died. EasyE died on March 26, 1995. He died of complications from AIDS. He was 30. EasyE died a few months before Bones E. 1999 Eternal came out, hence the title. But as just a little time passed and the group experienced even more lost,

they decided to remix Crossroad to honor EZE and Wally. And another mothogs member named John Boo Moore, and Wishbone's Uncle Charles, among others. And thus the Crossroads was born and released in April 1996 and added to the E-1999 Eternal album. And pretty soon it was raining for a couple months as the number one song in America. That's Busy Bone with a partial roll call. I do briefly want to call attention to this beat. E-1999 Eternal was exes. executive produced by EZE and DJ Unique.

Thank you for remembering that name. DJ Unique produced the whole album, pretty much. And if you listen to a lot of Bone Thugs and Harmony, you can grow quite attached to the Sonic Template DJ Unique developed for Bone Thugs and Harmony. Because there is just so much rapping, so many syllables. The ideal beat for a Bone Thugs song is clean, is relatively simple, is relatively calm. And man, I dig the bass lines. especially, the piano type baselines, just a simple left hand on the piano baseline, just the

structure, the support it quietly offers. A hand on your shoulder, a steadying influence, doing more with less as the most transpires all around it. That's Crazy Bone with another roll call. Here's Wishbone with an important. important addition to it. I got to kill my dog. Damn man, I miss my uncle Charles, y'all. And he shouldn't be gone in front of his home. When they did, the group was wrong.

I had this whole thing, this rants, I guess, I was going to lay on you. I thought better of it, mostly. About this weird unpleasant image, this scene that pops into my head every once in a great while. It's random. It's unconnected to anything. It's unfair, almost. But the scene I suddenly picture is a large group of colleagues. kids at a party, maybe a frat party, maybe not, and they're all drunk, and they're all drunkenly,

sloppily, joyously singing along at the top of their little collegiate lungs to the masterpiece song I Miss My Homies. It's unfair because this didn't happen to me. I didn't hear about it anywhere. It's unconnected to anything in my personal experience. I didn't go to parties in college, pretty much. Surprise. It's bizarre. It's a bizarre tangent right now. and it's a bizarre tangent in my own head. And near as I can figure it, it's me working out the calculus of a hit song, a rap song, a pop song about grief,

about enormous personal grief, such as masterpiece grief over the death of his brother, Kevin, a rap song about grief that becomes a crossover smash hit, which means that millions of people know the song and love the song and sing along, rap along, stumble along to the lyrics to that song without any connection to the real life, dearly departed person, the singer slash rapper is singing slash rapping about. I'm working out whether anything changes emotionally in that translation.

A pop song is a vehicle for joy, almost by definition, an instant vehicle for joy. The crossroads comes on and you feel joy. It's a dopamine hit. It's a revelation. That's not disrespectful on your part if this extremely sad song makes you extremely happy. But it's a dopamine hit. It's a revelation. But it's a dopamine hit. It's a revelation. That's not disrespectful on your part if this extremely sad song makes you extremely happy. But it's weird, right? It's tricky. This is all a way of saying there is, I miss my Uncle Charles, y'all bootleg merch.

T-shirts, notebooks. There are YouTube explainers about Uncle Charles, a shout-out and a key and peel sketch, memes, etc. Uncle Charles was Wishbone's mother's brother. Uncle Charles took Wishbone to Wishbone's first concert to see Prince at the front row theater in Cleveland. And now Uncle Charles is a pop culture character. Millions of people have sung slash rapped about him and how they miss him.

They know Uncle Charles because of the song. And that's a beautiful thing, actually, now that I think about it in real time. It's tricky, but it's beautiful, too. And it's all down to I miss my Uncle Charles, y'all, being a fantastic line, a fantastic melody, a fantastic earworm. Tons of these fantastic earworms in this song, of course. This one, also from Wishbone, is my personal favorite. I get that loop caught in my head from time to time. I catch myself going,

Can somebody anybody tell me why? Which makes a lot more sense as a random thing stuck in my head, given that it's a fantastic earworm from an all-time smash hit crossover pop song. And it's such a sad line that I feel bad, sort of cheerfully ineptly wrapping along to it in my head. But it's a great line. It's a great question. In that same vein, I feel bad chuckling whenever I rewatch the video for the Crossroads.

MTV played the bejesus out of that video. And suffice it to say that the Crossroads video packs a Marvel movie's worth of CGI into four minutes and change. The finest CGI-1996 had to offer. The face coming out of the brick wall. It's not funny. it's a little funny, right? When your grief is this melodious, this infectious, this joyous, this anthemic, now it belongs

to everybody. It belongs even to the people who aren't grieving. But then again, as I learned from some YouTube comments recently, pretty much everyone is grieving somebody. And if you aren't, then one day you will. I don't tell you that to bum you out. I tell you that so you know that when you are bummed out, you've got options about where to turn and who to turn to.

just like they reminisce over you or soul alone or just like puff daddies, I'll be missing you if that's more your speed. The crossroads is here when you want it. But more importantly, it'll be here when you need it. Our guest today is Israel Dharamola, a writer and critic who's written for pitchfork,

spin, buzzfeed, and many other fine publications, including The Ringer. Israel, thanks so much for being here. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for letting me on. Of course, of course. To your mind,

where did bone thugs and harmony come from musically? Like I try not to ever describe anyone as unique, you know, or say nobody else has ever sounded like this. But like in terms of the speed and the melody and the harmony, like these guys do feel pretty distinct. Like what is the precedent here? They were incredibly distinct, which isn't the same as to say like they were the first to do anything.

Right. But their combinations and their style, it created something that just had never been heard before really and I don't want to be like hyperbolic but right me neither essentially like something you've never heard before but you know before bone thugs it was like a separation of church and state a little bit where rappers wrapped and you'd have singers who come in maybe and do a hook maybe they'd get their own verse, but it was never like together. They were like, in fact, they have like a very animosity-filled relationship together for a long time. And then guys like Nate Dogg comes along who is not quite a singer but also not a rapper, but like is sort of like bringing the two styles together to make something new. Right.

And the thing that's interesting to me about bone thugs is they're like boys to men, but rappers, like they're like really legit singers. Yeah. But they are also like incredibly like tough street wise like rappers. Yeah. Who just happened to have these like really great voices and they don't hide their voices. Right. So it's like that's kind of something that you just never.

experience. Yeah. I've read a lot about how, like, they're being from Cleveland, like, it's not so much that they're from Cleveland is that they're not from the East Coast or the West Coast. Like, they're not bound to what's happening in Los Angeles or what's happening in New York. Like, they're sort of regionless, and they can pull from anywhere. And that's part of the reason that they're able to bridge the singing and rapping divide. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's true. But also, and I don't know if it's because of, the EZE factor, but they are very West Close influence. Right. You know, their style is very, it's almost like a demented GFonk style, whereas just like taking GFund, but making it like darker and the wrapping is faster and more like, like, if they had been from like Oakland or something, I wouldn't be shocked. Right.

But, you know, the fact that they're from Cleveland, Ohio, but they find their opportunity in LA definitely influences their style. Yeah. I see Bone Thugs often described as doo-wop or du-wop influenced. Do you hear a do-wop influence yourself or does that

comparison feel more incidental? Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's in the harmony of what they do of like trying to harmonize with each other and matching each other's both their rast-out catases and their

tunefulness in the way that like they do their melodies they're always about like matching each other and like nobody really stands out i mean obviously like maybe crazy bonus like the main engine but they're all about like this uniformity in their style which is very duop and very barbershop quartet i was going to ask you if you had a favorite because for me part of you know listening to to a lot of a rap group, one of the thing that's fun for me is like they start to separate a little bit and like you start getting, you start playing favorites in your head, but it's a little harder with bone thugs. And is that a strength that there isn't so much separation that they're finishing each other's lines that they're blending like that on purpose? Well, I guess it's the other side of the tribe or outcast divide where it's like those guys are so distinct that like, they're, almost don't make sense together and their fans spend years trying to divide them for whatever reason. Right.

But when you bring them together with like bone thugs, it's like there's just so uniform that it feels silly to even think of them as four separate people. Solo rappers. I honestly would love to know how if people even know how many people are in both of us or like. 10. 15. Because it just doesn't matter.

But yeah, over time, crazy starts to separate himself and be more of like the distinct member of the group. But they are really all, they're all bone thugs even when they're not together. Right, right, right. Has any rapper or rap group since been able to do anything approaching what bone thugs did? Like I think about notorious thugs, the biggie track. And it's just amazing that he adjusts to their speed and their style at all. Has anyone managed to do anything like that consistently? I think you see that a lot with trap artists like Young Thug and Future

where people are trying to match their style and their energy. Yeah. You know, Drake does that a lot where like Drake will get on the track with somebody like Roddy Rich or like Future or somebody and try to rap like if not like them, but in a way that their audiences would understand. Right. But no, no one really does it anymore. Everybody's like just kind of doing their own thing.

And it's actually funny that like in this time of like excessive collaboration, the idea of like chemistry or like matching what the other person does as like a strength is like actually not a factor in any of these records. Right. What's missing is the harmony. Yeah, there's no, there's no harmony, really. Like, I think the last thing that happened was the rich gang mixtape. Yeah. We're like, Den Thug and Rich Homi Kwan, what makes their dynamic work is that they both have chemistry, but they're also trying to harmonize with each other on songs.

Like Flava, they're trying to harmonize with each other. and I don't that doesn't really happen yeah I also love excessive collaboration as a way to describe our current era that both in rap and also just in like products just everybody's getting together it's just the collaboration era right yeah uh because bone thugs have a more distinct sound like thinking about them now in 2021 does that tie them closer to their era do they sound like more explicitly like 90s rappers to you? Or do they sound timeless or at least less retro

since there's fewer people you can compare them to? I don't know if I call it timeless. Because it does feel dated, but it also doesn't feel like any specific time period. It just feels like outside of time their own thing that

is not necessarily current, but also is just like nobody else. sounds like them. And nobody sounded like them at the time. At the time, right. You could always tell a bone thugs song. Like, you know, they do that song with Mariah Carey for her album. And like, the minute you hear it, you think it's a bone thugs song.

Right. Even as Mariah Carey just kind of jumps in and you don't even realize that like, she's doing all of the singing and all of the verse. And they just come in at the end. But like, it just sounds. like a bone thug song from the production ad lives and hooks yeah um you told me that you have memories of singing of hearing the crossroads in church like broadly what is that like that sounds like a very intense experience to me well i grew up in a very religious family yeah

and you know when you're going to church all the time with other kids who are going to church all the time you just try to have fun and try to get away with doing things you shouldn't do. And one of those things is sing your rap songs. And we just like sing the most wildest offensive rap songs in church, like as a collective until like the adults had to yell at us and tell us to stop. Like what? What songs? I don't even know. I think maybe one time we tried to sing the whisper song.

This was like at the height of when the Yang Yang Twins' Whips' Whispers' Whispers' song came out. Oh, boy. And, like, it was on the radio all the time. It was. It's one of those things where, like, one kid either starts it or is, like, doing the beat on a table. And you just get into the moment of, like, doing the song. You don't even think about where you are.

And this is probably before the, I don't know if, like, kids get this now, but like, this is before the album came out. So, like, all we heard was the clean version. Okay. I was going to ask. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, we don't know what they are technically saying in the actual song, but, like, you know, you get, you still get the gist. I think you do.

going back to both of us yes please i remember seeing crossroads was like stood out to me because it was one of the songs we could get away with because that's actually a really clean record it's like there's no there's no curse words in it and also it gets into that thing

it feels religious it feels very religious so you know Christians are really fixated on death, the idea of, like, dying and going to heaven, but also the idea that, like, the world we live in is hell

that we have to overcome. It's actually a really dark song, but, like, it's such... It's such a, like, an irresistible hook and, like, the way they wrap it is just, like, it's fun to wrap along to, so you don't really think about, like, how depressing and like how like it's a real fear like they're like I don't want to I'm going to die

someday and I don't want to I don't want to be alone when I die yeah I don't want to be alone I don't want to like I don't want to pay for the things I did on its earth because I had to you know it's just it's a really deep song but so I think people were just kind of fine with for those rapping along to that because at least it felt kind of religious. Sure. I've always closely associated

the crossroads with I'll be missing you with Puff as just two massive crossover rap hits that each eulogize like a very specific, famous, and beloved rapper. Is there anything that those two songs can teach us about how hip-hop specifically mourns

its dead? Not really. I mean Totally an acceptable answer Yeah Not because On some level You never know when a song is going to blow up

Sure But on another level, especially in the case of puff Well, right, yeah Some songs are like engineered to Be hits And I don't think people Think to those selves

I'm going to make a hit song for my dead friend because that will be the true lasting legacy a way to like remember them. Like I think that people just either choose to

memorialize a friend through a song or an artist through a song and it might catch on, it might not like it's funny that like Tupac doesn't have a song like there's no song that anyone wrote about Tupac's death that like became like even the thing where like I can think of one on the top of my head.

Sure. So Easy and notorious BIG were just like in interesting positions where like they were next to people who were going to be big stars. And so they were able to like have these memorialized records that became these synonymous hits. Right. Because I guess I was thinking, like, there's no rock song eulogizing Kirk Cobain anywhere near this explicitly at anywhere near this scale. And I was wondering if, like, rap music was more in touch with its feelings in that sense, or at least more willing to just outright say, here is a song that we wrote for you specifically.

But, like, the reason I'll be missing you as a hit is because it's based on one of the biggest hits of the 80s. Like, it's just a straight. Like that's much more important to how huge that song is than what it's about. But I do think there's something to that where we do want to moralize people in hip hop songs more likely because of the circumstances of how people who become rappers grow up. Right. But also like, you know, when Kirk Hovein was alive and a major star, he wasn't like making. friends with like big people in the industry, he was using his platform to like push up bands like the meat puppets. Daniel Johnston and Jobbreaker and the Melvins and like bands that just

had been lifers and were working already. Right. It just never got the opportunity to like play for a large crowd. So like, I don't know, it'd be weird if like, One of these grunge, the big grudge bands were like, let's write a song for Kurt Cobain to memorialize it. It doesn't seem like at the height of grudge, all these guys are like hanging out with each other. No. They were just part of the same scene. Right. Both of those have a chaotic history and discography.

Like, guys will drop out and come back. Flesh and Bone was in prison. But, like, they've put out records consistently, and they're touring right now. Like with a hit as huge as the crossroads, do they not get the credit they deserve for consistency and longevity? Probably not. There is something about bone thugs that feels gimmicky, even though it's not a gimmick. Right. Like they feel like a gimmick, like these guys who rap really fast and sing like they do with this like barbershop quartet style.

Right. It just feels gimmicky, even though it's really hard to pull off. And it's really hard to pull off in a way that's like, you take them seriously. But, like, fast rapping has become such a punchline now. You know, that's sort of, like, style where, like, every white rapper does it now. So it's become this, like, joke style. But I guess there is this thing of, like, being too innovative. No, absolutely.

Where you're so innovative that like, how do other people kind of match you without like outright copying you? No, I get that absolutely. This has been awesome, Israel. Thanks so much for collaborating with us today. No problem. Rest in peace to Uncle Charles.

That's right. Always. Always. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Israel, Dara Mola. Thanks as always. to our intrepid producers, Justin Sales, Isaac Lee, and Lonnie Ronaldo, and thanks very much to you for listening. Without further ado, here are Bone Thugs in Harmony with the Crossroads. We'll see you next week.