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Czars of Bizarre

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Rebel Rockers: The Pharcyde

The Pharcyde wrestles with success

By Nicky Baxter

Three years ago, with L.A.'s hip-hop scene in the grip of gat-rap mania, along came the Pharcyde, a kooky crew of class clowns rockin' something dubbed True School, a loopy but deft melange of tricky beats marked by sinuous horn figures, toon-town synths and stray samples ranging from Dr. Funkenstein's P-funk lab to CSN&Y burn-out Stephen Stills.

The group's debut album, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, added up to quite an adventure, light on the booty-bump quotient but heavy on comic-strip hilarity. Prime rhyme-schemers and inspired loop-lifters, Tre "Slimkid" Hardson, Imani Wilcox, Romye "Bootie Brown" Robinson and Derrick Stewart (a.k.a. Fat Lip), tipped their collective hat to hip-hop's then-royalty--EPMD and A Tribe Called Quest, with a nod to rap renegades De La Soul--mugging all the while.

Orphaned by hip-hop's hardcore as "too soft," the group was instead embraced by the alternative tentacles of indie rockers, who saw the Pharcyde as a less-threatening option to gangsta's aggressive posturing. The group's current release, Labcabincalifornia (Delicious Vinyl), suggests that the feeling isn't necessarily mutual.

Having apparently outgrown the school-boy high jinks of the inaugural effort, the band has had its sense of humor darkened considerably by the hype, hoes and money hounds. Where Bizarre Ride magnanimously welcomed fellow passengers with open arms, the new album, at least initially, keeps you at arm's length. Slimkid and his companions have discovered that Lollapalooza glitter ain't always gold. This is a cynical bunch, distrustful of jealous guys and dolls, and the powers that be.

Musically, the Pharcyde has cranked up the bass and drum to entice 'hoodies who like beats that go bump in the nightclub. As the first track, "Bullshit," makes obvious, these wise guys got no beef with the party people, they only want to free your mind, so your ass can follow.

The thorny dilemmas of pop-star status, power and gender, however, have led these young men to some unfortunately predictable conclusions. Like much of the G-funk contingent, the Pharcyde falls prey to the spurious notion that all women are conniving bitches out to squeeze men of means dry, emotionally and financially.

"Groupie Therapy," for instance, suffers from a certain lack of analysis. The reality of women dialing up the stars for dollars cannot denied, but neither can the broader social context--the group is, after all, a commodity on the pop marketplace, a link in a convoluted chain of events wherein money changes everything, including their relationships with women and men. Those so-called "bitches" are just as much a victim/product of that process as the Pharcyde itself.

On the other hand, "Runnin'," the album's first single, has been a breath of fresh air on ersatz black radio. A comely confection of acoustic guitar, in-yer-grill drums and cushy harmonizing, this sad-sack story of a 98-pound weakling who is fed up with having sand kicked in his face isn't so much a threat as wishful thinking.

After the desultory bedroom warbling of "She Said" and a meandering supper-club interlude, the boys go toe to toe with the record biz. Sporting an aggressive bass/drum tandem, "Somethin' That Means Somethin' " juggles a deceptively offhanded critique of capitalism with some excellent dream-state flow. Like the Digable Planets at their best, the Pharcyde's murmured rebel rock is packaged so attractively that its cautionary advice ("It's a business/The record companies are quick to end the fantasy") can slip right past unless you listen up.

"Devil Music" is even more explicit in its depiction of the battle between art and commerce: "Everytime I step to the microphone/I put my soul on 2-inch reels that I don't even own." Yet, while these young, gifted and black brothers are smart enough to describe their predicament, it is far from clear that they can come up with an effective counterplan.

This vexing contradiction--lack of control over one's creative endeavors--helps explain Slimkid's aggravated paranoia: "They got the girls by the hearts/And the niggaz by the nutz/Ear, tongue and butts/Yeah, they're trying to fuck us up/But, shit, you know what's up."

Still, you get the feeling that the Pharcyde ain't goin' out like that, as midway through the song they issue a defiant challenge: "We gotta get with the movement/And move men soon." The Pharcyde may be, as Imani conceded in a recent interview, "sleeping with the enemy," but they're keeping one eye open.

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