3rd Bass

3rd Bass offered a new model for white rappers. They were the anti-Beastie Boys. Queens native MC Serch and Long Island’s Pete Nice presented themselves as loyal devotees, not brash punks. The pair met and studied at ‘80s hip-hop meccas like Latin Quarter and rapped for years to earn their stripes before signing a deal. Their Def Jam debut, The Cactus Album (1989), with Jamaican-born DJ Richie Rich, cheekily acknowledges the emcees’ own interloping status from the jump, dissing “pop figures who figured they’d get paid exploiting art the black man made”. That album and their follow-up, Derelicts of Dialect, featuring “Pop Goes the Weasel”, flip canonical funk breaks and deliver knotty lyricism attuned to Rakim and Big Daddy Kane’s avant-garde rhyme schemes, while leading producers Prince Paul and The Bomb Squad contributed beats. History may best remember 3rd Bass for the artists they launched—MF DOOM’s first verse, then as Zev Love X, appears on “The Gas Face”, and Serch executive produced Nas’ Illmatic—but their records stand on their own as hallmarks of Def Jam’s transition into the ‘90s and hip-hop’s own evolution into a dense literary form.