Back in 1995, the Pharcyde disappointed the hiphop world with the mellow and mushy Labcabincalifornia. It was the worst possible follow-up to the group's reckless debut CD, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. At the time, critics and fans who opted to misread the terrible truth of this failure claimed, as the Pharcyde did in interviews and press releases, that Bizarre Ride was puerile, and that Labcabincalifornia represented a more mature side to the group. One pleased critic for Spin, Sia Michel, went so far as to describe it as "Martin Lawrence doing Chekhov." But the Pharcyde's bewildering shift had almost nothing to do with growth, maturity, or Chekhov. The Pharcyde simply turned coward when it came time to confront its own dazzling creation: its genius.
In this respect, a more useful Russian literary reference to the Pharcyde's post-Bizarre Ride slump is Gogol. Indeed, we can say that anything the Pharcyde has made after its debut CD has been "Martin Lawrence doing Gogol," because it is in Gogol's rejection of his masterpiece Dead Souls that we find affinities with the Pharcyde's rejection of Bizarre Ride. Dead Souls, which was published in 1842, was an inelegantly messy and unrestrained novel. Its hero, Chichikov, is still one of the most immoral creatures in all of literature. In a word, the book was brilliant! Astounded by its success and influence, Gogol spent the rest of his insane life trying to dismantle the magnificent monster he created. He even wrote a sequel, which attempted to tame the voluptuous Chichikov, to make him more responsible, respectable, humble. The novel was terrible.
Likewise, the Pharcyde's first CD lacked boundaries, a moral center, basic principles, and was charged by an energy sourced not from the refined order of heaven but the orgasmic disorder of hell. Bizarre Ride confessed, denounced, and laughed at everything. "Ya Mama" opens with "brothers and sisters" asking the Pharcyde "to be dropping some knowledge and shit, [and] wisdom for the people today." The Pharcyde responds to this request by declaring: "Your mom is so fat!" But the mockery, which was clearly aimed at Public Enemy and the school of Afrocentrists (X Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers) who dominated hiphop's political discourse at the time, was not satirical or meaningful. The Pharcyde was simply laughing at Public Enemy's tropes and tactics.
And after laughing at Public Enemy, the Pharcyde would laugh at gangster rap ("Yes, I come from Cali/no, I do not have a perm") and then laugh at itself ("So I'm looking at my wallet and I do not have a buck/damn I'm out of luck, damn I'm feeling stuck"). This would be followed by a bright, sunny song about how the drug dealer had just called and was on his way.
Instead of reviving or reinventing the lunacy the Pharcyde captured on its first CD, the group's members did their desperate best to renounce it. Their last CD, which was released just three months ago, is called Plain Rap. Meaning, "Don't expect any of that silly stuff from our younger years, we are now grownups, with things to say to the world." Even the song titles of Plain Rap express their total commitment to mature themes: "Trust," "Misery," "Evolution," "World," "Frontline."
Shortly after releasing Plain Rap, which managed to be even more dull and lugubrious than Labcabin, the Pharcyde has now come up with Cydeways: The Best of the Pharcyde. The immediate problem with this CD is its title, which implies that over the years the group has gradually accumulated a list of hit songs from various releases. This is far from the truth; the Pharcyde's career is not distinguished by a legacy, but rather one massive monument that contains all of the group's best songs. Cydeways, however, is not entirely ignorant of this hard fact, because out of the 15 tracks it offers, nine are from Bizarre Ride.
Sadly, Cydeways has excluded "Soul Flower" and "On the D.L." from the ranks of the very best. But this is something the Pharcyde has had to do, otherwise Cydeways would have simply been Bizarre Ride, minus the skits and interludes. My final recommendation is this: If you own Bizarre Ride, then there is no reason to buy Cydeways; if you don't own Bizarre Ride, I still suggest you just buy a copy of the debut, since it happens to be the best CD for a house party that has entered the morning hours.
