Revisited: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - E. 1999 Eternal (1995)

Revisited: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - E. 1999 Eternal (1995)

Rappers would make great small business owners, and perhaps even great corporate CEO's. Most people listen to a rap album and hear boasting and braggadocio; I hear branding. Take Bone Thugs-N-Harmony for instance. They use E. 1999 Eternal to continually state what they're about and establish their brand. If they came up with a mission statement, I imagine it would read something like the following:

With Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, we promise to celebrate marijuana culture and to pursue financial security through the distribution of cocaine and other related drugs and paraphernalia. We are intensely focused on increasing our revenue, and with a comically large arsenal of illegal weaponry, we will continually strive to provide more murder than any of our competitors.

The major themes and statements on this album are driven home with just enough repetition to commit to memory but without ever annoying the listener. After only one listen, you will have intimate knowledge of the band's smoking habits as well as be fully aware of their killer instinct. You will know exactly where the group is from; SCT will be a familiar acronym. Terms that may have been unfamiliar to you before, like "llello" (yay-oh) and "pap", will be made apart of your everyday lexicon. When your skeptical friends question whether "shots to the double glock" actually makes sense as a statement, you'll be able to argue against their suspicions in detail. Any company on earth would die for that kind of brand recognition and loyalty. Had Easy-E been alive when the group recorded the remix of "Crossroad" (which would've then nullified its re-recording altogether, but lets not start analyzing my rant too much), he probably would've scolded them in a morning meeting for failing to adhere to the groups' core principles regarding drug use and violent retaliation, and kept them after work until they could recite the mission statement verbatim. Tell me that's not the attitude of a successful businessman.

I used to listen to E. 1999 all of the time as a kid. You know how sometimes people will excitedly reminisce over their favorite childhood cartoons and Disney movies when they're around a group of peers; bringing back all of these fond memories and having them state regrettably how kids today are getting ripped off in comparison? That's how I am about this album. My wife raised an eyebrow at this. It's now probably on the list of things I've told her about my past that makes her marvel at the fact that I turned out to be such a normal and level-headed adult. I may be all about responsibility and budgeting these days, but in the summer of '95, at the tender age of eleven, I was all about "keepin' em on da run wid a me shotgun".

Blame my older siblings: they both bought the album the day it came out, assuring that I was never to be very far from it. You have to try and understand their excitement, though. After the Creepin' On Ah Come Up EP and the success of the single,"Thuggish Ruggish Bone", the anticipation for Bone's full-length was huge in Ohio. HUGE. Bone were the only worthwhile rap artists representing our home state in a time where the genre was dominated by the east and west coast, skipping the Midwest entirely. Yet here Bone were: the talk of the entire rap world, and certainly the talk of the entire region and state. I didn't grow up in Cleveland, but I imagine they were bursting with so much pride that mine was just a mild seeping of pride in comparison.

Listening to E. 1999 Eternal today, I'm delighted as to how well it has held up over the years. You know, despite all the talk of murder and whatnot, Bone have always seemed like a pretty likable group of guys. There's nary a discriminatory remark about women to be found on the whole album, which is notable for almost any era of rap music. Their rapid-fire rhymes mixed in with occasional harmonizing (they aren't called Thugs-N-Harmony for nothing) provide a style that totally sets them apart, and the verses are delivered with such sincerity that when Krayzie talks of a murder he's recently committed ("I didn't want to take his life, but the nigga tried to run and get away with me llello"), you believe him and sympathize with his difficult decision. I mean, the guy tried to take his drugs for Christs sake, he had no choice.

My only complaint with this album, besides some filler tracks here and there, is that the version I bought doesn't contain the original version of "Crossroad". True, the "Crossroad" remix was much better (Grammy nominated, even), but they didn't have to take the original off entirely; they could've made it a hidden bonus track at the end or something. I miss the original mainly because it was one of two tracks on the album to borrow a sample from the Sega Genesis fighting game, Eternal Champions ("Eternal", naturally, being the other). See, that's another reason why Bone seem like likable guys. Despite their tough exterior personality and rampant drug use, they were really just geeks who liked nothing more than to chill out and play video games, which made me feel a lot better about myself growing up.



"Eternal"