Well, is it?

first!

This was pure East Coast grime!

Where are you drawing the connections to crunk?

I don't see that. I think cats like Too Short, DJ Quik, 8 Ball and MJG, Scarface, Geto Boys, etc. influenced crunk moreso than Onyx or any other East Coast crews from the early 90's.

everybody knows Conan O'Brien invented crunk.

FunkMistress said:

I dunno. The energy of it. The near moshing in the video. Maybe more the overall effect than the specific sound.

GangstaFam said:

I was going to ask whether it had do do with the manic energy of it rather than musical elements. I get where you're going there.

FunkMistress said:

I thought "grime" was all the Dizee Rascal/Lady Sovereign stuff coming out of the UK right now.

MendesCity said:

I thought so too.....I know that I like a lot of the grime music that I've heard so far.

"Slam" is one of the songs that kinda sums up the 90's for me. Not necessarily my favorite song in the world, but whenever I think of the 90's, that song definitely comes to mind.

I dont know, but I know two of the dudes in that group went onto semi successful acting careers.

Maybe a Lil' Jon remix of "Slam".....YEEEEEAH!!!!!

woogiebear said:

Oops.....I meant YAAAAAY-UUUUHHHHH!!!!!

FunkMistress said:

The reason I assosciate it is because whenever I heard the term crunk when it first started like 3 or 4 years ago, there were always a bunch of guys slammin' around in the videos. I thought of that as crunk before I could tie any musical elements together into a sub-genre. "Slam" seems way more like the word crunk than any of this current stuff.

dammit, now i got the friggin chorus in my head....

slam! dut-duuuuuh-dut, dut-duuuuuh-dut...

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

GangstaFam said:

damn you!

plus i remember i liked the way they spelled the name of the album this was on...bacdafucup.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Don't ask me why, but for some reason that sounds like cough medicine to me.

GangstaFam said:

for instant cough relief...bacdafucup!

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

That's the one!

in the video they had some rock band thrashing around with them.....anyone remember that? i can kinda see where your goin with this. like you said the overall effect maybe more so than the group. it was rowdy east coast hiphop of its time.

Christopher said:

yeah, i remember that remix they did...i forgot who the group was, though. i wanna say it was anthrax, but it's been forever since i heard it.

"Slam" is a record you can get "crunk/hyphy/active" to, but it's not necessarily a part of the "crunk" genre.

Crunk is centered in the South first and foremost (although its ethos has spread throughout the nation). Its the antithesis of the Miami/Southeastern Booty Bass/Quad sound and is a direct cousin of it. Its danceable and bass heavy, but in a more slowed down, brooding way with lower BPMs. The subject matter is more brooding and sonically darker as well. Plus, crunk combines elements of West Coast [gangsta] rap/G-funk.

If you've heard Crucial Conflict's "Hay," I'd say that fits more along the lines of proto-crunk because you can hear the spirit of that song in tunes like Bone Crusher's "Never Scared," and a lot of Three Six Mafia's stuff... namepeace gave some good examples as well when he mentioned Geto Boys, Scarface and Eightball & MJG, they inspired SO many acts in the South. 2 Live Crew did as well.

SORRY FOR SOUNDING LIKE A TEXTBOOK. That's the only way I can describe it to you.
[Edited 10/9/06 7:36am]

I wouldn't consider Onyx a precursor to Crunk. If anyone, I'd consider Luke the 1st to consistently do call-and-response party rap that Lil' Jon's made popular. Lil' Jon's "crunk" is kinda like Luke chants over old Three 6 Mafia beats, going back to "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" through the mid-'90's Luke albums.

Still, Onyx never gets the lyrical respect that they deserve. Sticky's verse aside, have you ever checked how sophisticated Onyx's flow was for the early '90's?

I still have my bacdafuckup cd and "shifty" cd single that I bought the summer of 1993. They tried to mix hip hop with the slam dance culture that was hot at the time in the alt rock scene. It was definitly something new and fresh at the time. Mainstream hip hop was soooo much more diverse then. There was something for everyone and it was actually played on the radio and MTV.

You neva miss the water.... I tell ya...
[Edited 10/9/06 19:35pm]