#BONE THUGS N HARMONY EAST 1999 SONGS FULL#
It was full and heady, but it still gave their vocals plenty of room to work. He have them a hazy, tingly take on the West Coast G-funk sound. Eazy-E, the group’s mentor, had paired them with the West Coast producer DJ U-Neek, who went onto produce everything on their first three albums. If Bone had been just a new approach to rap vocals, they would’ve been a fun novelty, but they might not have been more than that. It was like: “I didn’t know you could do it like that.”
Hearing Bone for the first time was like watching seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki shoot a three-pointer for the first time. But maybe that was just what Cleveland rap sounded like in the early ’90s, and we don’t know because barely anyone knows any Cleveland rap other than Bone. Three-6 Mafia accused Bone of biting as soon as they came along, though the two groups never really sounded that similar. It’s a completely alien take on rap, one that seems like it shouldn’t work but that absolutely does. Nobody’s ever heard anything like it, and by the time they break out of their town, nobody knows what the fuck they’re hearing. Cleveland, hometown to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, was and is a total rap backwater, so they develop this whole sound in complete isolation. They get so good at it that, sooner or later, all five guys sound like Twista trying to sing like Nate Dogg while still rapping absurdly quickly and somehow succeeding. They get into that friendly-competition thing that’s always great for rap, cramming in as many words as they can. It’s the early ’90s, so they start rapping, too, and they find ways to do that while staying completely in key. But they aren’t living in the early ’60s. While they’re out on those corners, during quiet moments, they fill time by singing old songs together, harmonizing on Temptations tracks the same way the actual Temptations once did. Five guys from a decrepit Midwestern city stay out in the streets, trying to get money however they can. In the end, E 1999 Eternal stands as one of the most accomplished, unique hardcore rap albums of the '90s, one that's often unfairly overlooked, if not dismissed entirely, because of the group's subsequent unraveling.It’s practically a rap superhero origin story. There are a few standout moments, most notably the Grammy-winning ballad "Tha Crossroads" and the feel-good welfare ode "1st of the Month," as well as, of course, some obligatory blaze-some-to-this tracks, "Budsmokers Only" and "Buddah Lovaz." The intermittent tracks are good old-fashioned gangsta rap about murder, drugs, and money. The Bone Thugs interweave their voices well, trading off verses and harmonizing on the choruses. From beginning to end, the album maintains a consistent tone, one that's menacing and somber, produced entirely by DJ U-Neek, a Los Angeles-based producer who frames the songs with dark, smoked-out G-funk beats and synth melodies. Following the surprise success of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's summer 1994 anthem "Thuggish Ruggish Bone," the group returned a year later with E 1999 Eternal, an impressive debut full-length that dismisses any notion that the group was merely a one-hit wonder.