When Golden Era rap heads wax nostalgic about the long gone days of great hip-hop lyricism, they aren’t typically referring to Nice & Smooth. Maybe they ought to be. Lest anyone forget, before rappers were rappers they were known as emcees (MC’s) – AKA masters of ceremony – a role defined by personality and showmanship above all else. Raised in the Bronx as eyewitnesses to hip-hop in its park jam infancy, Greg Nice and Smooth B embodied these attributes as a highly entertaining team of contrasting timbres: Greg with his high-pitched non-sequiturs offset by Smooth’s, yes, smoother, and deeper debonair witticisms. Presented as silk PJs-wearing playboys on their self-titled 1989 debut, Nice & Smooth could convincingly rap/sing an interpolation of “The Girl From Ipanema” (“More and More Hits”), drop a catchy chorus over the Fat Albert theme (“Early to Rise”), or unleash an opening lyrical faux pas so memorable (“Hey yo, Dizzy Gillespie plays a sax” – from “Funky For You”) its flagrant historical inaccuracy only added to its charm.
So when their once-prolific independent label, Fresh Records, went belly-up, enabling Def Jam/RAL to savvily acquire both theirs and labelmates EPMD’s recording contracts, Nice & Smooth were poised to enjoy a proper promotional push for their already infectious sound. As its title indicates, the resulting LP, Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed, doesn’t mess much with a good thing. Its breakout hit, “Hip-Hop Junkies,” may in fact provide a perfect case study for their signature hook-loaded approach: one part sample earworm (from the Partridge Family’s ’70s bubblegum pop hit “I Think I Love You”), one part easily repeatable refrain (“I got a funky, funky rhyme and a funky style”), one part background vocal harmonies (from frequent collaborators, Pure Blend), and most crucially, several parts nonsensical but catchy-as-hell rhymes – the most reliably silliest via Greg: “Greg Nice, my life’s like a fairy tale / Orca was a great big whale / I knew a fat girl who broke the scale / You won’t taay-ell, I won’t taay-ell.”
Musically, “How to Flow” and “Cake and Eat It Too” largely stick with this musical formula, leaning prominently on routines reworked from classic R&B hooks (or at least vintage-sounding ones) in their slick updates of the spirit of the original school. They also make room for some additional deeper thoughts: contemplations of faith on the former, disappointment and heartbreak on the latter. It’s a subtle mood shift that sees the duo going full mercurial on the album’s other smash single, “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow.”
Based on the elegiac opening acoustic guitar riff from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” it’s initially characteristically playful – all jittery drums matching Greg Nice’s hyper first verse (in which he hilariously rhymes “Chick-O-Stick,” “take a lick,” “catch a flick,” and “Wore my Timberland boots so I can stomp ticks”). Smooth B’s verse, on the other hand, chronicles a romance gone awry thanks to an unfortunate recurring character in rap narratives of the period, addiction: “I don’t deal coke, and furthermore you’re making me broke / I’ll put you in a rehab and I won’t tell your folks / And what do you know / In 18 months she came home and I let her back in / And now she’s sniffing again…” It’s a stunning turn – a compelling, sobering second act in an otherwise irresistibly happy-go-lucky hit. But then again, great emcees can surprise you that way.
Listen to the Nice & Smooth album Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed now.