Because you don't look real If I touched your face your skin would peel And reveal your real identity People would find out what you used to be A scheming six foot piece of dogshit I hope you heard this, Because you really fucking deserve it!
Remember 1991? It seems like a long, weary time ago when the most deserving target of our collective ire was Vanilla Ice. Not, we hasten to add for the quite excellent ‘Ice Ice Baby’ – still a guaranteed floor filler at any office party, but for his ill-advised half-witted comments about his ‘blackness’ and risible comments about gang scrapes; cultural appropriation not being a term most of us had ever heard of 29 years ago.
Whilst most thought ‘major-label funded dickhead, possibly being pushed as part of a corporate effort to gentrify hip-hop and blunt its’ political vigour’* and moved on, it clearly and very understandably got right up the nose of MC Fusion and his friends in Walsall. This fuelled his debut single Pay The Price, released on Chumbawumba’s Agit-Prop label.
A very jolly ditty with a high swear count and a great happy tune, I was always going to like this when I heard it^. Add in the fact that MC Fusion, Matty to his mates, raps smoothly in a mix of Jamaican patois and Birmingham slang and it gets even better. Wrap it up in a sleeve parodying the Beano comic and I was always going to covet this beauty. For the sake of harmony and positivity I will gloss over the B-sides and the odd end-terlude where MC V (apparently a cartoon figure of Dennis The Menace’s dog, Gnasher) raps in a sped-up chipmunk voice – but hey, Matty was 17 at the time.
Talking a lot of lies about what he used to do He used to be in gang fights? Fuck you! Saying God went wrong when he made you white Well done Vanilla you got something right He should have made you something what dogs use the most Something that they piss on Yeah a fucking lamp post
Oddly I bought this on Discogs from Texas, I can’t imagine a more English record in a more American place. I would love to know how it got there. Enjoy.
So after making ripples with Call It What You Want, I picked up Credit To The Nation’s follow-up Hear No Bullshit, See No Bullshit, Say No Bullshit, can you see what could possibly have attracted swear-fan me to this 12″?
Love songs come straight from the heart, Not from your arse You raas!
It’s good and heavy, a widely-targeted scattershot comment on contemporary hip-hop and the music industry in general. It’s good on rap clichés and sexism in particular. There’s a sample swirling around in the background that I can’t quite put my pinna on, which is intriguing.
It’s interesting just how much Credit To The Nation had found their voice in the two years since their debut. Some of the giddy good time roll has gone, but there’s a much smarter focus on the bigger picture. The Beelzebub of Pay The Price even gets a mention too, nothing worth losing your cool over.
Vanilla you sometimes ponder / Ice ice baby, now you’re a one-hit wonder.
The B-sides are better than those on Pay The Price, but neither ‘Ole Him Selecter’ (lovely jazz piano sample and nice harmony vox) and ‘Time To Get Hype (American Wannabe Remix)’ tickle the memory glands too much.
Credit To The Nation got a lot better in the two years from ’91 to ’93 but the earlier single better suits my state of permanent adolescence. Ah well, at least Hear No Bullshit, See No Bullshit, Say No Bullshit comes with an enormous poster of the cover that I have yet to put up at any office I have worked in, despite the temptation.
As for Credit To The Nation, I taped the debut LP Take Dis from a mate (lack of funds at the time, sorry Matty) and enjoyed every second of a brilliant support slot on the manic Street Preachers Gold Against The Soul tour and then totally failed to buy their best single, Enough Is Enough; maybe there’s a copy out in Nebraska with my name on.
1019 Down.
*which was always a theory espoused by the powerfully paranoid and very astute Jello Biafra about why grunge was pushed hard at the masses in ’91 – to numb political discourse and miscegenation**.
**although history has shown us the true reason was a plot by the military industrial complex to kill off the careers of Roxx Gang and Trixter; their motives remain shadowy to this day.
^a couple of years later after it came out, the mighty, Call It What You Want.