Artist: Above The Law
Release: Uncle Sam’s Curse
Release Date: 12/07/1994
It’s been a hot one, but this summer is coming to an end. As the air cools and the dark nights draw in, it seems the perfect time to revisit a classic West Coast album that is just Cali enough to keep that summer feeling going a while longer, but just dark enough not to feel out of place as autumn falls. This week’s throwback is Above the Law’s largely-forgotten classic ‘Uncle Sam’s Curse’. There’s something about this album, the way those sludgy purple G-Funk basslines, soulful hooks and vinyl crackle over the drum samples contrast with the squealing synths and plasticky organs. It’s druggy and dark, but with an unavoidable sense of warmth. Close your eyes listening to ‘Concrete Jungle’ and your nose seems to catch the smell of weed smoke in the summer night air outside a Pomona house party in 1994, the residual heat from the day’s sun rising off the concrete, as voices and cars drift by in the distance.
This is a far more mellow and mature sound than the metallic sonic assault that the group put out earlier in their career when, as labelmates and close collaborators with N.W.A., they had a Dre-produced hit in ‘Murder Rap’. The sound is less self-consciously violent than that, and this chilled approach extends to the album’s lyrical content. Although the gun and drug talk is there, contextualised by the kind of anti-establishment politics that you expect from a group who came up during the ‘Fuck The Police’ era of West Coast rap, on the majority of ‘Uncle Sam’s Curse’ the tone of the lyrical delivery is muted, nihilistic in a way that suggests a melancholy wisdom rather than directionless adolescent fury. Cold187um and KMG aren’t threatening the listener so much as warning them about the dangers and injustices of California street life.
Whatever the two MCs discuss in their roundabout, relaxed flows, politics is never far away. The album projects the idea of the gangster as a ‘Black Superman’, held back by prejudice and inequality but ready to rise above it by any means. Every activity is both a rebellion and a necessary act of survival in a hostile world, and is therefore justifiable. Whether talking about partying, politics, the drug trade or gang violence, every aspect of life is a part of Uncle Sam’s Curse. In short, the album feels like a kind of twilight for the West Coast’s gangsta glory days, one where the flames have become embers, a haze has settled in and where the sound has matured into something more thoughtful and evocative. With that being said, buy it, burn one and drive around at night pretending your Golf is a ’64 Impala.
9/10
