The story of All Natural is typical of indie rappers. Here we have, by the end of the 90's, a promising band coming from Chicago - by then not a rap stronghold yet. These guys start negotiating a contract with the Wild Pitch label, but its closure forces them soon to manage their career by themselves. Then, while taking the lead of a new crew, the Family Tree, the duo launches its own facility, All Natural Inc. And by the beginning of the new decade, they associate with two indie institutions, their neighbors Tortoise's Thrill Jockey label on the rock side, and Fat Beats on the hip-hop side. The former releases their records as CDs, and the latter as vinyls.
However, before All Natural joins these labels, before they release an album, Second Nature, featuring Slug, J.U.I.C.E. and the Lone Catalysts, and positioning them as a part of the Midwest indie intelligentsia, the duo made of Capital D and Tone B Nimble proposes remarkable singles, all collected on another record, No Additives, No Preservatives.
Considered by some as a cult album, this record has two key assets: first, it is sold with an interesting booklet full of political observations, Fresh Air, concocted by The Writer's Bloc, a hip-hop writers collective led by Capital D; and also, it addresses exactly the underground's demands of the time.
The two guys offer what they want to hip-hop heads, hostile to the bling bling pop that has come to dominate rap music by these days. Their raps are dark and sober. They are declaimed with skills and clarity, on simple but impactful loops. Scratches are prominent. Lessons are shared about the best way to do rap. And the archenemy is the wack MC.
Sometimes, when people play this game, the risk is to replace clichés by others. And this is precisely what Capital D and Tone B Nimble do, at times. Many of the album's tracks, however, haven't lost much of their original luster.
On several occasions, the duo drops their usual boom bap for weirder sounds, like with the insane beat of "Fresh Air", or the vibrating "MC Avenger". The heavy bass and emphatic strings of the sumptuous "Phantoms Of The Opera", a strange story about vanishing wack MCs, are also worth noticing. And the atmosphere is still the same, oppressive but delectable, with "Take It To Em" and the progressive beat of "No Nonsense", while the single "50 Years", where All Natural projects themselves in the future, is luminous.
Last but not least, there is "It's O.K.", a song where, more than the light flute proposed by Panic of the Molemen, we can enjoy lyrics where rappers are invited to follow the only valid guidelines in any form of art: to do their own things, not to mimic their idols, to be nothing else than themselves.
PS : the cover art above belongs to the British version, the one I own, released by the short-lived rap subsidiary of the trip-hop label Cup of Tea (Monk & Canatella, Statik Sound System), Uppercut. The American edition's is the following.
