Rating:
Genre:
Rap
Release Date: 09/20/1989
The landmark opening salvo from
the Jungle Brothers,
Straight out the Jungle was also the very first album from
the Native Tongues posse, which would utterly transform
hip-hop over the next few years. That alone would be enough to make it a groundbreaking release, but
Straight out the Jungle also contains the musical seeds for a number of soon-to-be-dominant trends. Their taste for jazzy horn samples helped kick-start the entire
jazz-rap movement, and their concurrent
James Brown fixation was one of the first to follow
Eric B. & Rakim's lead. Plus, the group's groundbreaking collaboration with legendary
house producer
Todd Terry,
"I'll House You," is also here; it paved the way for numerous
hip-house hybrids that shot up the dance and
pop charts over the next few years. The lyrics were often as cerebral as the music was adventurous and eclectic, appealing to the mind rather than the gut -- and the fact that
rap didn't necessarily have to sound as though it were straight off the streets was fairly revelatory at the time.
"Black Is Black" and the title cut are some of the first flowerings of Afrocentric
hip-hop, but the group isn't always so serious;
"I'm Gonna Do You," "Behind the Bush," and the sly classic
"Jimbrowski" are all playfully sexy without descending into misogyny. To modern ears,
Straight out the Jungle will likely sound somewhat dated -- the raw, basement-level production is pretty rudimentary even compared to their second album, and makes the
jazz-rap innovations a bit difficult to fully comprehend, plus the album ends on several throwaways. But it is possible to hear the roots of
hip-hop's intellectual wing, not to mention a sense of fun and positivity that hearkened back to the music's earliest
Sugar Hill days -- and that's why
Straight out the Jungle ultimately holds up.
~Steve Huey, All Music Guide
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