Deep Album Cuts Vol. 413: Naughty By Nature
Pretty much everybody knows at least a couple Naughty By Nature singles, but far fewer people know how good their albums were, which is really the essence of what this series is about.
2. Pin the Tail on the Donkey
3. Wickedest Man Alive (featuring Queen Latifah)
4. Yoke the Joker
5. 19 Naughty III
6. Ready For Dem (featuring Heavy D)
7. Cruddy Clique
8. Hot Potato (featuring Freddie Foxxx)
9. Sleepin' On Jersey (featuring Queen Latifah)
10. Poor Man's Poetry
11. Connections (featuring Kandi Kain, Road Dawgs, and Cruddy Click)
12. City of Ci-Lo
13. World Go Round
14. Penetration (with Next)
15. Work (featuring Mag and Castro)
16. We Could Do It (featuring Big Punisher and Tony Sunshine)
17. On the Run
18. Red Light (featuring Queen Latifah)
19. What You Wanna Do (featuring Pink)
20. Ride
Tracks 1, 2, 3, and 4 from Naughty By Nature (1991)
Tracks 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 from 19 Naughty III (1993)
Track 10 from Poetic Justice: Music from the Motion Picture (1993)
Track 11 from New Jersey Drive, Vol. 2 (1995)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Poverty's Paradise (1995)
Track 14 from Money Talks: The Album (1997)
Track 15 from Butter - Soundtrack from the HBO Original Film (1998)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Nineteen Naughty Nine: Nature's Fury (1999)
Tracks 18 and 19 from IIcons (2002)
Track 20 from Anthem Inc. (2011)
Naughty By Nature exploded on the charts with their self-titled album in 1991, but they actually had a major label album before that under a different group name, The New Style. Independent Leaders was released on MCA in 1989, but it didn't chart, and it's a pretty good, if derivative, late '80s rap record. So they weren't really independent, they weren't leaders, and their style wasn't new. But they were undeniably talented from the jump, and I think it's a shame that that record isn't on streaming services today.
If I could put tracks from Independent Leaders, I'd definitely include "Start Smokin'," which used the same Grace Jones sample that LL Cool J's "Doin' It" would be built on a few years later. The biggest difference is that Vin Rock sounds a little more polished than Treach on Independent Leaders, they're closer to equals, where by the time they were Naughty By Nature, Treach was the clear frontman and did all the rapping on a good number of songs. Vin Rock had a great flow too, though, some of my favorite Vinnie verses are on "Poor Man's Poetry" and "On the Run."
Queen Latifah started mentoring the group after Independent Leaders, suggesting the name change to Naughty By Nature, bringing them into Flavor Unit, and hooking them up with the label she was signed to, Tommy Boy. The first single they released with the new name and label was "O.P.P." and the rest is history. I was a 9 year-old-white kid in Delaware and I knew that song by heart, everybody knew that song and chattered nervously about the meaning of its cleverly coded sex jokes. The other day I got home and got out of my car, and "O.P.P." was blasting out of a neighbor's car, and that song and "Hip Hop Hooray" just never get old.
At a time when most of the big crossover hits were by guys like Vanilla Ice and Hammer, Treach was operating on a completely different level, he was probably one of the nicest mainstream MCs of the first half of the '90s. And Naughty's gift for making streetwise feelgood music really became the path forward for rappers for the rest of the decade, something that feels almost like a lost art today.
The Grammys didn't introduce a Best Rap Album award until 1996, and Naughty By Nature received the very first one for Poverty's Paradise, winning over much bigger and more enduring albums like 2Pac's Me Against the World and Bone Thugs' E. 1999 Eternal. That's not a knock on Naughty for being emblematic of the Grammys' flawed early attempts at recognizing hip-hop, they were just a huge name at that point, but now that album is underrated.
Kay Gee is just a tremendous producer, obviously. I never get sick of hearing rap producers flip "Nautilus" by Bob James and there's a really sick "Nautilus" chop on "Cruddy Clique." Kay Gee wasn't a member of the group on IIcons and the album really suffers from a lack of his signature sound. Pink had already released Missundaztood by 2002 and had started to move out of her R&B-leaning early era but it's kind of fun to hear her own a ribald Naughty By Nature jam.
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