Man Overboard (album)
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| Man Overboard (Re-release Artwork) | ||
 |
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| Studio album by Buck 65 | ||
| Released | 1999 | |
| Recorded | ? | |
| Genre | Alternative Hip Hop | |
| Length | 69:57 | |
| Label | Anticon | |
| Producer(s) | Buck 65 | |
| Buck 65 chronology | ||
|---|---|---|
| Vertex (1997) |
Man Overboard (1999) |
Synesthesia (2001)
|
Contents |
[edit] Man Overboard (1998 - 1999)
Language Arts Part 3
Originally released on the anticon. label in 1999, this album broke Buck 65 to an international audience. When re-released on Warner in 2002 it had a track omitted because of a Metallica sample that was used as a part of the music.
[edit] Track listing on Warner Re-release
- "Off and Running" – 3:10
- "Plastic Bag" – 4:17
- "Up the Middle" – 4:53
- "Hats on Beds" – 5:31
- "Lil' Taste Of Poland" – 3:11
- "Sunday Driver" – 2:00
- "Can of Worms" – 3:22
- "You know the Science" – 3:20
- "Ice" – 4:54
- "Achilles And The Tortoise" – 7:19
- "Coleco Vision" – 9:32
- "Azazellos Cream" – 1:27
- "Secret Splendor" – 6:43
- "Pants on Fire" – 6:24
- "Mudslide" – 3:54
[edit] Background
Structurally, Man Overboard bears a lot of resemblance to Terfry’s preceding album Vertex, but it has a much more sensitive tone. As a one time part of the anticon. collective, this release brought Buck 65 to a much larger audience. Radiohead were touted to endorse this album and Buck 65 as an artist. The album starts rather aggressively with Off And Running, which employs the trademark self-name-checking that became a staple for the more hip hoppier efforts in the earlier segments of Terfry’s career. This first intro track also showcases Terfry's scratching style, including a brief beat-scratch more often associated with, and popularised by Fingathing’s Peter Parker.
The album is dedicated to Terfry's mother, who died of breast cancer after his Vertex album. The title track is called "Ice" which is a slow and sad song about his mother and his emotional state. It is mostly this high emotional charge that dominates the track – a mournful piece populated with a heavy beat and an innocent-sounding Terfry who expresses his utter grief over the loss. This personal theme, later also taking in his father and current and ex girlfriends, previously untouched upon, permeates through every following album including the very recent Secret House Against The World.
One of the most popular and acclaimed songs from the album is 'Pants On Fire', which makes use of a memorable chorus (an utter rarity in earlier Buck 65 songs):
Who are you anyway and where did you come from?
Dumb dumb just when I thought I could trust someone,
The mask comes off and your face fades away,
You radiate eighty-eight full shades of grey.
This song helped Buck 65 to continue his rising popularity and to gain international recognition. It was also used his first music video.
Man Overboard is perhaps one of Terfry’s most consistent albums. It is probably his least eccentric hip hop album and contains a few examples of tracks with traditional song-structures such as the aforementioned Pants On Fire, and perhaps even You Know The Science, a relatively uncharacteristic jazzy number. Despite his focus on the bereavement of his mother, Terfry actually seems at his most chipper and opinionated compared with earlier works. His frivolity and confidence later crops up in the next instalment in his Language Arts series, Square, which sees Terfry begin to enter more mainstream territory.
[edit] History
Man Overboard, originally released on the anticon. label, was a significant turning point in his career. The record, and the entire anticon. collective (of which Sixtoo was also a part), were considered hallmarks of a new avant-garde movement in underground hip hop. It was at this time that Buck met Cincinnati DJ Mr. Dibbs who inducted him into the 1200 Hobos, a loosely-knit hip-hop collective named for their proficiency and skill in manipulating the Technics 1200 turntable.
[edit] Buck 65's Self Review of Man Overboard
This record rose from the ashes of an album called Boy/Girl Fight which was abandoned before it was finished.
Technically, the record is a shitty mess. You'd think it would be difficult to make a recording sound worse than Language Arts or Vertex, but this one takes the cake. But like flowers from the dirt, sometimes something beautiful comes out of ugliness...
I died and was born on this record. It had to happen. The death was slow and the birth was painful. Here I am as a soggy baby: wonderfully alive, but confused and a bit wobbly in the knees. This record is very far away from greatness, but it's promising.
The first big problem with this record, like most of mine from this period, is that it takes way too long to get going. There's what amounts to one intro after another. After ten agonizing minutes of throat-clearing, the first song begins. This first song only appears on the original version though. It was cut from the re-issue because of a dangerous Metallica sample. Then the next song isn't much of a song at all.
Finally we get something called 'Hats on Beds' which basically drives the last nail into the coffin of the old me. It's taking the piss out of all the old songs that had nothing to say. It's a mystery with no pay off at the end. It's deliberately obtuse and misleading. It starts nowhere and goes nowhere. "...don't take your wig off under any circumstances..." "...glue a magnet to the bottom of a pie plate..." Then there's the awesomely bizarre one-two musical punch of 'Lil' Taste of Poland' and 'Sunday Driver' - some kind religious marching band music followed by a polka! Next is 'You Know The Science', which was rescued from the lost Year Zero album and is almost a real song! Blow me down...
Then there's the grand accident - the song that changed everything, 'Ice'. It's a little something about the death of my mother that I almost didn't even include on the record because I thought it wouldn't mean anything to anyone. Shows how backwards my thinking had always been. This was the first song I ever made that got any reaction at all. It proved to be a real eye opener.
But the warm human touch doesn't end there! My own death is detailed in a song called 'Secret Splendor'. Next there is the suggestion of a wounded heart on 'Pants On Fire' which offers proof that I was a real human being after all and not just a two dimensional cartoon. Beautiful! 'Achilles and the Tortoise'! Who the heck is this guy? And how old is he? 90?!
It's exciting to see the evolution taking place here. But to fully appreciate that, you'd have to expect people to have heard all that came before it, which would be cruel. It's half-ways honest which is a good start. Musically it's a good step forward. But taken out of context, it's still very weird and self-absorbed. It's small but solid. Perhaps not built to last, it probably won't matter in 30 years. 'A' for effort and 'hurray' for saying something...
Two and a half out of five
