The Pharcyde Reflect On Their Bizarre Ride Third album, Plain Rap, is result of internal strife, label disputes and now, rejuvenation. Jason Ferguson reports: Five years is a long time, but it’s a very long time in the world of hip-hop. That truth is certainly not lost on the members of the Pharcyde — their remaining members at least. After making an unforgettable impression with their 1992 debut, Bizarre Ride II: The Pharcyde, and, three years later, an experimental album that some fans found scattered and difficult, it seemed like the Pharcyde — if not already history — would soon be counted among the "damn, they were dope" set. However, late last year, a mysterious white-label platter began making its way through hip-hop circles. Theoretically a bootleg, Testing the Waters turned out to be the self-released return of the Pharcyde. Though it evoked neither Bizarre Ride nor '95's Labcabincalifornia, the six-song EP indicated that the Pharcyde were still out there, hovering just below the radar. "Over the past five years, we’ve been working on stuff, but we really didn’t know what the situation was," said Romye "Booty Brown" Robinson, one of the group's founding members. "There was stuff going on with the label, there was stuff going on with the group. But yeah, we haven’t really been out there in the spotlight much." Now, with the national release of their third album, Plain Rap, it's clear that the Pharcyde are back in business. In 1990, it started with three: Robinson, Imani Wilcox and Tre "Slimkid" Hardison hooked up as part of a Los Angeles B-boy dance crew called Two For Two, which gained some notoriety with appearances on "In Living Color." After adding after-school pals Derrick "Fatlip" Stewart and DJ/producer J-Swift to the mix and recording a demo in 1991, Two For Two became the Pharcyde, and choreography practice was replaced with studio sessions. The 1992 release of the perfectly out-of-step Bizarre Ride II, preceded by a track, "Soul Flower," on the Brand New Heavies classic Heavy Rhyme Experience: Vol. 1, were clarion calls. The group’s witty and decidedly un-gangster take on West Coast hip-hop — "I’m That Type of Nigga" and "Pack the Pipe" were album standouts — were as much a response to the East Coast Native Tongues (De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest) as it was an accurate representation of the other side of Cali’s madly diverse rap scene. Inspired by their newfound success, the Pharcyde decided to take some stylistic chances, and in 1995 they released Labcabincalifornia. Its sparse psychedelia (a young Jay Dee, now of Slum Village, produced its hit, "Runnin' ") was enough of a shift away from Bizarre Ride to confuse many of the folks who thought they were going to get "Oh Shit ’95" but instead got a densely woven sonic patchwork topped off by killer — if abstract — rhymes. As if the sophomore slump wasn’t bad enough, things were starting to get a little tricky in Camp Pharcyde. "Well, Fatlip left," Robinson said. "Actually, he was still in the group, but he didn’t want to do shows anymore. Basically, he just wanted to chill. Then Delicious [Vinyl] started having some problems. So when that happened, we were still doing shows and folks were asking us what was up with the new record and you can’t just come right out and be like, ‘Yo, my label’s fucking me up,’ 'cause it sounds like you’re just being a grouch." But the Pharcyde had reason to be grouchy. In addition to having their label-based tour support pulled, they soon discovered that they were contractually bound to a label that couldn’t release their records. This didn’t do much to maintain stability within the group. After Delicious Vinyl couldn’t distribute their next EP, Karma, Tre left the band.
Ironically, the loss of two members and the impending collapse of their record label was one of the best things to happen to the Pharcyde. "Since Delicious still didn’t have enough money to put something out, we put out Testing the Waters by ourselves," Robinson explained. "That really gave us a little boost, ‘cause people realized we were still around." With that upturn, the Pharcyde (back with Tre) headed back into the studio to work on the album that would become Plain Rap, the group’s third record in eight years. Living up to its title, the album presents a streamlined and simplified group: the Pharcyde are now all about straight-up hip-hop. Obviously re-inspired by the pop-lockin’ beats that brought them together as dancers more than a decade ago, the album's top-shelf rhyming and un-self-conscious production are successful both because of and in spite of the hardships endured by the group. "I’m not dissing my own record or anything," Robinson said, "I’m just saying that the fact that it’s out — given the way that everything was going — is surprising. I could be arguing about how it’s all fucked up or whatever, but I just wanna use this little bit of light to launch my own in a major way. I gotta say though, this album is not full on. It’s not everything it was meant to be. "We want to have an album that’s what we want," he continued. "To explain it would be hard, but I’ve got a concept. After we get done with this record, I wanna drop the real stuff."
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