Pharoahe Monch, Forgive Me

I was going to write about the Beats ‘N Treats Music Festival & Beat Contest going down at Mohawk this weekend, and tell you this two-night shindig features a “Gold Rush Beat Competition,” in which the winner receives an Open Labs NeKo LUX keyboard dipped in 24-karat gold. The show rolls on at 5pm Friday and 2pm Saturday, and if you register here it’s only five bucks for both nights.

But I can’t talk much about that, because today I listened to Pharoahe Monch’s 1999 debut, Internal Affairs, and it kind of put me on my ass. Lost in the shuffle of late 1990s albums, Monch’s debut album came a week on the heels of fellow Rawkus Records release Black on Both Sides. Never mind that he was already third on Rawkus’ totem pole, as BK darlings Talib Kweli and Both Sides bard Mos Def had already “validated their ghetto credibility” with 1998’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star. In line with their city-boy flow and complex wordplay, Monch, whose lyrics are admittedly less accessible than his Rawkus cohorts, was already playing from behind by the time his debut was released.

Introduced as “The Star of the Show,” Monch declares himself to be “the most incredible MC of the year,” out to display a “brand new rendition of style that I have” but the specific style’s unclear. That bag o’ tricks is deeper than a Rakim jam, moving from one stunt to another without ever losing a streetwise sensibility reminiscent of another Queens lyricist’s Illmatic debut. A Barnum & Bailey Master of Ceremony canter ringing in the album’s intro meets fist-to-face with the brass-knuckled brawl “Behind Close Doors” as Monch delivers multisyllabic rhyme schemes not seen outside of Eminem and Clipse’s Pusha T: “My exterior serene with the potential of a killin machine. Ex-marine, you drag queen, we tag team. Queens' finest the alliance defiant we bag fiends.”

“Queens” tops off as woman-hating (“There’s a place I know where the bitches go, where they rob you for your dough and sit you on the low”) before sorting through a tale of hoop dreams lost to the bottle and the corner, proving the Pharoahe grew up in a scene comparable to Nas’ in “One Love.” His understanding of metaphor is put to good use on “Rape,” where spits, “The original plan was to kill the bitch on the bridge, ditch the body parts off somewhere near the crescendo” and “grab the drums by the waistline, I snatch the kick, kick the snares, sodomize the bass line,” and his “Halftime” moment plays out as “Simon Says,” the Godzilla-sampled track, the one that brought Pharoahe his greatest fame but also shut down production of the record, supplants as boast track (“Styles greater, let the lyrics anoint. If you holdin’ up the wall, then you missin’ the point"). Pharoahe knows it could easily be lost in its fierce party beat and “rub on your titties” lyrics.

Internal Affairs’ precision isn’t lost at the arrival of its first guest MC, as the snarling, gritty freestyle phenom Canibus rides “Hell” tight just after Pharoahe’s fe-fi-fo’d alliteration leaves Gift of Gab’s “A-G” child play in the dust. When Brooklyn locals M.O.P offer “No Mercy,” a still-hungry Busta Rhymes fills “The Next Shift,” and Apani, brandishing a roughed-up Foxy Brown-styled flow, says, “Vagina’s diamond studded, you know you love it,” on “The Ass,” Pharoahe’s adeptness as a producer is stamped approved.

The aforementioned usher into a Reasonable Doubt-ian B-side, more subtle than shot out. Hitched with fellow Rawkus rumbler Talib Kweli and Chicago-winder Common, Affairs haunts out on the Double D produced “The Truth” and equals “Love Language” jazz pairings finding “The Light.” His “Simon Says” remix, putting Method Man and Redman on the firing line alongside early-goer Busta Rhymes, closes Affairs with Monch in the finest of hip-hop company. Sadly, too few were there at the turn of the century to take notice, this writer included.