90's Hit Parade #45

Latyrx - Latyrx

So most of these songs I don't have stories about the first time I heard them, and how blown away I was. Most songs take a couple listens to really reveal themselves. This one, yeah, I remember it as clearly as the first time I heard "Eruption/You Really Got Me" or "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave." It was right after our first exploratory visit to L.A. We arrived at ATL around midnight, got to our car feeling somewhat dazed and confused, nearly got into an altercation with another driver who wanted our space and didn't think we were vacating it fast enough. I tuned in WREK, the Georgia Tech station (which is just a fucking BONKERS station), lit up and drove off. A midnight hip hop show was just starting. I think the first song they played was something by DJ Shadow, then it segued into this (which is also produced by Shadow). I was blown away, nobody else in the car seemed to care.

The track is called "Latyrx," by a duo that's either called Latyrx or Lateef and Lyric Born, and later kicked off an album that was either called Latyrx or The Album or maybe Latyrx: The Album. It begins with the best section, with the two rappers rapping simultaneously over sitar-like synth drone. this is the best section. I almost can't believe nobody had ever recorded anything like this before. Lateef's rap sounds almost like a Hindu chant, Lyrics affects a voice that sounds like Richard Pryor doing a white guy. Then, after a shadow cut-n-chop breakdown, the two go their separate ways, dropping all kinds of marvelous nonsense (my favorite headscratcher: "I taught neanderthal to use the rotary phone/I kicked the Devil in his neck without my rosary on." The rest of the album is solid, but there's nothing even close to this.