90's Hit Parade #5

Jungle Brothers - I'm In Love With Indica

"I'm in Love with Indica" may be the perfect hip hop song. I'm not sure I can explain why. It's not because it's a love song to marijuana, nor is it because it samples the Stooges' "Dirt" (and a little bit of "T.V. Eye"). There are no kind of impressive verbal gymnastics, and the beats keep to a simple, mid-tempo groove. Maybe that's the point: it's the simplicity of the song that makes it so memorable. It almost seems like a throwback--could this really have been released as late as 1993? It's such an old skool party jam! Great to sing along to, great to dance to, great to listen to.

There's something so in-the-pocket about those raps on the verses. The beat seems to get funkier with each verse, but of course that can't be true--it's a sample, the same loops repeated over and over (with the funkier bassline recurring in certain places). There must be some strange kind of voodoo emanating from the MC's, their rhymes actually creating the illusion of an ever-funkier beat. This is the magic of hip hop.