Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
Back in the late 80's, a few groups within hip hop began experimenting with House music. Most well known was the Jungle Brothers' 1989 release, I'll House You, but they weren't the only ones. For a minute there, it looked like House/Hip Hop might become a legitimate offshoot of traditional rap, but the movement was pretty much killed with the release of Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which shifted the focus in hip hop back to beats that relied on funk-based samples.
One of the groups that achieved some success with this house sound was the group Twin Hype out of Newark, New Jersey. They were produced by Ricky Pagan aka Hollywood (the founder of the collective Hollywood Impact) and were backed up by dj King Shameek. As you may have guessed from the name of the group and the above picture, the two members of Twin Hype were, indeed, twins, with the unfortunate names of Glennis (aka Sly) and Lennis (aka Slick).
I was probably in 4th or 5th grade when I heard their first album, which was creatively titled "Twin Hype." My brother used to play this album out on the regular and its stuck in my head ever since. You might expect something along the lines of Kriss Kross just from looking at the album cover, but Twin Hype's voices and lyrics were a lot harder than what the smiling faces in their photos would suggest.
Soon after their second album was released, the twins got caught up in some drama that effectively ended their careers. Coming home from a party with a friend of theirs who decided to go for a little new jersey drive, their coked up friend ended up killing a man during the carjacking. This led to all three of them serving significant jail time. Twin Hype were eventually released from jail (I couldn't find the exact date, but it looks like they got out around 2002), after which they hooked back up with King Shameek and began working on a new album. From everything I could find, they have yet to find a label deal, so the chances of a new album from the twins does not seem to be too good at this point in time.
I'm not sure how the rest of you will react to the Twin Hype track I'm putting up, Do It To The Crowd. I'm a huge fan of theirs but part of that may be due to the nostalgia factor. I'm sure I listened to this album hundreds of times growing up, so there's no doubt an emotional attachment that may be clouding my judgment on this one. If anyone tried to put out a hip hop album today with this much house flavor in it, it would no doubt sound real corny. Yet I can play this one all day:
(track after the jump -->)
5/19/2006 10:19:32 AM posted by Fresh