Darc Mind - "Outside Looking In" 12" (Loud Records, 1996)
Darc Mind’s experience in the record industry is one that is
all too familiar to hip hop heads. After the Nielsen SoundScan was instituted
in 1991, major labels were presented with accurate numbers showing that hip hop
was one of the highest selling genres of music. During the resulting scramble
to sign as many rappers as possible, quite a few labels took on more artists
than they could hope to successfully promote, and many artists languished for
years on unresponsive labels. A lot of these artists never had the broad appeal
that would allow them to succeed in a major label system, and their careers
ended before they had a chance to find an audience, releasing a single or two
before getting dropped.
Loud Records never quite fit in with the major labels.
Although their records were distributed by major label RCA, and they were
beholden to sales requirements that RCA imposed on them, Loud never signed
artists based on broad appeal. The label’s first and greatest success was with
the Wu-Tang Clan, a relentlessly uncommercial group that became the most
popular group in rap. Loud had similar successes with Mobb Deep, Xzibit, Big
Pun, and others, but they had trouble hitting the same numbers with most of
their artists throughout their original run from 1992-2002.
Darc Mind consists of rapper Kev-Roc and producer X-Ray
(known formerly as G.M. Web D), who were both originally members of the Legion
of D.U.M.E., a group that put out one 12” in 1994.[1]
After splitting from the Legion, the duo signed with Loud in 1995 and
immediately began work on their first album Symptomatic
of a Greater Ill, which was to be released in 1997. They managed to get two
songs from the album released on Loud. “Outside Looking In” (which was slated
to be the last track on the album) was released as a radio promo 12” in 1996,
and “Visions of Blur” (the first track on their album), made it onto the
incredible soundtrack to the 1997 documentary Soul in the Hole.[2]
Unfortunately, Loud’s financial problems were already becoming serious as early
as 1997, and the label couldn’t afford to release or promote albums by some of
the lesser-known artists on their roster. Symptomatic
of a Greater Ill was shelved, and Darc Mind was dropped from the label.
Unlike the rest of the songs on Symptomatic of a Greater Ill, which are produced by X-Ray[3],
Darc Mind brought in an outside producer for their debut single. Nick Wiz is
one of the great unheralded beatmakers of 90’s New York. While he doesn’t have
a style as immediately distinct as contemporaries like Pete Rock, DJ Premier,
or RZA, Wiz carved out his own niche with his minimal, menacing beats for
artists such as the Cella Dwellas and Rakim. Wiz was incredibly prolific in the
90’s, and his beats were apparently cheap, as he’s been able to release three
60 track Cellar Sounds compilations
collecting his work on obscure singles and remixes from that decade. For
“Outside Looking In,” as with all of his beats, the focus is on the drums,
which are classic boom bap, a simple combination of snare, high hat, and kick
drum. Nick Wiz’s beats rarely include much instrumentation outside of drums,
and “Outside Looking In” is no exception. Wiz employs samples of bass and
vibraphone that stay very low in the mix during the verses, serving as accents
for the drums. There’s also a bit of keyboard that’s barely audible outside of
the chorus.
Nick Wiz productions are so understated that the songs he
produces are generally only as good as the emcee; he can rarely anchor a song
with a weak emcee by himself. Kev-Roc, who has an entrancing voice and flow
that is capable of holding the listener’s attention even on acappelas, is the
perfect kind of rapper for a Nick Wiz beat, and gives perhaps the best
performance of his career on “Outside Looking In.” His voice has some
resemblance to Rock from Heltah Skeltah, but his percussive flow is much more
complex than Rock’s, erratically slipping in and out of double-time for bits
and pieces of lines. His subject matter isn’t anything unique, focusing on wack
rappers and his own lyrical abilities, but there is nothing in his lyrics that
even resembles a cliché. In fact, his abstract phrasings make it difficult to
figure out just what he’s talking about at times. For instance, when Kev-Roc
raps “impress a punk, aggressive fuselage pressure deficit/ill verse of mine
precurse a punk, I’ll push him off a precipice,” you can tell that he’s
claiming his skills are greater than other rappers, but it’s hard to discern
exactly what he means by “aggressive fuselage pressure deficit.” Kev-Roc makes
this mouthful of multisyllabic rhyming sound effortless, further distracting
from the occasional questionable or inscrutable lyrical choices. He was able to
position himself as one of the most exciting new underground rappers of 1996
with just this one song[4],
but getting dropped by Loud killed Darc Mind’s momentum and Kev-Roc retreated
from the rap world for nearly a decade.
Anticon Records, best known for releasing experimental hip
hop by artists such as Jel, Odd Nosdam, Doseone, and Buck 65, issued Symptomatic of a Greater Ill in 2006.
During the nine years between getting dropped by Loud and the release of their
album, Darc Mind was not an active concern for either member of the group.
Kev-Roc disappeared from hip hop completely, finding work doing voiceovers for
videogames and commercials. X-Ray joined MF Doom’s Monsta Island Czars group,
taking the name King Caesar and splitting production duties with Doom on the
group’s only album Escape from Monsta
Island! He also released two compilations of solo tracks by M.I.C. members,
and “U Da One” from Symptomatic of a
Greater Ill was included on Monsta
Mixes Vol. 1. X-Ray quit the Monsta Island Czars in 2004.
Darc Mind reunited for a few shows to promote the release of
Symptomatic of a Greater Ill. These
shows went well enough that they returned to the studio and recorded an EP, Soulfood, and an album, Bipolar, both of which were mostly
ignored upon their release in 2006. Darc Mind has been quiet since.
[1]
This 12”, “Son’s of Sam” b/w “Darc Mind Inc.,” came out on Darc Mind Records
(clearly X-Ray and Kev-Roc were fans of the name long before they signed with
Loud as a duo). It might get its own Spray
Cans entry down the line.
[2]
There was a weird stretch in the 90’s where hip hop artists seemed to be saving
some of their best material for one-off soundtrack appearances. This made for a
lot of soundtracks that were more memorable than the movies they were attached
to, much like many of the Blaxploitation soundtracks of the 70’s.
[3] Of
then ten songs X-Ray produced on Symptomatic
of a Greater Ill, half are credited to X-Ray and half are credited to G.M.
Web D. In a later interview, X-Ray said that he did this because he felt that
some of the songs were produced in the style of his earlier G.M. Web D stuff,
while others were in a newer style that he felt was more in line with his new
name.
[4]
The “Outside Looking In” single doesn’t have a proper b-side, forcing Darc Mind
to make a statement with one song. The a-side features the dirty version and
instrumental of the song, while the b-side had the clean version and acapella.
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