Slept on albums part 2

Kurious - Constipated Monkey

In some bizarre early 90's Hip Hop Bermuda triangle, there emerged three emcees of note at the same time who had some affiliation with 3rd Bass. Each of them went on to have differing levels of success,

Nas (With the help of MC Serch) released one of the greatest albums of all time; Illmatic and then seemingly conquered the world whilst trying in vain to recreate that perfect joint,

Zev Love X (who would be reborn as the legendary MF Doom) was going through a highly controversial and later tragic time with KMD; Black Bastards causing a storm and his brother, Subroc, getting killed in a car accident,

And finally, Kurious Jorge, the Cuban/Puerto Rican brother from Harlem had some minor success with the singles "Walk like a duck" and "Uptown Shit". The album dropped to what should have been an adoring crowd who dug the jazz infusions of the Beatnuts mixed with dope guest spots and abstract wordplay from the man himself. However it never really took off despite having some dope cuts on there.

My favourite at the time was without doubt "I'm Kurious" which laced the dopest Blackbyrds sample with the "Don't change your love" drums as used by (everyone at that time) Naughty nature and Domino.



"Tear shit up" features two of Hip Hop's finest of all time; Biz Markie and Rakim over a sick, sick beat.

"Leave ya with this" is a fitting tribute to the fallen Subroc and "Top notch" features the eternally unfortunate Lucien of ATCQ fame.

The beat for "Walk like a duck" still sounds phat as fuck even after all these years, Damn they knew their way round those kicks and snares.



"Uptown shit" carries on the dopeness, even changing its title for the radio and video channels doesn't diminish its charm. That is some serious Jazz Hip Hop as it should be made along with a chorus built for crowd participation (why don't we still do this, it was great fun?).



A great album that was sadly missed by a lot of people possibly being wrongly tagged as leftfield or alternative due to some slightly off the wall lyric ideas.

The good news for his fans is that he is making a comeback. Constipated Monkey has been re-released in anticipation for the release on Amalgamated Digital. For details on his comeback album check out Bouncemag