July 01, 2016

Geto Boys "My Mind's Playing Tricks" (The Source, 1991)


"When "My Mind's Playing Tricks On Me" blew the fuck up, we were surprised. It got props on both coasts and in the middle, and scored on both Video Jukebox Network and Yo! MTV Raps. But we shouldn't have been surprised. The Geto Boys have always shown major skills, and "Mind Playing Tricks On Me" brought them together to create four of the most chilling minutes in hip-hop. Surreal and substantive, the single took us on a terrifying trip through the mind of gangster under the gun. With Willie D, Scarface and Bushwick Bill as guides over a powerful beat sprinkled with a light guitar chord, "My Mind's Playing Tricks On Me" was an experience that was not matched. Even before the single dropped, the Geto Boys proved that they couldn't be stopped... by anyting. After Geffen Records refused to distribute their major-label debut and the group left Rick Rubin's Def America, many though that they would fade away into obscurity. Wrong." Peep the visuals, cont'd below...


"After Bushwick Bill, drunk and depressed, shot his eye out, many thought that the Geto Boys were too crazy and self-destructive to matter. Wrong. Instead of wallowing in the Geffen-Rubin mess, they went back to Rap-A-Lot, the Houston independent label, and hooked up with Priority to get their shit out. Instead of running from tragedy, they embraced it, going far enough to put a picture of an injured, hospital-gowned Bushwick Bill - flanked by his partners - on the cover of their next album, the appropriately-titled (and fiercely compromising) We Can't Be Stopped. The cover may have been hard to swallow, but the album wasn't: the record went gold without a video in a time when "no video" supposedly equals "no sales." If that's not enough, Willie D and Scarface dropped solo records, which sold buck wild - with Bushwick Bill not too far behind. Going into 1992, the Geto Boys are no longer a novelty act; they have became a true rap superpower." - The Source, 1991.