The Pack busted onto national hip-hop charts four years ago, when the members were still high-school students, rhyming a hypnotic jingle about the sex appeal of their footwear of choice — Vans skateboarding shoes. Much more than free advertisement, this MySpace-fueled hit served as a declaration of independence. The Pack wasn’t following the herd mentality declaring Nike sneakers the national kicks of hip-hop. No, these MCs embraced their Berkeley roots and all the hippie-hipster-punk influences that seem to be in the water here.
Of course, this was at the peak of hysteria over the hyphy hip-hop movement, itself a celebration of Bay Area-bred kookiness, with the brightly dyed dread, oversized stunna shades, and spontaneous outbursts of manic dancing. Too $hort quickly signed The Pack to his Up All Nite imprint on Jive Records, but the major label dropped the group as quickly as hyphy fell out of fashion and failed to hit critical mass on national hip-hop radio.
Now, here in 2010, the word “hyphy” is usually met with groans or eye-rolls, dismissed as hopelessly passé. In the wake of the brutal recession, hyphy seems naive in a way, suggesting that despair could be danced away or that brilliant beats and rhymes — and perhaps a few clever marketing schemes — could lift the Bay Area’s most depressed ghettoes out of poverty.
Thankfully, The Pack, featuring Damonte “Lil Uno” Johnson, Brandon “Lil B” McCartney, Lloyd “Young L” Omadhebo, Keith “Stunnaman” Jenkins, are still young enough to keep the faith in the power of partying. On their new nearly 70-minute album, Wolfpack Party, they’re still living it up like it’s 2006. Tracks like “Front Back,” “Booty Bounce,” and “Dance Floor” have the frenetic climbing and descending scales and chaotic layers of beats that suggest these kids never stopped “going dumb.” Yet this album is not stuck in the past, even with its cheeky sampling from Boston’s “Peace of Mind” and its hip ’80s nostalgia on “E.T.”
For a group known for its DIY videos and word-of-mouth success, a number of the Auto-Tune tweaked dance grooves, like “Wolfpack Party” and “Sex on the Beach,” shake off the bass-heavy hyphy beats in favor of a more mainstream sound, which would be at home on VH1 Top 10, rubbing elbows with Lady Gaga and Drake. The love ballad “Super Man” hits a surprisingly sweet note, while even the more sinister-sounding rhymes steer clear of gangster tropes. No, songs like “Bend That Corner” take out their aggression on women.
