Steve 'Flash' Juon“Da 4 Foot Attack” is exactly the kind of album my friend Adam Bernard loves. He flat out told me he enjoys learning about albums so obscure that he’s never even heard of them before, so I went out of my way to find something so obscure it was never RELEASED. Now you might be asking “Flash — how are you reviewing Kronic’s album if it never came out?” Simple. They were signed to Jive/RCA Records in the 1990’s, and in typical major label fashion, they sent promotional copies of “Da 4” expecting to generate buzz amongst deejays and radio programmers. It didn’t take them wrong to realize that in the wake of Kris Kross, Illegal, Another Bad Creation and Da Youngsta’s, nobody was clamoring for yet ANOTHER child rap group. Seeing the lack of interest, Jive/RCA shelved the album and promptly claimed a tax write off for whatever they put into its production.
Perhaps it’s better to say this album was quasi-released. It never made it to retail stores, but what we have here is a fully mastered and release ready product. The group even had a marketing plan that BaeBoy, Double EE and Zane Copeland Jr. (a weirdly real name next to two nom de plumes) either came up with themselves or were given by a label A&R. KRONIC was allegedly an acronym standing for “Kids Rappin On New Ideas And Concepts,” so despite the obvious weed reference they could pretend it was all PG-13. It also appears that despite being an Atlanta based group they were linked up with East Orange, New Jersey’s own Kay Gee for production. Despite the diminishing returns for diminutive sized rap groups, he no doubt thought his music on songs like “Time to Play” could get them over the hump to the mainstream. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the BDP sample here.
I’d +also+ be lying if I told you they didn’t sound exactly like Jamal and Malik. I mean EXACTLY. I swear this is a carbon copy of Illegal sans Erick Sermon. These shorties are trying to pull off the same trick that Illegal did — we’re shorties but we’re not KIDS. While their voices are filled with helium, their swagger is that of fully grown adults, throwing out generic bravado like “if we got beef then it’s on” on songs like “We Getz Down.” Nobody believes you “getz down” like that kid — you would get your ass whooped by your mom or your grandma for even trying to act hard in the front yard. Stop playing.
What’s funny is that “Da 4 Foot Attack” isn’t really bad enough to have been shelved. It wasn’t bringing anything new to the rap scene in 1994 that hadn’t already been done, and Kronic arguably didn’t need to exist at all, but an effort was clearly made by everybody involved to do this project right. The familiar Five Stairsteps sample heard on the promotional single “Summertime” was used by everybody from Big Daddy Kane to Brand Nubian, and I’ve never once been mad at it. I’m not mad at it here either. Had Jive/RCA made more than a halfhearted effort to push this song and this group, they had a chance. All it would have taken was a music video and getting them some ink in The Source and Rap Pages.
The tragedy of it all is that Kronic was a victim of bad timing. Had they come along a year or two earlier they could have caught the “kid rap groups” wave and rode it, but by the time promo copies of their album were sent out it had already crashed hard. Even survivors like Kris Kross quickly abandoned their playful image and worked to win people over with their “all grown up” new look and sound. I don’t think “Da 4 Foot Attack” ever stood a chance in 1994, but 30 years later it’s a glimpse into how shameless the record industry was about copying whatever worked over and over until it became nauseating. These youngsters got totally crossed out by their own label and that should be illegal.