Steve 'Flash' JuonThis record did not need to exist.
I understand why it does though. In the first half of the 1990’s Naughty By Nature was one of the biggest rap groups in the world. Their stature had risen to the point that in an era before self publishing was the norm, they had their own label (Illtown Records) and the ability to sign and publish acts underneath them. The trend at the time was to form kid rap groups and market them as the next Kris Kross or ABC, and if you’re a successful rap act with your own label, why wouldn’t you join the trend? NBN already had one third of a group ready to go as Diesel was the younger brother of Treach, so they only needed to add Chap and Fam and coin them the Rottin Razkals to proceed.
“Rottin Ta Da Core” was thus born into rap music with advantages other kid rap groups didn’t have — a family connection, a supportive label, and distribution through Motown Records. Actually they had even more than that thanks to NBN’s Kay Gee being the executive producer of the album and lacing a few tracks like the singles “Oh Yeah” and “Hey Alright” personally. The former is the better of the two thanks to an aggressive funky bass, sharp drum taps and guest bars from Vinnie and Treach. Both singles managed to hit the Billboard Rap Singles at No. 14 and No. 23 respectively. That would be the last time anybody would hear from the Razkals.
“Life of a Bastard” illustrates the problem nicely. The production echoes Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s legendary “T.R.O.Y.” thanks to the same Tom Scott sample, but none of the three young rappers sounds better than older brother Treach when he comes in for a cameo. As much as Kay, T and Vin Rock tried to prop their group up they couldn’t make a guest appearance on every song. That leaves you with mediocre “life is hard in East Orange” raps from a lesser version of Naughty By Nature, which was a double whammy as rap fans had started to move on from both NBN AND kid rap acts by 1995. If I’m going to chose between this and “Poverty’s Paradise” though it’s an easy choice.
I think everybody involved quickly realized that two modestly successful singles wasn’t enough to keep the idea going. “Rottin Ta Da Core” stalled at No. 190 on the Billboard Top 200 and quickly vanished back into obscurity. Billboard isn’t and shouldn’t be the only metric of an artist’s success, but in this case it’s a fair enough indicator that unless Naughty By Nature was standing behind the Razkals and shoving them in your face, nobody gave a shit. They’d feature them on their own albums, they’d produce tracks and raps for their acts, and for all I know big bro Treach might have even been ghost writing their shit. It didn’t work. Nobody wanted the younger, lesser version of NBN and nobody wanted rappers who hadn’t hit puberty talking like their older siblings.
Attempts to appeal to the harder sensibilities of their audience didn’t work. “One Time For Ya Mind” is filled with expletives on the hook and throughout the bars, but may be more memorable for insincere platitudes like “I writes like that and keep it tight like that.” Vowing that you do is not the same as actually doing it for real. Diesel is the only member of the group that sounds tolerable and I attribute that to genetics as much as anything else. Had it been up to me I would have pushed him as a soloist and taken the exact same approach with marketing and production, and the end result would have been a hell of a lot better. Hell he’d probably still have a career today if they had just said “this is Treach’s younger brother, but watch him do his own thing.” They didn’t and this record is rightly forgotten.