Steve 'Flash' JuonPicture this — it’s the early 1990’s and you’re a white Italian-American teenager from the borough of Brooklyn. You’ve grown up around rap music your entire life, you genuinely love and appreciate hip-hop music and culture, but your musical aspirations aren’t panning out. Despite your genuine desire and passion to make an authentic contribution, you can’t even get a gig as an opening act in a local club or watering hole, let alone get a single A&R at a label to listen to your demo. You hand out tapes on the street and find them in the trash when you walk back down the block. What’s a kid to do?
“All in the Family” is the culmination of those frustrations for the Lordz of Brooklyn. Brothers Mike McLeer a/k/a Kaves and Adam McLeer a/k/a ADMoney found some kindred spirits named Dino Cerillo (Bottz), Paul Nugent (Paulie Two Times) and Scotty Westerman (Scotty Edge) and formed like Voltron. If they couldn’t get respect and success individually, perhaps they could achieve it collectively. There was only one problem though — they still needed a gimmick to get attention from a skeptical audience and shady record label executives. What was their choice? Leaning HARD into Italian-American stereotypes. The album name implies they are in the mafia and songs like “The Bad Racket” quote directly from The Godfather Part III. “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.”
They even call themselves “wiseguys” and “goodfellas” on the track. Allegedly they even sent copies of their album to reviewers in pizza boxes. I suppose that makes more sense than sending it to them in a bowl of pasta with some gravy on top? But the Lordz were serious about playing this gimmick to the hilt, and you can almost feel a palpable senses of frustration or desperation that accompanies it. They had undoubtedly tried to go the traditional route, paid their dues in ciphers, and even caught a few beatings in back alleys in their quest to get on. Did this finally get the Lordz of Brooklyn over the top and vault them to the success and respect they craved?
“All in the Family” had a few things going for it. The group got signed to Rick Rubin’s imprint American Recordings, and given Rubin’s dual passions for rap and rock, his influence can be felt on singles like “Tales from the Rails.” He’s not credited as a producer or even an executive producer, but you know he personally listened to the song and approved it as a single. It’s even more apparent in “Saturday Nite Fever” which directly loops “American Woman” by The Guess Who. You really can’t get more hip-hop meets rock ‘n roll than that. I have no doubt American put their full weight behind this crew.
Their earnest desire for respect bleeds through the tracks like “Out Ta Bomb” with lines like “never say ‘White boy you got no soul’.” If that was all there was to the song I might have left it at that, but ADMoney made the somewhat unusual choice to sample Alice In Chains “Would?” for the bass line of the track and I LOVE IT. Let me be clear — there’s every reason for the Lordz to be wrong. They’re whiter than white bread soaking in a bowl of 2% milk, there’s no chance any of them have even been part of “this thing of ours,” and they would be immediately compared to the Beastie Boys, House of Pain and the Young Black Teenagers. The funniest part is I wouldn’t say they’re as good as ANY of the acts I just listed, but there’s a certain Onyx-esque edge to tracks like “Pull Your Card” that I enjoy.
Sometimes they take that “Bacdafucup” energy too far and it winds up feeling absurd. “Unda the Boardwalk” is as silly as the beat is monotonous — skip this song. They also go overboard on songs like “Brooklyn Pride” with a ridiculous hook like “Hey goombah! Where you at?” Even in the mid-1990’s it was more likely a listener would associate that with Super Mario Bros. than Italian slang. For the most part the album works, but I’ve tried hard to find evidence it was commercially successful and came up short. Maybe the album cracked the Billboard Top 200, maybe it didn’t. Maybe the singles made it into the top 25 for Hot Rap Songs. Nobody bothered to make a note of it.
The thing is I already know how this story ends. Even if they didn’t get as far with their debut as they could have hoped, they had the best quality for a rap act to be taken seriously by skeptics and the industry alike — they didn’t give up. They were still releasing new albums in the 2000’s and beyond, with the most recent one called “The Family Reunion” coming out just a few years ago. They’ve earned my respect by not being one trick ponies who tried a gimmick, failed, and promptly gave up all hope of making it in music. Even if they’ve only been a modest success over the years, they succeeded at being true to their love of rap music, which takes what could have been earnestness bordering on corny and makes it commendable in hindsight. You may not like all of “All in the Family” but you’ll find enough to like that it’s worth your time.