Steve 'Flash' JuonThere’s nothing quite like thinking you’ve dug up every rap fossil from the 1980’s or 90’s only to find out there’s another substrata you haven’t hit yet. Today’s discovery was East Palo Alto, CA rapper C-Funk. He had four albums on four different labels, arguably hitting his peak in 1995 when he was signed to Scarface Records (the imprint of strident rapper Paris). Before that he was on the much more obscure Tandem imprint recording songs like “Oh, You Make Me Go.” Five seconds into the song I was mouthing the words “The Humpty Dance is your chance to do the hump.”
His album “I’m Out 2 Stoages” has something else in common with the late Shock G and that’s an undeniable penchant for weed. The brother isn’t shy about it. The letters of his name are made up of joints, he’s standing in front of a big green leaf, and he’s rocking a 40-oh in the hand he’s not smoking with. The recipe for his success is to indulge in his vices to excess. There’s no shame in your game C, do you, even if you are getting blunted to the same sample as “Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?” on your anthem “Smoke Tru” (with Syl Johnson’s “Different Strokes” thrown in for good measure).
Let’s be clear though — there’s not one song on here that won’t have you going “I’ve heard that loop before.” Producer Marcus McKinley was unapologetically cribbing from everybody that came before him with songs like “Lisa,” which immediately made me think of “Plug Tunin'” by De La Soul. Hey in this era that’s just par for the course. If McKinley was digging in the crates he wasn’t digging too deep, but the nice part about that is that he was at least pulling out the gems and not fools gold.
And speaking of things that were obligatory in early 1990’s rap, sampling Diana Ross (before she got superstitious) was right up there on the list. “Don’t You Know I’m Good 4U” is more misogynistic than its title would imply, but the blow is softened a bit by hearing “Love Hangover” in the background. It’s not as good as “The Other Level” by the Geto Boys or “Crippin’ Ain’t Easy” by the Bloods & Crips but I can still get down with this mix.
You might have noticed scant discussion of C-Funk as a rapper beyond his producer being a jacker du jour and that’s not because he’s bad at it. In fact “Play My Song On the Radio” might be heavy on the P-Funk but his flow is legit enough to have earned it. Even on the West coast where it was a little easier to break into FM rotation his complaints are familiar to a rap fan. He’s doing lots of shows, signing lots of autographs, “but it wasn’t easy because it took a long time” to finally get his music heard by the masses. Apparently it was just too local to East Palo Alto for ME to have heard it before 2025 though.
Then again with only about 500 views in the 8 years since these songs were uploaded, I get the feeling that marketing and promotion weren’t C-Funk’s strongest suit. His rap songs were solid but the public didn’t seem to catch on to him in a big way, so he stayed a hidden artifact of the scene until dropping his final album (that I know of) in 2008. You could say “he deserves better” but so do a million other emcees who never broke through. Maybe he should have gone even harder on the marijuana and developed a cult following with the stoners and potheads. “I’m Out 2 Stoages” is a slightly above average album that got about as far as it was ever going to get.