Before Wu-Tang Clan there was the XClan...no, I'm not kidding. This group from Brooklyn was part of the Blackwatch movement, who had a stable of artists releasing albums in the early 90's buffeted by real radical political connections. Hypeman Professor X the Overseer (real name - Lumumba Carson) was the son of noted activist Sonny Carson, and the group's initial offering was a cryptic, mischievous take on Public Enemy's work from the same era. While the music is not as dense, the 'Clan's oddball sensibility comes through from the jump of the opener "Funkin' Lesson". Brother J's metronomic yet agile raps both grate and mesh great with X's high-pitched diatribes over sissies n keys. Definitely not a record that everyone is going to like but in the very least it's about politics AND it's fun, which is such a rare thing.

Midwestern lean and mean - and this time w/o big brass section - Crow's second album is a heap of Grand Funk-inspired bass grooves bolstered by deft keyboard playing with a big ol' side of dirty white boy rock 'n' soul licks. It does tend to drag on the slower numbers, especially "Gone, Gone, Gone". Fun, dumb, and....

1990 saw a ton of great and diverse releases from the hip-hop genre. This wasn't one of them.

After adding on a rhythm section (John and Hilary Stench, from Pearl Harbor and the Explosions), Edge and Creed set about creating song-centered, more refined takes on earlier themes. This resulted in a furious output of music in a short period of time, which ended when Edge left for a solo career in France. The two key LP's from this time are 1982's 3rd From the Sun and the lesser-known Blood On The Moon in 1981. Of the two, it's usually 3rd From the Sun which nominally gets the kid glove retrospective treatment, and for good reason - it's certainly the most outwardly "space-rock" album, of all the Chrome releases. It centers on a giant, eight-minute-plus, Gothic-style rocker called "Armageddon", has this bizarre alien insect face on the cover, and Damon even roped his then-girlfriend Fabienne Shine to guest vocal on a few tracks. Her work on "Shadows of a Thousand Years" is especially noteworthy. But do not discount Blood On The Moon, either - which might just be the absolute perfect teaming of Edge/Creed and the Stench Brothers on record, especially from a technical perspective. Simply put, both of these albums are stone-cold winners, and the lest vestiges of sanity before Edge took it with him to Europe for a string of miserable Creed-less solo records.

Even though it's a departure from the earlier Chrome sound there's nothing mainstream in the least about Red Exposure, which is the closest they ever got to recording for a major label (Beggars Banquet). The jagged Stooges-psych-punk edges have been smoothed down for the most part, replaced by a warped anti-social retro/futuristic mentality with vague roots in New Wave. The previous EP release Read Only Memory functioned much in the same fashion, but in a repetitive dance vein. In some respects, this material is even darker than anything on HMLP or Alien Soundtracks - how does the garbled grind of "Jonestown" suit you?