The Pharcyde, Bizarre Ride II
Featured Album
Self-deprecating tales of schoolyard rejection and unrequited crushes.
“I guess a twinkle in her eye is just a twinkle in her eye…” — there are few rap songs that express the kind of child-sized yearning and despair of the Pharcyde's 1993 hit “Passin'Me By.” Built on a sweltering Quincy Jones loop, “Passin'Me By” was a hip-hop anomaly, the then-teenaged Pharcyde spinning self-deprecating tales of schoolyard rejection and unrequited crushes, using words like “rooty-toot” and “nincompoop” and generally peddling themselves as the softest guys in the room. Mike Ross, the head of their label, Delicious Vinyl, perfectly captured their sensibility: “The Pharcyde were trying to dodge the bullets, not shoot them.”
The Pharcyde's 1992 debut, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, was a revelation, balancing sunny moments like the sappy “Soul Flower,” the slapstick “Oh Shit” and “Ya Mama” and the wistful “Passin'Me By” with the dark “4 Better or 4 Worse” and the caustic “It's Jigaboo Time” (check out the rarely seen, natives-gone-wild video here). Bizarre Ride stoked many imaginations — Ross called it Los Angeles'version of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising — but the moment for a breezy, carefree rap outfit, even one hailing from South Central Los Angeles, would be brief. Later that year Dr. Dre released The Chronic, and soon Nas, Wu-Tang Clan and the Notorious B.I.G. would recapture the flag for a grimmer, tougher New York.
