Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Musical Interlude: Pop Goes the Weasel (1991)

3rd Bass' 3rd CD, "Derelicts of Dialect", produced this monster hit in the summer of '91.

"Pop Goes the Weasel" was the group's statement about the proliferation of hip-hop onto the pop charts, specifically the likes of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. They even recruited poet-musician-actor Henry Rollins to masquerade as Ice to get the point across. I am not sure if that is also MC Serch in drag as the teacher in the opening segment.

3rd Bass sampled Peter Gabriel's 1986 megahit, "Sledgehammer", and in the middle portion, you can see Pete Nice moving around with his throne, a riff on Depeche Mode's clip for "Enjoy The Silence", from a year earlier. Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" was also sampled.

In recent times, Nice left the music business, and, at last check, was running a sports card shop in Cooperstown. MC Serch has hosted a couple of reality competition shows for VH1. Man, it was good while it lasted.

Edit, 7/31/21: Found a fresh copy with the Rollins skit included:

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