Showing posts with label Puppies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puppies. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The Puppies Are a Lie!!

 
It's time I got down to the bottom of The Puppies' conspiracy, and worked out exactly just who's for real in this mess. What? You didn't even know there was a Puppies conspiracy? Ha ha! You probably didn't even realize that Jay-Z is the head of an evil, Satanic cult that's brainwashing our children. ...Okay, no, but seriously. There is a real thing with The Puppies.

Look at this "Big Booty 12"" put out by Vision Records in 1995. The first track is by The Real Pupps, featuring the legendary Disco Rick and Fresh Kid Ice. They also have a song on the flip-side with MC Roni D. Well, why would you specify that you were "The Real" Pupps, unless you felt that there was another group out there, capitalizing on your name, style and the media attention that should be rightfully yours? I can't think of another reason, but if you can it doesn't matter because that's exactly what's going on here.

If you were paying attention in the 90s when kiddie rap groups became popular, you may remember The Puppies. They were the big Miami bass representatives of that phenomenon who scored some hits with tracks like "Funky Y2C," "Summer Delight," and to a lesser extent, their club rendition of the "Hokey Pokey." They had two albums: their self-titled debut in 1994 and its follow-up, Recognize, in 1996, both on Joey Boy Records. Listen to those albums and they name-check themselves hundreds of times. Look at the album covers, watch the videos... It's two kids, a boy and a girl, named Big Boy and Tamara Dee. Sure, we remember them.
But were those two always The Puppies? Let's delve a little further into the history of the group. The first place you would've heard of The Puppies was The Dogs' infamous hit single, "Crack Rock," where a chorus of children taunt, "yo mama's on crack rock!" Or maybe you recall the kid on the intro to "Where Is Disco Rick At," Disco Rick's angry response to his former crew, Gucci Crew II's "Show Bizz," where a young kid yells, "can somebody tell me where Disco Rick at?" How about the chorus to "Ten Little N....s?"  They were never credited (the album was very light in song credits in general), but this was the inauspicious debut of The Puppies. That's the origin of their name - they were the little kids version of The Dogs.

A later album from The Dogs featuring Disco Rick, Beware Of the Dogs, is fortunately a little more forthcoming with its credits. The liner notes there spelled out the line-up of The Puppys[sic.] as: Li Greg, Extherlena, Sereba, Cantrell, Keysa, Latrell, Disheka, Chanelle, Terrick, Donta, Shalena, Dorena and Shunda. Holy crap, that's a lot of kids. But you'll notice two names that aren't there: Big Boy and Tamera Dee. Then, two years after that album, when Disco Rick left the label to sign with Luke, and Dogs member Ant "D" released his solo album, Top Dog, featuring The Puppies, the credits were a little different. They list the line up as: Big Boy, Tamera "D," Pup Pound, Melissa, Monique, Shante and Porsche.

Well, things are starting to become clear now, right? In between Beware Of the Dogs and Top Dog, Disco Rick left the label to sign with Luke. The Dogs was always essentially a solo act of just Disco Rick backed up by his crew. He did all the rapping, song writing and production. The line-up of The Dogs was pretty large on the early LPs, including guys like Rodney, Baby D, Damien, JJ, Peanut, Nova and DJ Tony Tone. When Rick left, Joey Boy Records tried to keep the group alive by making dancers Ant D and Peanut the lead rappers, and doing all the production themselves. Then, when Ant D wound up getting put on death row for murder, the label owners just became The Dogs themselves. They were certainly capable, since the owners are brothers Carlton Mills and Calvin Mills II, a.k.a. The Rock Force, who actually produced a large majority of the artists' albums on their label.

Now let's look at Big Boy and Tamera D's real names... Calvin Mills III and Tamera Dee Mills. That's right, Joey Boy just stuck their own kids in and took over the group name, making them the new Puppies. Pretty much the same thing they did with The Dogs... the artists were out but they kept the group names and continued to release records as if they were still the original act.

By the way, just to be thorough... you may've noticed that The Puppies second album, Recognize, says it's featuring The Pup Pound. That Pup Pound consists of Tinika, Tamyra and Candice, who may or may not be the same Pup Pound from Top Dog.

So, okay, here's the chronology of Puppies albums... Top Dog with Ant D in 1993, self titled in 1994 and Recognize in 1996. Now, this "Big Booty 12"" on Vision Records (which Disco Rick was a co-owner of)? 1995. Putting The Real Pupps right in the middle of The Puppies' two major albums. I suspect these songs were recorded for what was intended to be a full-length album by The Real Pupps, designed to challenge The Puppies for their name and clout.  But Vision became a graveyard of Rick's unrealized projects at that time, with singles and compilations promising albums by acts like Silence (Down 4 Life) and Roni D (Mind of a Mother's Child) that never came out. So they wound up just being included on this EP and a CD compilation called Bass In da Hood.

But just who are The Real Pupps exactly? Bass In da Hood has more detailed liner notes than the 12", but even that doesn't tell us much besides the interesting tidbit that Quad Star and Don Ugly (of Madd Blunted) had a hand in "Get Low, Get Low" and that both the Pupps' material is being released in conjunction with Phat Rat Records (who presumably would've released the album, had anybody done so). But actually listening to the songs, it gets a little more interesting...

They start laying claim to their authenticity by asking, "remember back in the days when we used to kick it with The Dogs?" They rap, but a large part of their act (just like the other Puppies) is providing hooks and shouted choruses. And a lot of that is sampled and replayed by the producers. Interestingly though, a major refrain from both of the new songs is actually a sample from the intro to the original "Crack Rock" song ("oochie wally wally, oochie bang bang" - long before Nas or The Bravehearts recorded their songs!), I guess to demonstrate that these are the real Pupps. But they name-check themselves, too; and while it's a little hard to make out since they're talking over some very busy instrumentals, it seems to be just two girls named Sereba and Noochie (guessing on the spelling, of course). Now let's scroll back up to the list of kids from The Dogs' album before the Mills brothers substituted their own offspring.  Sereba's there, but I don't see any Noochies. Maybe it's a new nickname, or maybe it's just one more kid being thrown into the mix. If anyone wants to come forward, I'd love to know.

At the end of the day though, all The Puppies/ Real Pupps kids sound the fucking same, and a large percentage of their performances seems to be created by their producers anyway. But I like that at least one of the original Puppies girls got to come back for a second round while The Mills' kids were making deals with Sony and Pandisc. It's a shame The Real Pupps' album never came out, not so much for the lost art, but just because it would've made for a pretty entertaining publicity battle to have two kids groups claiming to be the authentic Puppies. It would've made for some amusing Source articles, and all these Puppy records are at least fun examples of the more hype side of 90s Miami bass; you can never have too much of that.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Ant "D" Revisited: Part 1 - The Music

I got a couple questions after posting my last 2-part blog entry on Disco Rick (click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2), mainly about The Dogs' member Ant "D." It's been a almost ten years since I wrote the article, and I kind of breezed over Ant D's album, and of course his horrible crime... Ant "D" was mainly just a tangent in a piece focused on Disco Rick. But it's damned interesting tangent (in a very morbid kind of way), so I thought I'd go back now and take a look back at the music... and the murders.

Disco Rick and The Dogs was always really a solo act... the Dogs were just the name of whoever he toured with: hypemen, DJ, etc. But when Disco Rock left Joey Boy Records for a new label (Luke Records) and a new crew (The Wolfpack), Joey Boy decided to keep the Dogs' highly successful/ marketable name alive by giving it to Rick's dancers, Ant "D" and the Amazing Peanut, who suddenly got promoted to rappers. So, given that dubious origin, Ant "D"'s 1993 solo album featuring The Puppies, Top Dog, is surprisingly not too terrible.

Like most of the Joey Boy releases at that time, it's produced entirely by in-house producers Calvin Mills II and Carlton Mills, which is a good thing. After all, Ant "D" (by the way, if you're wondering why the "D" is in quotes, I don't know - it just is) has the approximate rapping skills of a professional athlete, so if he works, he works because he's essentially an in-studio creation. ...That said, to his credit, he does apparently write all his own lyrics here - at least according to the liner notes. Of course, it says, "all lyrics by Labrant Dennis [Ant's real name]," which would mean all the guest MCs' verses as well... so I'm guessing the album credits aren't telling the whole story here. Heck, they don't even name the guest MCs... but more on that later.

So, the album begins and ends with forgettable skits about two guys very excited to have the new Top Dog tape. But once we're past that we get right into one of the nicest (not "next level" exceptional or anything, but just really engaging and fun) Miami bass beats you're likely to hear, called "We Wanna Party." Perhaps the best thing about this album is that Ant "D" raps through the entire thing. It isn't 50% "shout and call" tracks, or long instrumental fillers devoted solely to car stereo system testing baslines. Don't get me wrong, this album does have the low frequency prolonged, programmed rumble you'd expect from a Miami-bassed artist at this time; but on this album it's clearly secondary; an afterthought to making enjoyable songs anybody can listen to without a jeep full of coffin-sized woofers.

Next up is the prerequisite track based off of Planet Patrol's "Play At Your Own Risk" (hey, I said this was a solid entry into the Miami bass music genre, not that it was revolutionary), followed by the first of only two songs to actually feature The Puppies. The other is the single, "Break It Down," with Ant "D" and Big Boy sharing the mic - Tamara is name-checked, but never rhymes. You've got a few other typical dance tracks, like "Work It" and "Get It Get It," and one ultra-corny love song called "Good Thing," where Ant slows it down almost to a spoken word piece. The first verse is about being true to a good relationship when you find it (something we know came from the heart and his real life experiences), and the second is more of a "do what your parents tell you to do" "Hey Young World"-type thing.

By and large, Top Dog is a collection of nothing but upbeat, fun party rhymes making for a fast-moving (the whole album just barely tops half an hour, since almost all the songs are just 3 minutes long), family friendly experience. Not what you'd expect, really, from a member of The Dogs, and certainly not when you consider what we now know he'd go on to do later...

Even on the hardcore posse cut (and only song with explicit lyrics), "Here Come Them J-Boys" (the chorus is "Here come them Joey Boys"), which features... well, I don't know. I'm gonna guess Ace the Bulldog and at least one of the Miami Boyz. They do name check themselves, but except for Ant, the MCs seem to have difficulty with ennunciation. So what you wind up with is a lot of really violent, realy slurred lyrics, like:

"I'm the Bulldog;
I've got the heart of steel
On the real,
These gangstas love to kill.

[something] from the knife wound,
Then I'ma drink your blood with a spoon!
...
Grabbed my nine
And shot a girl in the chest.

Now that was real messed up and hated.
Step to me, girl,
And even God couldn't save ya.
So, lay low before I pull ya card;
Don't snitch on the boulevard.
I told you once;
You didn't follow example.
Now your family must be dismantled!"

Another one of the MCs directs his verse towards Disco Rick:

"Let me talk about this cat
That tried to diss Ant D;

But you know that you gots to come clean.
I'm not even gonna say your name,
'Cause, punk, you don't deserve that kind of fame.
Tryin' to make girls jiggle;
I heard at the store, 'Wiggle, Wiggle.'"

But, yeah. What I was saying... even on this track, Ant D leaves the curses, violence and dissing to his guests, and keeps his verse relatively clean and non-threatening. Like Jose Armada, Jr. of Joey Boy Records said, "It really shocked me because he was a quiet guy, not that violent at all. But I hadn't seen him in three years. I guess a lot can happen in that time."*

The only other non-party song, "Ya Gotta 'Go'" (I don't know why the word "Go" is in quotes either... I guess Ant "D" just has a thing for quotation marks), takes on a disturbing new subtext when you listen to it now, knowing what happened. It's about Ant dealing with a cheating girlfriend. He decides to video-tape her in a gangbang (classy all the way), but the infidelity still gets him so mad "I was so mad, I just pulled out my glock." But in the end, he thinks better of it all, and just tells her, "you gotta go." Tragically, he didn't have those second thoughts in real life.

[Continued in a follow-up post being added immediately.]

* Taken from a 1996 article titled "Business is Booming," by John Floyd. Most of it has nothing to do with Ant D, but he does also say, "[The Dogs'] stuff has always sold steady... It's sad to say, but it's really picked up [since Dennis's arrest]. The whole thing is just crazy."


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