1999 Eternal’ put Midwestern, and more specifically Cleveland, rap on the map - and it was just as bleak as the city at the time.Īnd as far as the album compares to east-coast rap at the time (geographically, Cleveland’s only an eight-hour drive from New York City), there is no connection. The Chronic or Doggystyle it wasn’t.īone Thugs-N-Harmony and ‘ E. Eazy-E, despite passing away from AIDS shortly before the album’s release, executive-produced the effort, but his involvement is the extent of the album’s West Coast influence. 1999’s producer, the album draped listeners in a post-apocalyptic soundscape, as if U-Neek heard Snoop Dogg’s “Murder Was the Case” and thought, Hell, let’s make this grimmer.
If you had to pigeonhole it, the album was “West Coast,” but only in the sense that West Coast musicians had an overwhelming hand in making it. With the exception of the group’s super-hit, “Tha Crossroads” (a remix which was an altogether different song than the original), the LP was an anomaly. 1999 Eternal, was the stunning end result of this metaphorical flight from Cleveland’s east side, one of the Golden Era’s most unheralded (and oddest) releases which perfectly summed up the group and its city. “When we found him, we found our way out,” Wish Bone told the Times’ Heidi Siegmund Cuda. Of course, they tracked him down, prompting the hip-hop legend to sign the group and launch their career.īone’s journey out of Cleveland might not have been on a plane, but it took abandoning their birthplace to achieve success. As a 1996 Los Angeles Times story points out, the Cleveland quintet set off for Southern California in 1993 in search of former NWA member Eazy-E, the only person who they thought would understand their raps. Literally and figuratively, “flight” is the story of Cleveland and its people.īone Thugs-N-Harmony left on a bus. For many northeast Ohioans, it’s the last impression they have of the city before setting out for greener pastures elsewhere. It goes without saying, however, that this experience is the city’s final goodbye, a parting shot worthy of stamping on an incredibly large postcard. Some people make this flight regularly others, both natives and not, make it once or twice per year. It’s a fascinating bird’s-eye view which definitively lets you know you’re leaving Cleveland, with everything slowly vanishing before you see nothing but green-and-brown Upstate New York 29,000 feet below. Sometimes if you’re lucky when you fly from Cleveland to New York City, as the plane steadily climbs after takeoff, you’ll be able to glimpse Lake Erie’s coastline unfurl below you.įrom up high you can look down and spot the markers dotting this part of the Great Lake: downtown and Key Tower the east side’s factories and industrial plants suburbs like Euclid, Willoughby, and then Mentor-on-the-Lake I-90 as it strings its way towards Buffalo and Boston.
Whatever the reason, quality music is still quality music and it’s always worth checking out - even if it means veering from your usual tastes. Each author is writing from their experience based off a fresh listen - whether they missed the record in the first place or haven’t touched the record in a while. This month, we’re publishing one throwback album review per day for releases ranging from one month to a decade old. Welcome to our new series, Run That Back.
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