HOUSE OF PAIN Fine Malt Lyrics CD (1992)

1992. Jump Around drops and suddenly every kid from here to Boston knows the words. Fine Malt Lyrics is the album that housed it, and it holds up better than the backlash crowd wants to admit.

House of Pain were a weird proposition, Irish-American hip hop with a chip on their shoulder and a DJ in Lethal who knew his way around a sample. Everlast and Danny Boy brought genuine aggression to the mic at a time when West Coast g-funk and East Coast boom-bap were the only conversations anyone wanted to have. This record sits outside both camps and is better for it. Raw, brawling, and genuinely funny in places, it's a time capsule from when alternative hip hop meant something different than it does now. The kind of CD that earns its place in any collection built on outsider sounds and alternative fashion in attitude if not in genre.

CD. Full-length album. Tommy Boy Records, USA, 1992. Genre: hip hop, rap.

Fans of: Cypress Hill, Ice-T and Body Count, Run DMC, Beastie Boys.