Geto Boys - We Can't Be Stopped 2LP

I can vaguely remember the context of how Geto Boys found their way into my music collection. Around 15 years ago I came across a ‘Screwed & Chopped-A-Lot’ CD edition of their 1991 album ‘We Can’t Be Stopped’ in the bargain basement of Utopia Records short lived Broadway location. Sadistik Exekution’s Rev Kris Hades may have been soundchecking. I had a vague understanding of their reputation as one of the most obscene and outrageous Hip Hop groups and was excited about experiencing the Chopped & Screwed treatment, as I had read about this great Houston tradition in The Wire (nerd alert!).

Needless to say, I still treasure that disc til this day, and think ‘We Can’t Be Stopped’, chopped or not, is the Geto Boys masterpiece. Let’s observe the landscape of Hip Hop in 1991. You’ve got The Low End Theory, De La Soul Is Dead, NWA’s Niggaz 4 Life, Cypress Hill’s debut, Ice Cube’s Death Ceritfication and much more. Competing vision of Hip Hop in East Coast versus West Coast, as well as the creative playfulness in the Native Tongues camp versus both coasts take on unfiltered portraits of harsh urban realities. Then you’ve got Geto Boys sitting outside all of that noise, doing their own thang down in Texas. 

The only thing close to this level of brash, bombastic, exaggerated ignorance in hip Hop circa 1991 is Tim Dog’s ‘Fuck Compton’. Even though ‘We Can’t Be Stopped’ has the technology and P-Funk/James Brown sample sound palette as Hip Hop’s coastal elites, the heavy and humid atmosphere of Houston looms large. And we all know those region-specific sounds are what made the sonically diverse tapestry of Rap Music so gosh darn amazing! – Nic