Steve 'Flash' JuonIncredibly the title “Fuck What You Think” isn’t even the most offensive thing about this album.
Calling this a Main Source album is a joke. Technically speaking K-Cut and Sir Scratch can get away with it since they are two thirds of the group, but their famous frontman Large Professor left well before their sophomore album was released. There’s only one song from between these albums that I consider an authentic Main Source track and that’s “Fakin’ the Funk” from the White Men Can’t Rap soundtrack. Even though Large Pro splits the lyrical duties with Neek the Exotic, fuck man, at least he’s on it.
It turned out to be one of the most unintentionally apt song titles of all time. Everything about “Fuck What You Think” feels like Main Source is faking the funk big time. It’s a shame because Extra P’s replacement emcee Mikey D isn’t even a bad rapper, but because he doesn’t have the laconic smooth lyricism of the Professor, it feels wrong. Apparently even the notoriously unreliable Wild Pitch Records felt the same way, because the only single from this album was “What You Need.” In retrospect the only thing that makes this album notable is a pre-L.O.X. appearance of Jadakiss and Sheek Louch on the posse song “Set It Off,” which accidentally commits two more insults along the way. Item number one — it opens with the same sample as “Live at the Barbeque,” and if you’re not bringing that lineup back then don’t go there. The second is that if you’re not coming as correct as Black Moon or the Pharcyde did with their “Summer in the City” samples, then you’re just the third best at best to loop Quincy Jones on a song.
It’s hella hard to divorce myself from how personally insulting I found a Main Source album without Large Professor is in 1994, but once I’m finally able to settle my emotions I can admit there are some moments that are “aight.” The opener “Only the Real Survive” is no less flagrant with overly familiar samples, but I’m able to dig Mikey D’s delivery and wordplay here. “I paid dues to rap/they paid the toll and crossed over.” Yeah, cool. The “keep it real” trope is certainly in full effect, but a lesser emcee wouldn’t have pulled it off with the credibility that D does here.
In fact if K-Cut and Sir Scratch hadn’t called “Fuck What You Think” a Main Source album, I think I’d be okay with it. Perhaps “Mikey D & The Crew” would have been a better name? Then drop some subtle hints in the liner notes that they’re “the producers formerly known as Main Source” and people would have been like “Oh! Aight. It’s a new project.” The fact that D proclaims this is “the underground sound from the group called the Main Source” on the hook of the only single is just too IN YOUR FACE with the fact the Professor had been shamelessly replaced. It takes away the credibility that D establishes with songs like “Hellavision,” where he rails against the negative influences that TV has on the youth. I’m not even saying I agree with his premise, but he’s passionate about it and he’s at least got arguments to back up his beliefs in the bars he wrote.
A rose by any other name would smell sweeter than “Fuck What You Think.” The title seems deliberately chosen as an answer to critics who would dislike Large Professor’s absence, and the response they got back as a result was entirely expected. I wish they hadn’t gone about things the way that they did, but the fact that Main Source’s legacy ended with this album is their own fault and not anybody else’s.