Steve 'Flash' JuonDid rap music need two Pharcydes in 1994?
If you’re listening to the first verse of “Just Feelin'” and don’t get the feeling that Stenge sounds exactly like Booty Brown, I don’t know what to tell you. They’re practically twins separated at birth, even though he says (ironically enough) that he’s got “flavor that separates us from the rest.” The rest of this group is Stix (RIP), Stones, Bambino and Ced Twice. You could say that makes them different from Pharcyde in group size, UNLESS you count Pharcyde’s deejay as a member (Mark Luv or J-Swift) then they’re equal again. The difference would be that two-fifths of Anotha Level were the producers (Stix and Stones) while the rest rapped. One more producer, one less emcee. The chill production, punchline bars (“my third leg is fatter than a Jenny Craig patient”) and friendly interplay between members makes the comparison even more obvious on singles like “What’s That Cha Say.”
Both groups hail from Los Angeles, California. That one fact you could almost excuse as a coincidence given that Cali was blowing up all over the place in the early 1990’s, to the point that East coast rappers started getting jealous and recording songs like “Fuck Compton.” I’m less convinced of the coincidence when Pharcyde’s “Soul Flower (Remix)” sampled The Jetsons’ famous verbal nonsense song that made Judy Jetson swoon titled “Eep, Opp, Ork, Ah-ah” while the same phrase is referenced in the song above. Okay maybe that one’s a stretch… but THE PHARCYDE IS HERE on a song called “Phat-T.” That’s right. These two groups that sounded like each other, came out around the same time as each other, and hailed from the same city as each other made it even more obvious they sound alike by doing one big massive posse song together.
Now I’m not going to front like the bassline isn’t dope or hearing this many emcees who probably got their start at the Good Life Cafe all doing a superstar track together, and Fat Lip’s alter ego Farmer Brown was just a hint at the madness he’d bring to rap as a soloist. 30 years ago I couldn’t shake this feeling they were an unnecessary duplication of something hip-hop had already done and listening to “On Anotha Level” today I still feel the exact same way. This project was shepherded to fruition by executive producer O’Shea Jackson (b/k/a Ice Cube) and he even supported them with a cameo on “Level-N-Service.” It didn’t seem to help them commercially though.
Their album peaked at No. 60 on the Billboard charts and quietly slid back down without anyone noticing, and after making one appearance on the Street Fighter soundtrack for “Rap Commando” the group quietly disbanded. In an alternate universe where Pharcyde never existed I think “On Anotha Level” would have been much better received in 1994. In fact in hindsight it’s a perfectly fine album. The problem is there were just too many coincidences to ignore when somebody had come along not that long before Anotha Level and did everything they did too… but just a little bit better than them. If you’re going to be a copy you don’t want it to be so obvious you’re the lesser version of the same thing.