The group formed in a rather odd way. It's somewhat a fateful, act of God-sort-of affair. Me, Chad B., or Onasuss Maximus the Antagonist when rhyming, met the Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie, secret identity Charles, in 1983 on a street called Sudbury in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Chuck was the dude I knew to start rhyming first; circa 1993. We would freestyle purely for fun before that, but no one really started seriously rhyming until Chuck met the Primates at Shaker Heights High School. BLG, Reno Raynes, Sciencimatic, M-Double-A-L, Tha Nigga K, and shortly after, Dukie himself. Those dudes were all tight on the rhymes and we became real cool. They were the impetus to start Chuck rhyming. Chuck got a four-track and the Gemini mixer with the four sample banks as his first studio. You had to be precise with that thing. No waveform to view on a computer screen for ease of looping minus the pop. His dad had all of the old school hits, so Chuck got to digging. Looking to upgrade, Chuck worked mad hours at a gas station to get a MPC2000. On that machine, the boy got really busy making some ahead of his time hits. Chuck Dukie's demo is a bona fide classic. I lived down at the dorm at Cleveland State and we had mad MCs too. B-Roc and Black Male as 2/3 of Mental Ka$e, J-Akshun and Sean Corleone as Mental Chess, Crazy Steve the Barber, Rich London and those T-Dot boys, the Evildoers, Rafeeq Washington and a gang of others, myself included, were on some freestyle dojo shit. It really worked to hone the skills as we would go up to Mekkah Sunshine's radio show on WCSB and freestyle almost every weekend. We'd also steal a shitload of records. We were really on some Hip-Hop shit keeping it real as fuck at the time. I ended up moving to Washington, DC in 1998 to go to Howard University, the real HU, as an exchange student for a year. I get there and meet a gang of muthafuckas that, while weren't necessarily really trying to be MCs and pursue careers as rappers, loved to fucking freestyle and were quite good at it. Chris Adams is a freestyle dynamo and observant comedic asshole all in one. He is definitely the wrong dude to battle. Rob Bacon, CJ, Kevin, and a slew of mostly New York dudes would be in front of Slowe Hall on some serious rhyming shit. Because Howard is so international, you had to be on it, cause you were really representing your city. I came with the polished mercurial tongue from Cleveland; ask if you doubt me, step if you see me. I remember the homie Eric from Belgium would flip it in French and in Anglish. Howard also served as a serious rhyme dojo. One day, this one dude from Cincinnati who I had seen around often but never really conversed at length with, Jabari, jumped in the cipher and came quite tight. I was shocked cause he really ain't look or seem like the MC type. Dude was too magnanimous for that ego-driven role. I dapped him up and we stayed in touch. Instead of going back to Cleveland at the end of the academic year I decided to stay in DC. I had a decent job at George Mason and was able to stack a few, so I purchased a 61-key Triton and went to work on the beats. I randomly ran into Jabari on the streets and he says that he had been thinking of getting some equipment himself. Me and him ended up doing some song called "Throat Punches" which was horrible and stupid, but by making it we learned that we did work well together. After coming over and checking out my Triton, he went and got the 88-key Triton. Baller. Chuck Dukie moved out to DC in 2002 in the apartment I was staying at in Landover, MD at the time. We lived right in King's Square and it was perfect for making music since no one ever called the police. Chuck's MPC wasn't working properly, but he was quick to learn the Triton. Chuck and Jabari got along cool, so we decided we should all start the band up. The name "The Intangibles" was inspired by the philosophies of MC Hammer, as we, like he, knew ourselves unable to be touched. A funny thing was that Jabari himself really never had a rap name. At first he was "Legend", but that lasted for like, 3 weeks. Then he became "Hot Merchandise" or "The Hot Merchant," both of which I thought were dope, but he never kept to those. It's not of much consequence as he never says his name on the whole album anyway. As I stated previously, the guy's way too humble to be an MC. The original plan was to make a song a week, but that turned into a song every two months or so. We did however, record many beats, but just proved too lazy to record vocals. When we did do the tracks, our ritual was to get some decent vodka, usually Stolichnaya, and some cranberry juice and like mulattoes, mix 'em. Our rule concerning vocals was one take. No punch-in bullshit. If you couldn't spit the rhyme then you had to adjust it accordingly until you could. Imagine how this could hinder an MC on stage attempting to spit rhymes one hasn't the dexterity of tongue to say. As we got drunker, this could often result in many takes. Chuck had the record with 58. Sometimes the liquor worked perfectly as was the case on the song "Hooch." After we completed a track we'd record it to MiniDisc and go out. The usual location to party was Adams Morgan. The Common Share (R.I.P.) mostly. On rare occasions we'd hit up Dream. We never really pushed the album even though most people seemed to like it. We almost did it. Husky Records, was a legal entity, we were ready to go, but like so many other farts in the breeze, it didn't amount to shit. When I went to Tokyo in 2002, I passed out about 200 CDs for free, so maybe we're large over there as I haven't been back since and wouldn't know. We are though, a hit in Saipan. I moved into DC and everyone just seemed to get busy with life and kinda said "the hell with the rap game." Such is life. We're all still real cool though, and all in DC at the moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll start the band back up...Anyhow... Download the album, Plexiglass, here, and then check the track-by-track notes below...
"Hooch" Produced by Anachronus
To make the track I chopped up and pitched down parts of the Persuaders' "Love's Gonna Catch Up (And Walk Out)." It was made on a Triton, as were most of our beats. I wanted for us to make a cut concerning alcohol, but the point was to be brutally honest about the effects of the drug and the asshole-shit we are prone to doing while under the influence thereof. The final product satisfied my original plan, and I thought we personified alcoholism as well as any Hip-Hop song I have heard before or since. This is probably due to the fact we were extra drunk off of Stoli and cranberry the day we laid the track down. The drunk fellow doing the intro, chorus and outro was our downstairs neighbor, Wes. Wes had a large family and used to come up to me and Chuck's apartment to escape the fam for a spell, have a beer, a smoke and philosophize. He came up once while I was laying the beat down on Pro Tools. I miked him up and let him chat shit over the beat, which I then later chopped up into the intro, chorus and outro you heard. There is also an alternate version of this song with DJ Reemycks on the cut, but I didn't use it as the primary one here only because it is a little low in volume.
"Fox In Socks" Produced by Redfoot Jones
Jabari banged out this dope beat and came to me and Chuck with the concept to flip real quick 4-bar rhymes using the same word over and rhyming the surrounding words. We had no idea that in a couple of years that all these lil' young rappers would begin to do this all the time. Sorry. No unifying theme other than the rhyme structure, so everyone was free to be their own respective asshole self. This track went without a chorus for quite sometime. I believe that Chuck and Jabari thought up the chorus you hear and laid it down in my absence. I personally think the chorus is great and resonates with the title perfectly. "We write and jot, for tykes and tots. The game we spit, is the game we got. Your game ain't shit. We claiming spots. They say you hot, but we know you not." Dr. Seuss would have smirked. That's the homie Kevin doing the intro with his weird-ass Trinidad/London/Chicago amalgamation of an accent.
"Tedious" Produced by The Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie
Chuck called this beat "Tedious" as a comment regarding the process of recording from the Triton to Pro Tools. Like most of Chuck's beats, this beat has an evil tinge to it. Unlike most of Chuck's beats, this one had no samples. Chuck's primary instrument was the MPC2000, but at the time his Zip drive wasn't working, so he started to bang shit out on my Triton. The lyrics matched the evil aura perfectly. My rhyme was basically about me as the angel of death. Jabari has the gall to challenge perpetrators and God in his verse. Chuck comes the fuck off on this. I always thought Chuck to be the best lyricist out of all of us. The dude is a natural. "Pipe bomb at the address. It said C.O.D., and you paid for it." C'mon man. That's dope. Listen and tell me I'm wrong. The little kid at the end of the verses is Jabari's little brother (little brother as in the Little Brother/Big Brother program) doing his DC Errea thang. I don't think Chuck really wanted him on the song. Whatever. We write and jot for tykes and tots; or so we claim.
"Fiefdom" Produced by Anachronus
The samples came from some Chinese film, Triton drums and a lot of sounds from Portishead's website. We usually came off on the album as some carefree hedonists, but we all actually read from time to time. Tired of having our race card trumped by white privilege, we decided to voice our aggressions on this cut. The homie B-Roc came down for the weekend from the Land to lay down a verse. Everyone was on point on some pro-Black shit. It took us for ever to lay down the chorus as everyone sort of did it their own way, and not exactly as Jabari had originally intended. Jabari was usually the one able to formulate choruses best.
"Rubix" Produced by Redfoot Jones
One of our more upbeat songs. Jabari wanted for us to write a rhyme about how people try to figure you out but have no idea who you truly are or what you've been through. A very no-frills song. No chorus or adlibs. Just three 16s one after another. Something I consider to be a cop out on our part.
"In the Club" Produced by Redfoot Jones
We made this song way before 50 Cent did his club song. This was our closest thing to a club-banger. Jabari was playing this beat you hear here one day at his house with me, Chuck and our homie Jamiel listening like, "This shit is tight." Chuck comes right off the top with the chorus, "Jumpin' in the club, smackin' hoes, poppin' Mo." We all crack up and decide to write our verses and make it a done deal. The next week we bang the shit out and don't get it right until we get drunk. A lot of women that have heard this song thought we were talking about smacking the shit out of the hoes in the club. No. We don't condone violence against women. We just meant smacking on the respective hoes' asses. That's all.
"Very Good Years" Produced by Anachronus
At first this wasn't gonna be on the album because we didn't think we would get away with sampling Sinatra. The concept was simple, rap about a good year of your life. I chose 1998, when I was balling and told the story of my move from Cleveland to DC. Jabari took it back to 1986 by painting a portrait of a young Black adolescent and the hijinks inherent. Chuck Dukie brings it back to 1995 when he gets the MPC2000 and gets busy with the beats and rhymes in Cleveland, representing the Primate Foundation properly. Another well-manifested idea from them Intangible boys.
"Me to You" Produced by Anachronus
I made the beat from a poorly looped Indian sitar lick, a sample from the Four Rooms soundtrack, and some of my horrible synth licks. A slightly faster-paced beat for us to be MCs over. No theme at all, just loosely-knit braggadocious rhymes. Again we have Jabari on the chorus. The way the songs ends is great.
"Icarus" Produced by The Grand Glorious Chuck Dukie
The sole MPC2000 beat on the record courtesy of Chuck Dukie. Not sure where he got all the samples from, but I do believe they were mainly from a movie. The concept was based upon Icarus, the wax-winged dude that tried to fly to the sun. Fucking idiot. So we all made up what I thought to be excellent stories of rise to fame and fortune and the fall from it. I owe Chuck and Jabari an apology because I wrote a 32-bar rhyme that I thought was 16-bars. This was the first song that we recorded together, and this was during the time when I never wrote rhymes that adhered to a sensible, even number of bars. My bad. This song, like "Hooch", was one of our best produced. The rhymes and beat perfectly complimented the title. Hopefully the young kids will hear this one and not want to become superstars.
"Perpin'" Produced by Redfoot Jones
(Addendum 11/11/2007) I forgot about this song until Jabari reminded me about it after a night of drinking in which both of us claimed we weren't trying to drink. This was our hidden song that came on following seven minutes of silence from the conclusion of "Icarus." The concept is simple, talk about those fake-ass, perpetrating, uniform-wearing, automatons that think they're prodigies. One point about this song... it's hilarious. The rhymes are spot-on, but the chorus is utterly ridiculous and best exemplifies how we got increasingly intoxicated during our vocal sessions. This was a very fun track to make and it can be heard in the music. We once flew DJ Reemycks out from Cleveland to lay down some cuts on the album. I remember that he did some on "Hooch," but I forgot that he cut on this song too. Real Hip-Hop. Scratches hoes.
