Somebody Likes It

Given time, pressure, and the varied perspective that arrives with age, we can be forgiven for re-imagining the opinions we formed in our halcyon days. But as long as music bears the burden of snapping us back to the moment when we first made its acquaintance, it feels, if only for a brief time, like we haven't aged a day.Ryan's friend Daniel Rich sits in on this show, and he brought us a gift: The Jungle Brothers' Done By The Forces of Nature. And there, in the way back machine, he is...nineteen, staring down the semi opaque business end of a flimsy promotional pressing LP, slapping it on a substandard turntable, and falling hard for whatever bumped and grooved out of the tinny speaker set. For all that the Jungle Brothers didn't quite accomplish in comparison with the overt popularity of some of their Native Tongues brethren, this album signaled the serious Afrocentric arrival of an act with real chops, and even in a period of volcanic creativity in the genre, the LP rings as fresh today as it did in 1989.