The last time we heard from Organized Konfusion here at TimeIsIllmatic was during their cameo appearance on O.C.’s “War Games” earlier in 1997. Organized only contributed a refrain to the song, leaving me wanting to hear more from the Queens duo. It had been three years since they released their sophomore effort, Stress: The Extinction Agenda —an album I enjoyed and some deemed a classic. The underappreciated Queens duo would return in September of ‘97 with their third release, The Equinox.

With each of their three albums, Organized Konfusion would relinquish more of the production duties. They handled all of the production on their self-titled debut, bringing in Buckwild and Rockwilder to help with Stress. For The Equinox, OK is credited with producing only five tracks, leaving Buckwild, Rockwilder, and a handful of other producers to shape the sound of the album.

An equinox occurs when the Earth’s axis is tilted neither toward nor away from the sun, resulting in nearly equal amounts of daylight and darkness (equinox comes from the Latin words meaning “equal night”). An equinox occurs twice a year: around March 20, marking the start of spring, and around September 20, marking the beginning of fall. I wonder if the September 23rd release date was a part of Organized Konfusion’s calculated plan.

I didn’t listen to The Equinox for at least a decade after its release, and the few times I did, they were quick skims through. Jay-Z warned us of the dangers of forming an opinion on music when you skim through it. This review marks my thorough listening to The Equinox.

Interior Assasin’s Car 3:35 A.M. (Skit) – Ahh, the coveted hip-hop album intro. The first thing you hear is rain, followed by a conversation between some guys preparing to do a drive-by on some unassuming chumps. The skit ends with the fellas throwing something into the tape deck (remember those?) to set the murderous mood and cue the next record (FYI, I’m fully aware that “Assassin” is misspelled in the song title; blame Organized Konfusion, not me).

They Don’t Want It! – Prince Po shouts out his supporters before addressing OK’s haters (the “individuals that be fakin’ moves and fakin’ jacks (or jax?)”). Then he and Pharoahe dedicate a short refrain to inferior emcees, daring them to step up for a war of words. I find it hard to believe that this bland, low-energy background music would be the soundtrack to anyone’s drive-by shooting. But I’m not a killer, so what do I know?

March 21 3:45 A.M. (Skit) – Apparently, the drab music from the previous track did the trick, because ten minutes later, the fellas from the opening skit complete their murderous mission (note that March 21st is one of the Equinox dates). One of the drive-by kids becomes the story’s narrator. He speaks retrospectively about regretting how out of control his crew had gotten. He also introduces us to the co-star of this hood tale, who also happens to be the most menacing member of his crew, Malice (described by the narrator as “the most ferocious, game-type, pussy getting, mom loving, ego maniac”). This skit bleeds into the next track. No pun.

9xs Out Of 10 – Four tracks into the album and we finally get our first dose of Po and Pharoahe bars; thankfully, they don’t disappoint. The duo sounds sharp as they take turns boasting of their greatness and proudly raising the Organized Konfusion banner over a cloudy yet vibrant backdrop. This was dope.

Questions – Diamond D provides an energetic instrumental backed by a blaring horn break and a warm, groovy bassline for the two P’s, who continue to display their underappreciated rhyming skills. They sound a little haterish on the hook (“Just ‘cause them niggas got dough, don’t mean they got that flow”), but I still enjoyed the track. This one ends with the narrator speaking on his and Malice’s contrasting personalities (he claims to be “logical, dealing with absolutes” while he describes Malice as “emotional, unpredictable fire”) and reminisces back to the night they gained their “nigga stardom” (I’ll assume that’s the night they did the drive-by). You then hear the sound of a crowd lined up to get inside a nightclub.

Soundman – This one begins with Pharoahe Monch doing a mic check, before the soulfully thumpin’ backdrop (credited to someone simply going as Rasheed) comes in for him and Po to effortlessly check the mic and wack emcees, simultaneously. The track ends with a skit that finally reveals the narrator’s name: Life. Life and Malice flirt with a female bartender (who greets them by name) before the next track begins.

Move – During the hook, Organized calls for the listener to get on the floor and move something. But their dull and dingy instrumental says otherwise. Thankfully, Pharoahe and Po’s bars are decent, making this track only a minor mishap.

Confrontations – The DITC continues to get love on The Equinox. Diamond D produced a track earlier in the sequencing (“Questions”), and Showbiz provides the music for this one. P&P get confronted by some OK haters, and in the name of self-preservation, they detail the brawl over a murky bassline and composed drums. I enjoyed this one.

Life & Malice Exterior Club Nite (Skit) – The Life and Malice storyline continues to develop as the duo gets thrown out of the club they were drinking at in the previous skit. This skit closes with the two agreeing that they’re too old to be fighting in the streets and that they need to come up with a plan to make money.

Numbers – Life and Malice’s need to make money bleeds into a track called “Numbers“ (Ah…I see what they did there). Pharoahe and Prince cleverly reference numbers in each bar to get their points across over a hard backdrop that sounds a little Premo-esque (by the way, I hate when rappers ask me if I “get it?” when they think they’ve come up with a super witty bar that’s over my head, like Po does during his first verse; but on the flip side, his “227” line makes me lol every time I listen to this track). OK’s execution of the concept was dope, yet not nearly done as masterfully as Mos Def’s “Mathematics” from Black On Both Sides, which wouldn’t come out for a few more years. The record ends with another skit: Life and Malice come up with a plan to open a check-cashing spot, where Life manages the legal side of the business, and Malice runs the illegal activities (i.e., drugs, prostitution, etc.).

Shugah Shorty – The Pharoahe and the Prince are looking to get their royal penises wet as they both shoot their shots at the objects of their erections. Pharoahe’s shot is ultimately blocked (and in true rejected, salty nigga fashion, he talks shit about her after she denies him; excuse me, sir, but her ass was also fiberglass backboard flat before she dissed you), but Po is successful. Hurricane G stops by to play a baddie named Star, and she’s eating up the game Prince Po is laying down, even referring to him as a “big black piece of chocolate.” Buckwild becomes the third DITC member to produce a track on The Equinox, and it’s discreetly dope. I absolutely loved the East Coast/Puerto Rican accent and tone of Hurricane Gloria’s rapping voice. May she continue to rest in peace.

Interior Car Nite (Skit) – The last track ended with Life speaking on the success of their check-cashing spot. He acknowledges that its success came from them embracing the dark side, and he promises to elaborate on that later in the album. Meanwhile, the listener becomes a fly on the wall inside a car where Life, Malice, and their crew’s bickering is interrupted by a phone call from either Life or Malice’s girl (her sexy accent makes me believe it’s Star, the bizarre body baddie from the previous song), letting him know she’s pregnant.

Invetro – Monch and Po both rap from the perspective of troubled fetuses. Pharoahe plays the future child of a bad diet, cigarette-smoking, crack-addicted mother, whose foul lifestyle has him hoping not to be born, but to no avail. And despite the obstacles Baby Po sees in his future, he’s full of optimism and can’t wait to be born, but his unprepared mom has other plans. Po and Pharoahe’s rhymes can get very intricate, making it easy to miss some of their content. I’d advise reading the rhymes on Genius or Apple Music while listening to this song to catch all the details. The concept was genius, the bars and execution were brilliant, and Buckwild’s bluesy jazz instrumental will stir your emotions while listening to the two unborn babies’ sad stories.

Chuck Chesse – Life is back. He starts this track off with a short monologue about the “other side” and shady friends, which leads right into the song about a young shady thug known as Chuck Chesse (not to be confused with Chuck E. Cheese, though I’m sure he influenced the alias of the YN in this story). Pharoahe sits this one out and lets Prince Po and a few of his cronies (Rude One and Tha Ill Rahlos) share the exploits of young CC. I love the gritty, raw boom-bap feel of the instrumental, but Po and friends’ storyline is way too elaborate for me to follow.

Interior Marisol’s Apartment (Skit) – The woman who called Life or Malice to let him know she was pregnant during the “Interior Car, Nite (Skit)” resurfaces. Marisol had the baby, and now she and the baby’s daddy are arguing, while the baby cries in the background. The skit ends with the BM kicking the BD out of her apartment.

Sin – Not sure how the previous skit ties in with this song, but whatever. Casper (not to be confused with the friendly ghost) serves up audio slop for Pharoahe to vomit his vivacious vocabulary all over, battling wack emcees, supposedly in the name of God. This didn’t do it for me. The beat was horrible, which in turn made Pharoahe’s word salad and animated delivery nearly impossible to tolerate. The track ends with Life expressing his growing disgust for Malice: “Alongside all my family love I had for him, grew a hatred of myself.”

Hate – The track begins with an ill rock guitar riff that makes you believe the instrumental is going to be bananas, but it quickly loses its zest like an ED penis. Sticking with the hate theme, The P’s rap from the perspective of white supremacists. They do a poor job of selling it as their characters’ posh content (especially Pharoahe’s) sounds more like they’re giving a dissertation on white supremacy than expressing their authentic disdain for everything not Caucasian.

March 21 – 3:47 A.M. (Skit) – As Life and Malice are locking up and leaving the spot, someone rolls up on them, letting off a round of gunshots. The timestamp on this drive-by is two minutes after the one at the beginning of the album, and the shooters use the same dialogue as the previous shooters, only in a devilish, distorted tone. I’m confused as shit. What am I missing?

Somehow, Someway – As the tires from the drive-by shooters’ car from the previous skit screech off into the night, a luscious string loop and a mysteriously cool bass line creep into your ear, later joined by lively drum claps. Rockwilder (who’s had an impressive 1997 to this point) receives credit for the irresistibly slick instrumental that OK uses to boast about their extraordinary rap skills, right in the middle of a drive-by shooting. It’s a dope record (one of my favorites of the album), but a weird transition from the previous skit. Speaking of the previous skit, the track ends going back to the scene of the shooting, and it appears Life got hit, as he speaks of feeling the weight of his sweater getting soaked with blood and clinging to his body, but ultimately, he decides he is going to pull through. Suddenly, things fast-forward (or rewind) to somebody knocking on Life’s door (Malice?). Life opens the door for his guest, they exchange words, then leave, get into the car, and you hear the sound of rain. It sounds like the rain from the opening scene. Is this the prequel to the opening skit? If so, why is it placed here? Am I in the Twilight Zone?

Epilogue – The previous two skits left me confused, but Life’s closing monologue left me baffled, befuddled, and bewildered. I was under the impression that Life got shot during the “March 21 3:47 A.M. (Skit).” But during this epilogue, Life talks about going to visit Malice at the hospital as he recovers from thirteen gunshot wounds. Wtf is going on? Did I miss something? Did Malice get hit the same night Life got shot? Or was he shot in a separate incident that didn’t make the album? Are Life and Malice split personalities trapped in the same person, representing a balance of light and darkness, hence the album title, The Equinox? Or was this just a poorly written script that has me overthinking it?

United As One – The Equinox ends with this hidden track that brings Tha Ill Rahlos back, as they unite with Pharoahe and Po to form…the Medicine Men? They take turns spewing extravagant boasts with their studious vernacular. At this point in the album, I’m in no mood to dissect and decode rhymes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the clouded melody in the instrumental.

I was recently listening to a hip-hop Morning Show on SiriusXM, and they played Organized Konfusion’s “Releasing Hypnotical Gases” from their self-titled debut album. When the song ended, the lead host (who played it because he liked it) went around the room, asking his co-hosts what they thought about the song. The first three said they enjoyed the record, but the fourth was a bit indifferent. He thought the music was “cool,” but felt the rhymes were “too wordy,” causing him to mentally check out. I’ve heard the song, and I completely understand where he’s coming from. His sentiment can also apply to some of The Equinox.

During “Soundman,” both Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch proclaim themselves as “God’s gift to vocabulary.” That gift shines bright on songs like “9X Out Of 10,” “Questions,” “Soundman,” “Confrontation,” “Shugah Shorty,” and two of my favorite records on the album: the creatively clever, “Numbers,” and the emotionally powerful, “Invetro.” But at times on The Equinox, their gift can be a curse. Po and Monch are undoubtedly both talented lyricists (no disrespect to Po, but Monch is obviously the more skilled of the two; maybe that’s why he’s a Pharoahe and Po’s a Prince), and I do enjoy meaty bars and a witty, slightly coded riddle in a rhyme. But at times, Organized Konfusion’s content (especially the second half of the album) becomes verbose, often getting tangled up in intricacies, making some of their rhymes a mental strain to follow.

Speaking of hard to follow, the Life and Malice storyline that plays out between songs on the album is a hot mess. The opening skit and the drive-by scene that follows, “They Don’t Want It,” had my attention. From that point on, the skits and dialogue are hit and miss, sometimes making sense to precede or follow a track, and other times, feeling completely random in the album’s sequencing (I still can’t get over them bragging and boasting about making funky shit every single day on “Somehow, Someway” while Life lays on the ground bleeding to death). The story ends anticlimactically, leaving the listener with questions (whose baby mama is Marisol?) and confusion (Did Life and Malice both get shot while leaving the check-cashing spot?). Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po are very cerebral, so I’m sure there is a hidden message or encrypted metaphor in the saga. Regardless, the storyline is too involved to be effective without a visual.

The core of the production on The Equinox maintains a foggy, soulful feel, occasionally venturing off into grimy waters or jazzy vibes. There are a few underwhelming instrumentals, but the bulk of the production is fire. So, while the rhymes on the album can get a bit complex, and the parallel storyline can be overly convoluted, the production stays consistent and enjoyable.

On “United As One,” Prince Po raps that OK be “Droppin mega jewels on third eyes like smart bombs.” The Equinox is an intelligent hip-hop album (sometimes maybe too intelligent), filled with smart bombs. There are a few duds, but most of the bombs detonate in your mind, causing you to think or giving you too much to think about. It’s a frustratingly solid album. Based on the group name, that was probably by design.

-Deedub
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