I have to admit that I've been a poser when it comes to this album. I bring it up all the time in conversation when I put forward my contention that Busta Rhymes is the best emcee with no classic albums. He has classic songs, classic verses, huge impact on the culture, but never made a 5/5 album. When I present people with this take, I always say, "of course, that's assuming you don't count Leaders of the New School." But friends, I have a confession to make & here's where the poser part comes in: I've really never listened to A Future Without a Past... enough to make that determination. I bought the CD off the strength of "Case of the P.T.A." but I doubt I listened to it more than a handful of times. Not because I disliked it, but just because it was long & kind of odd & at the time I got the CD my interests were elsewhere...you know how it goes. Sometimes you can acknowledge that a record is good even if it's not clicking with you at the moment. So this one got put away & I never got around to revisiting it, but periodically I would think about it & it went down in my head as a great, classic album--just one I didn't have much interest in listening to. So, upon this long-delayed revisit, did it live up to my memory?
1st of all, the name Leaders of the New School feels kind of ironic, because what Buss, Dinco & Charlie flex is a style that was already retro even in 1991. The energetic, uptempo style with lots of hypemanning call & response is reminiscent of the unison routines of some of the earliest rap groups. Their innocent subject matter, mostly discussing the rather mundane travails of high school students--chasing girls, dealing with bullies, smarting off to teachers, believing in yourself--must have seemed quaint in an NYC scene that was already being taken over by hardcore rap. Within this framework, the guys manage to walk the line between being childlike & being childish--they interject with snatches of Disney songs & nursery rhymes, & at one point Charlie Brown literally sings the entire ABC song. But thanks to the guys' nimble flows & interesting wordplay, it's all shot through with a hip intelligence & street smarts.
One contemporary group that comes to mind as a comparison is De La Soul: LONS have a similar freewheeling, goodnatured energy, & the beats, while not as left-field as Prince Paul's off-the-wall sample collages, have the same gleeful unpredictability. Check out Vibe Chemist Backspin's work on "What's the Pinocchio's Theory?", which manages to incorporate both Dixieland jazz & bagpipe music into its sonic stew. The Long Island boys also got some help from Eric "Vietnam" Sadler from the Bomb Squad, whose best beat on here is the moody "Sob Story," a lowkey epic punctuated by wonky piano scrawls.
My understanding is that part of the reason the group split is because the other members got tired of Busta stealing the show all the time, & I'm sorry to fuel that particular fire, but he absolutely does. On the other hand, Dinco & Charlie are no slouches--they all set themselves apart with distinctive flows, deliveries & lyrical perspectives. True, future icon Bussa Buss outshines his partners with his sandpaper voice & dancehall-inflected flavor, but at no point does it feel like The Busta Rhymes Show Featuring LONS--well, except for "Feminine Fatt," Busta's solo celebration of cellulite where he even manages to make lines like "Spandex makes small fat look real fat/I'd rather deal with fat that is actual fat" sound dope.
So was I right? Is A Future Without a Past... a true classic? Well, for one thing, I still think it's too long. Occasionally it feels like listening to a slightly less out-there De La Soul. But aside from just being a good record, I can see how it is positioned between 2 eras. The members' camaraderie & their slang-heavy worldbuilding almost seem to anticipate the rise Wu-Tang, while at the same time honoring hiphop's most primitive traditions. (Maybe the group name was more apt than I gave it credit for.) For that alone, plus being a breeding ground for Busta's talents, this one goes down as iconic. He still never made a great album on his own though.
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