Krispy 3 - Can't Melt the Wax

Most people love and remember golden era UK hip hop for its hardcore, raw and aggressive stylings. However there were some gems released during those days that brought different flavours to the table and Krispy3’s debut album “Can’t Melt the Wax” was one of those albums that sounded unlike much else coming out at the time in the UK or even the US. Little in the way of darkness, noise or hardcore can be found on the album but instead it’s best described as bouncy, jazzy, upbeat and pretty lightweight (but thankfully not in a commercial way).

Catchy tracks like “Can’t Melt the Wax”, “Back it Up” and a couple others share a pretty similar formula – midtempo bouncy beats with various horns and/or pianos keys sitting on top of the tracks and a slight reggae feel to the musical vibe with the MC’s similarly adding a slight Jamaican tinge to some of their vocal techniques.

There are a few standouts on this one for me. “Pop Like Bubblegum” is one of the livelier tracks on the album and is a head-nodding track laced with a superb flowing bassline and catchy handclaps and has the busiest chorus on the LP with all manner of scratching and freaky squeals going on during the chorus and is a brilliant opening track to the album as each MC has his turn to shine on the mic. “100% Intelligent” with its totally addictive Q-Tip sample is a slower, far more stripped back track which benefits musically from its creative simplicity and has great lyrics regarding the uplifting of the black race. The other standout is “Come ’N’ Get It” which is the one track on here that sounds a lot like what you’d expect from an early 90’s Kold Sweat album (think Katch 22) – it’s sparse and raw and offers nothing much more than a banging breakbeat with stabs of sounds and muted horns dropping in and out over it with the MC’s doing a bit of nice mic ripping.

All finer points of production aside the three MC’s here deserve special mention for their skills. We have Mic Don and Mr Wiz who sound somewhat alike with their deeper voices and ragga accents and also Sonic G who is slightly more distinctive from the other two with the higher pitched voice and more straightforward style. Whilst all three would unlikely be rated by anyone as the greatest of all time they are all very, very solid on the album and maintain my interest in the album from start to finish and contribute to making the album a good one as much as the music does.

Whilst historically I’ve had little time or patience for hip hop of the lighter, jazzier persuasion I do actually really enjoy this album and do not skip anything on here, even the few little interlude tracks come and go harmlessly without needing the help of any FFWD functionality (in fact “Def in FX” and “At the Lab” are great little beats). Krispy 3 (who later became known simply as "Krispy") did have a rather large catalog of releases by UK hip hop standards and this album would not be a bad reference point at all if you wanted a good indication of their talents.