House of Pain - Same As It Ever Was (June 28, 1994)

The phrase “West Coast-based rap group House of Pain” doesn’t seem like it should make any goddamn sense. How could it, when the trio, consisting of Erik “Everlast” Schrody, Daniel “Danny Boy” O’Connor, and Leor “DJ Lethal” Dimant, have seemingly gone out of their way to claim their Irish ancestry through the guise of rowdy Boston hooligans? When you listen to their monster hit “Jump Around”, do you immediately think of Los Angeles? Of course you fucking don’t. But you should, because that’s where the group is actually from.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone when you sit down to think about it, however. Prior to House of Pain, Everlast was a solo artist affiliated with Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate collective, which certainly would have placed him within the future Law & Order: SVU star’s immediate orbit at the time, since the Interweb wasn’t much of a thing back in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s. The trio was also affiliated with Lawrence “DJ Muggs” Muggerud’s artist collective Soul Assassins, which formed shortly after his own group, Cypress Hill, found success in the rap game. Both Ice-T and Cypress Hill were based out of California – of course House of Pain is a West Coast group.

And DJ Lethal is Latvian. He’s not even Irish. The hell kind of shit are these guys trying to pull?

House of Pain’s 1992 debut album, House of Pain (Fine Malt Lyrics), which I will abbreviate to just Fine Malt Lyrics for the rest of this write-up, was fortunate enough to feature the aforementioned monster hit “Jump Around”, a staple of clubs, bars, and awkward office parties to this day. The rest of the project certainly had its moments, but for the most part they came across as a flagrantly Irish take on the Cypress experience, which is ironic, since the Hill wouldn’t even secure their own gigantic crossover hit, “Insane in the Brain”, until a year later. (That’s right: although their self-titled debut had some solid rap radio hits, Cypress Hill didn’t hit it big until after House of Pain did. So who was really copying who?) (Neither, that’s who – it’s hard for one to be a clone of another when DJ Muggs was responsible for guiding both acts.) (I need to stop answering my own questions within parentheses.)

Same As It Ever Was is the group’s second album, which, unsurprisingly, failed to reach the heights of their debut, although, in fairness to the artists, they didn’t want to recreate their past success, opting for the more sustainable approach of “just trying to record some good music”. (Their label, Tommy Boy Records, wasn’t very thrilled with the sales figures, however. Same As It Ever Was sold over five hundred thousand copies, but unlike House of Pain, the label did want lightning to strike twice.) It followed a similar blueprint as Fine Malt Lyrics, with DJs Lethal and Muggs lending the vast majority of its production (Muggs less so this time around), and the guest list is kept to the bare minimum required for there to even be a “guest list”. (One. I’m saying there’s only one guest.) Everlast was under house arrest at the time of recording, which caused the rest of the group to work around this restriction, which results in a subtler album without much for the “party rap” sphere, but with all of Erik’s anger and resentment in full force.

1. BACK FROM THE DEAD

One effective way to kick off your sophomore album is to reassure the listener that yes, you are still alive and that no, you did not, in fact, pass away in between projects. That’s the scenario Everlast had to work with, anyway: even though I can’t speak to the veracity of the rumor being so widespread because it never made its way to my neck of the woods, word was that Erik had died from an overdose after Fine Malt Lyrics dropped, so the man, logically, felt the need to open Same As It Ever Was by calling out the lie. DJ Muggs and the Baka Boyz team up to give Erik a jazzy, jaunty instrumental built atop a Louis Armstrong sample that hits fucking hard today, maintaining the Cypress Hill aesthetic Muggerud excelled at back in 1994 while broadening his style for House of Pain, and Erik tears through four brief verses as though they were holding his children hostage, essentially giving his foes the “you’ll wish I was dead” treatment. The back half of “Back From The Dead” veers into hokey lyrical territory, what with all of the comparisons to Pearl Jam, GG Allin, and Steven Seagal (let alone the sound bite from Timex Social Club’s “Rumors” underlining the whole bit), but this shit was still kind of fire today, and Everlast’s command to “erase my name from off the tombstones” is some unexpectedly stark imagery.

2. I’M A SWING IT

On Same As It Ever Was, DJ Muggs’s role behind the scenes decreases while actual band member DJ Lethal steps up his game, as he handles production on over half of this project, including “I’m A Swing It”. And for his first time at bat, he delivers a never-ending loop that grows more tedious as the track rolls on: it feels like it lasts for at least three times its verifiable length. It’s boring, is what I’m trying to say using far more words than necessary. Everlast and Danny Boy pair up to unleash five verses in total, although Danny’s contributions play as afterthoughts written on the fly, while Erik’s three stanzas could have supported this structure just fine by themselves. “I’m A Swing It” is pure boasts-n-bullshit, as Everlast growls at his adversaries (at one point even shouting out Kool Keith while doing so, which was weird and interesting), threatens to take all of their women (yeah, that verse is not great), and disses DJ Quik for retaliating in a beef that Everlast fucking started. Danny Boy is also present, but let’s be honest, you won’t remember anything he says on here. Alas.

3. ALL THAT

An instrumental interlude on a House of Pain album is a fantastic idea. Thankfully, DJ Lethal’s work on “All That” is far more imaginative than that of the preceding song.

4. ON POINT

The first single from Same As It Ever Was fails to hit the same highs as the lead-off from Fine Malt Lyrics, but “Jump Around” came out of nowhere and shifted the zeitgeist, which is not something that any artist should be blatantly aiming to do, so it’s fine. It’s still pretty fucking solid today, too, and unlike the ubiquitous (especially on St. Patrick’s Day – wink wink) “Jump Around”, “On Point” is a true House of Pain song and not a Muggs-produced glorified Everlast solo, as DJ Lethal cooks up a (hot as fuck) instrumental for Erik and Daniel to spit to. Hell, Lethal even gets in on the action, rapping his own verse, a feat that has never again occurred in his career. (The remix of this very song that appears later on in the program doesn’t count, of course). The bars themselves stick to the group’s shit-talking (and shit-kicking) aesthetic, and by “group” I of course mean “genre”, as Erik unloads far too many similes alongside his dismissal of Boston entertainer “Marky” Mark Wahlberg, quoting Sadat X and shouting our his longtime friend Divine Styler for good measure. (The first line of his second verse is problematic as shit, and yeah, I know 1994 was a different time and all, but there’s no way in hell Erik Schrody would think that shit would fly in 2020, folks. Although based on what is still to come up on Same As It Ever Was, I could be wrong…) Lethal’s vocal contribution is… well, his beat is great. But, weirdly, my favorite performance on “On Point” comes from Danny Boy, who sounds coked-out-of-his-goddamned-mind excited to be here, and the listener will reciprocate accordingly.

5. RUNNIN’ UP ON YA

DJ Lethal’s beat for “On Point” sounds very heavily influenced by DJ Muggerud until the instrumental for “Runnin’ Up On Ya” kicks in, at which point you realize that no, they’re not all that similar: Muggs is simply on another plane of existence. His dusted, sinister bass notes, bundled with hard-as-fuck drums and a screeching sample, drive a darker track than what we’ve heard thus far, but don’t worry, Everlast (rolling solo this go-round) doesn’t let the light slip away without a battle, talking mad shit in his effort to get your blood pressure to rise and cause you to fight back if you don’t like what he’s insinuating to your face (read: ears). He sounds pretty good here, too: his goofy pop cultural comparisons (mostly) fall by the wayside in favor of his Irish pride and his drunken shit-stirring, both of which elevate the enjoyment factor tenfold. The Muggstrumental hardly ever changes, but unlike “I’m A Swing It”, it actually sounds great: it’s too high-energy for Cypress Hill to have handled (although it’s more than bleak enough), so I’m happy he helped it find a good home. A nice hidden gem for you two that you may have forgotten about.

6. OVER THERE SHIT

Less successful is “Over There Shit”, another Muggs-produced Everlast solo effort that fails to stick to the ribs. There isn’t anything technically different about this song when compared to, say, “Runnin’ Up On Ya”: hell, Erik sounds about the same over both instrumentals. But this shit doesn’t connect on any level: Muggerud’s beat feels like what the kids on the YouTubes would refer to as a “Cypress Hill-type beat” and sounds as amateurish as that phony title would suggest, which, in turn, deflates Erik’s argument, loosening his death grip on the microphone. Our host’s shout-outs to the Soul Assassins crew aside, “Over There Shit” can stay the fuck over there for all I care. Those of you who dig the Milk Dee vocal sample from Audio Two’s “Top Billin’” should just go look up the original song instead: it’s a far more productive use of your time.

7. WORD IS BOND (FEAT. DIAMOND D)

The back cover art for Same As It Ever Was marks “Word Is Bond” as a “previously unreleased” song, which I always thought was strange, because, well, as a brand new album from House of Pain in 1994, nearly every one of these tracks could (and should) qualify as “previously unreleased”. That’s kind of the point of dropping a “new” album. One should, instead, read that phrasing as proof that “Word Is Bond” was recorded during studio sessions separate from those for tonight’s subject, possibly for inclusion on Fine Malt Lyrics before it was trimmed off, or even perhaps as a loosey for a soundtrack. Then again, “Word Is Bond” is so fucking awful that it should have remained lost for the benefit of humanity. Guest producer Diamond D, best known as a member of the Diggin’ In The Crates crew that’s still thankfully kicking around today, brings forth an instrumental that is as melodic as nailing your nuts to a cross, getting one’s head nodding like a malfunctioning bobblehead about to explode. It’s terrible, especially given the producer’s pedigree and past work. The verse from rapper Diamond D, the only guest outside of the immediate family invited to contribute on Same As It Ever Was, is also really bad, as though the man had no idea how to write to his own goddamn beat, contributing a stilted, awkward performance that he wishes he could travel back in time to delete, probably. Everlast, the only member of House of Pain to have anything to do with “Word Is Bond”, does his best with what is provided, but the instrumental is a poor fit for him as well, resulting in the worst song of the album thus far, a classification that will change in but a single paragraph. And so.

8. KEEP IT COMIN’

Muggs pops back in for “Keep It Comin’”, which should be best known as “that one song where Everlast, a white rapper, sure does sound like he’s saying the 'n-word' during his second verse, except on here he isn’t playing a racist cop character, as he would several years later on Prince Paul’s A Prince Among Thieves, so what excuse does he have, exactly?” And that’s the thing: there is no excuse. Erik drops the epithet in a way that makes it known that he’s absolutely used it regularly before, and the fact that absolutely nobody, not even DJ Muggs or, I don’t know, the missing-in-action other two members of House of Pain maybe?, thought that he should have given that a bit more thought? Wow. I suppose since nobody’s really said anything about this since 1994 that Erik Schrody is in the clear, but fuck that, it’s 2020, there’s no reason to let this go. Thankfully, Muggerud’s okay-but-not-great instrumental isn’t good enough to force the listener to compartmentalize the problematic areas in order to enjoy the song: you’re not going to enjoy this shit anyway. And what is with Erik’s obsession with fucking on every goddamn song on here?

9. INTERLUDE

Thank the deity of your choosing that our hosts saw fit to isolate this instrumental break onto its own audio track, so that you two could skip past it forevermore.

10. SAME AS IT EVER WAS

Looking to the project’s title track for salvation from the sudden deluge of terrible songs is a fool’s errand, as “Same As It Ever Was” is just as weak, although I give House of Pain (and producer DJ Muggs) kudos for at least not resorting to sampling a very obvious sound bite from the Talking Heads classic “Once In A Lifetime”. At least Danny Boy finally returns to the party after having been gone several hours just to “get ice”, the very excitable (and off-beat) Phife Dawg to Everlast’s… nah, sorry, I won’t do that to Q-Tip. House of Pain’s ode to bring “the same motherfucker that I ever was” regardless of how successful they become is decent, but not exactly “good” in the sense that you’ll “like it” and “want to listen to it again”, due to Muggerud’s lazy instrumental and, again, Danny Boy’s off-beat theatrics. Erik manages to sound okay enough, having the most experience “rapping” over “beats” here, but there’s truly nothing to see here, folks. Move it along now.

11. IT AIN’T A CRIME

Shifting away from braggadocio for a moment, DJ Muggs and DJ Lethal collaborate on the instrumental for “It Ain’t A Crime”, in which Everlast recounts the story of a fabled outlaw who, by the end of his two verses, still hasn’t been apprehended, as that would contradict the song’s very hook (“It ain’t a crime if you don’t get caught”). Erik slows down his flow just enough to fit more words into each bar, providing “It Ain’t A Crime” with a level of detail that the other songs on Same As It Ever Was just cannot claim, and it helps the track succeed. The beat is not just catchy as hell, it helps hammer down the point Erik is trying to make: you never really know what the next man’s breaking point is. The violent tale of Johnny and his evasion of law enforcement doesn’t provide any sense of closure, but it’s a pretty great diversion from a crew better known for one specific party rap anthem. The outro, where our host plays with the structure of the hook, does defeat the purpose of “It Ain’t A Crime” as a whole, however, so just know that going in.

12. WHERE I’M FROM

Muggs is done with Same As It Ever Was: the rest of the program is handled by DJ Lethal, and his boardwork for “Where I’m From” is surprisingly jazzy, a fuel-efficient vehicle for Everlast to wax poetically about his appreciation for the rough times pre-“Jump Around”. For the first two verses, he sounds positively grateful, reminiscing about old friends and longing for a life without his current obligations. The third verse, on the other hand, finds him embittered, defending himself from claims that he’s “changed” because he has money and fame now (which was the entire theme of this project’s title track, so there was no need for a revisit so soon). Erik’s vocals are straightforward and genuine during his first two stanzas: it’s only during his final one where he starts futzing with the conventions of a rap verse, which also, coincidentally, features the man at his most aggressive (a message to those who dare oppose him in secret: “If you wanna fuck me, first you gotta kiss me”). The hook, though: my God does that fucker drag. It consists of three sentenced repeated ad nauseum, with our host only seeing fit to tweak one of them, and then only occasionally, during the final wall of chorus. It beats the horse to death, even if Everlast’s overall message is one or remembering your roots. Oh well.

13. STILL GOT A LOTTA LOVE

Another lengthy list of shout-outs, similar to “All My Love” from the group’s debut, delivered in rhyme form, but while it does count as a song, “Still Got A Lotta Love” also serves as the proper outro for Same As It Ever Was and should be treated as such. Everlast sure does seem to love Kool Keith, though: with his praise of the Ultramagnetic M.C.’s on here, that makes two different compliments for the once and future Dr. Octagon on this project.

14. WHO’S THE MAN?

Certainly wouldn’t qualify as “previously unreleased” – “Who’s The Man?” is the title track House of Pain contributed to the soundtrack for Doctor Dre and Ed Lover’s 1993 flick Who’s The Man?, and they enjoyed the song so much that they wanted to throw it onto Same As It Ever Was too, I suppose. Surprisingly, this bonus track of sorts (it isn’t officially classified this way) doesn’t sound out of place on the album, a testament to DJ Lethal’s production, which leans too heavily and too obviously into its Kay-Gees “Who’s The Man? (With the Master Plan)” sample, but otherwise kind of bangs. Both Everlast and Danny Boy represent here, Daniel rocking the middle seat with a verse that is both aggravatingly simplistic and inadvertently realistic in its depiction of how shock and adrenaline can trigger a delayed response to trauma (just check out his delivery of, “…chillin’ in the park in the dark with the crew / I’m always getting’ high, I saw my man die”, all delivered in the same jovial cadence, and that last part? Never brought up again). Erik bookends the piece with proper explanations for why he wants your vote for “the man”, selling drugs and, after his eventual arrest, murdering a fellow inmate just to display that he isn’t one to be fucked with. Everlast presents this mentality as though it were a perfectly normal way to operate in society, so kudos to him on the writing tip. This shit still works today, by the way: it’s as far from “Jump Around” as House of Pain gets, and it sounds pretty good. A bit dated, maybe, but music doesn’t have an expiration date, Max says, quoting his RandoMax Radio pitch for no real reason here.

15. ON POINT (LETHAL DOSE REMIX)

DJ Lethal remixes his own instrumental, and there’s no reason for this shit to exist on this mortal coil. Stick with the O.G. You’ll thank me later.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Same As It Ever Was presents a bit of a quandary for me. I found it to be much more consistent than Fine Malt Lyrics musically, likely because House of Pain mostly relied on themselves and the immediate family this go-round. But in this case, I didn’t find that to be a good thing: too many of the tracks feel like retreads of one another, both by way of subject matter and with their beats, some of which aren’t imaginative in the least bit. And there are some really fucking awful songs on here, the kind that are so bad that House of Pain’s career would have effectively ended had social media been a thing in 1994. The reason Same As It Ever Was cannot be immediately dismissed, however, is because the tracks that do work on here, fucking work. DJ Lethal truly steps up to the plate on these, the actual good songs, presenting an evolution of his sound, the boom bap aesthetic blending with outsider influences that would inform much of his later work, and a handful of the DJ Muggs-produced tracks rank among his finest-ever work. As far as the rhymes go, Everlast doesn’t really say anything of substance for the bulk of the run time, choosing the path of least resistance (read: boasts-n-bullshit) more often than not. (His partner, Danny Boy, says even less, and not just because he’s barely a factor on this project and in the group as a whole.) But when Erik wants to tell a story, get a specific point across, or has a particular bone to pick, his bars come across as more concise than what one would expect from supposed party rock enthusiasts. He’s not achieving GOAT status off of Same As It Ever Was alone, obviously, and he relies on far too many easy pop culture references as a way of pandering to the “Jump Around” crowd, but he doesn’t sound bad. Same As It Ever Was isn’t a cerebral listen, although a lot of it is challenging in a “you’ll have to force yourself to listen to it all the way through”-kind of way, but there are some treasures worth discovering if you have the patience.

BUY OR BURN? I have five songs listed below as recommended listening, but even still I can’t say that a purchase of Same As It Ever Was is entirely necessary, as the low points override the highs by a not-insignificant margin. Stick with streaming this one. The tracks listed below are good money, however, so you should at least listen to those.

BEST TRACKS: “Runnin’ Up On Ya”; “It Ain’t A Crime”; “Back From The Dead”; “On Point”; “Who’s The Man?”

-Max

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I did run a review for House of Pain’s debut way back in the day, if you care to click through. And yes, I know the first part of that sentence rhymed.