Dying in Stereo

Northern State | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 3, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Star Time
• ASIN: B00009EIOG
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #145,221 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From URB Magazine

Haters better recognize, because Northen State is so much better than the premature hype that seems to have done more harm that good for these three wise women from the Island of Long (they’re now based in the Big Apple). If you don’t know the score, their demo tape Hip-Hop You Haven’t Heard was so hot everybody from Rolling Stone to URB were quick to sing their praises. But like all things that blow up straight out of the gate (especially in the hyper-fickle city of New York) the backlash is quick, brutal and inevitable. All it takes is a spin of their high-steppin’ full-length debut to realize that these ladies are worthy of the praise. Big, old-school beats boom righteously while Guinea Love, Hesta Prynn and DJ Sprout kick real rhymes about what it’s really like being a young woman living in the city. While the albums starts out fun and funky, by set closers "All The Same" and the title cut things get disarmingly deep and serious. Don’t sleep on Northern State — they’ve got the skills to pay the bills.

Permanent Ink

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hip-hop I hadn't heard, January 19, 2004

By 

Paul O'Brian (Thornton, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dying in Stereo (Audio CD)

Here's me: I'm white. I'm 33. Suburban background, Master's degree. Rap and hip-hop never spoke to me, but Northern State's my Run-DMC.

The doggerel above isn't meant to suggest that Northern State is anything like as important or innovative as Run-DMC was, but instead to make the point that for at least one listener, they've served as a bridge into a genre that never appealed before. Don't get me wrong -- I have plenty of respect for hip-hop as a musical style, but lyrically, most of the rap songs I've heard in my life seemed, if not outright offensive or stupid, just concerned with things that I didn't much relate to. Then, listening to the BBC via Internet, I heard "At The Party." Hey, female rappers! Who aren't rapping about explicit sex! (Nothing against explicit sex, mind, but it gets a bit dull when every hip-hop woman seems primarily concerned with herself as an object of male desire.) Not only that, did I just hear that woman say her name is Hesta Prynn? As in, Hawthorne's Hester Prynn? This bears further investigation.

So I checked out Northern State's website, and learned that they're three feminist college graduates who go by the handles Hesta Prynn (yeah, after Hawthorne), DJ Sprout, and Guinea Love (who's now known instead by her last name, Spero). They formed a rap group for fun and have seen it take off, getting rave reviews from no less a music authority than Robert Christgau, among others. I checked out some of the song clips, and put Dying In Stereo on my Amazon wish list just for the heck of it. My wife bought it for me as a birthday present, and now I can't stop listening to this album. THIS is rap I can relate to -- it's not just funny but smart too, and set to beats that I'm just old enough to feel nostalgia for.

At first, Northern State comes on like the Go-Go's of rap (this is a high compliment), an all-girl band whose music is pure fun and appealing energy. But there's more than that here. Prynn frequently injects Shakespearean verses and cadences into her rhymes, and all three of them name-check the likes of Dorothy Parker, Wendell Berry, and Anton Chekhov. There's probably other rap out there that has this level of intellectual engagement, but I haven't heard it. Their lyrics are a refreshing mix of the serious and the silly, like the oft-cited "Keep choice legal / Your wardrobe regal / Chekhov wrote 'The Seagull' / And Snoopy is a beagle." Sometimes their rhymes can feel almost sublime: "I walk a path of resistance / You haven't tried yet / Connect, accept, forgive, forget / With every single breath you will dissolve yourself / Your birth, your name, your deeds, your death" is a lyric that practically paraphrases Buddha.

I've seen a lot of negative reviews for this album along with the positive ones, and the common thread that the pans seem to have is that they come from people who love current hip-hop. I read them, and they explain to me why I love Northern State. I could care less about who has the freshest beats, and half the hip-hop argot is opaque to me (I have no idea what Northern State is talking about when they sing "You can't fade me / My signal flow everywhere I go," though it sounds great.) Maybe if you love hip-hop as it is today, then Northern State might not be anything special to you -- they even be the opposite of what you're looking for. But for me, they're the first rappers I've heard who consistently have something interesting to say. Like the title of their first demo tape, they're hip-hop I haven't heard, and I'm glad they're here at last.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yo Yo... Long Island on the mic???, July 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Dying in Stereo (Audio CD)

A bunch of Long Island girls busting ol' skool Beastie Boys style rap with pretty clever lyrics? It's fun, it's ridiculous and I get it. If you've got a sense of humor, dig License To Ill and are down with all things snotty - this is the bomb. For the rest of you, go buy Coldplay and Radiohead and whimper in the fetal position. Rap don't have to be all mad gangstas, y'all.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Girl-power rap that a mother can love, June 30, 2003

By 

Julie Fanselow (Boise, ID) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dying in Stereo (Audio CD)

I am a lifelong music devotee, 41 years old, living in Idaho. I've never been much into hip hop, though, because it just didn't seem to have a lot of relevance to me. But after reading about Northern State in Entertainment Weekly, I ordered this CD, and I can hardly stop playing it. Any women who cite Wendell Berry and Dorothy Parker in their rhymes are fine by me. Northern State are literate, feminist, and politically charged, but they also sound like they're having a LOT of fun. I have a 9-year-old daughter, and while I will refrain from playing her this for a few more years due to some of the cussin' and adult themes, I'll probably present her the Northern State catalogue in a few years. For now, I'm enjoying it myself and spreading the word to every woman I know.