One Step Ahead of the Spider

MC 900 Ft. Jesus | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 8, 1998)
• Original Release Date: 1990
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00000AEIC
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,802 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

An oddity when it came out in 1994, MC 900 Ft Jesus' One Step Ahead of the Spider makes a lot more sense in retrospect. It's not a hip-hop album, as it was often categorized, but a jazzy, luxurious spoken word album with Middle Eastern musical influences. Mark Griffen (a.k.a. Jesus) opens the disc with a gloriously evocative tale of distraction and destruction ("New Moon"); later, he takes tours through slackerdom (the hit "If I Only Had a Brain"), insanity ("Tiptoe Through the Inferno"), and pop culture ("New Year's Eve"). The most sublime moment on the album comes courtesy of Vernon Reid's restrained, soulful guitar on the cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Stare and Stare." --Randy Silver

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If I only had a brain is my theme song...., October 18, 2000

By 

Eric_the_Red (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Step Ahead of the Spider (Audio CD)

One Step ahead of the Spider was the first album I ever liked independent of any outside influece. I never heard it on the radio, MTV, or out of any friends or relatives collections. My older brother bought it mistakenly and I fell in love with it. He ended up giving me his copy as a birthday present about 6 years ago and I still have the same copy. It is one of the most overplayed CD's in my collection and is now the most prized (since the uncensored version of Body Count's "Cop Killer" became MIA.)

This is not Spoken Word. This is not Hip Hop. This is not Rap. This is not Jazz. Anyone who has heard the album knows that these statements are entirely true and false. MC 900 Ft Jesus gives us the paradox in music form; soulful, emotional as great art should be, yet deliberate, every note, every word inits proper place. Perfect parts cynicism and intelligence create an album that, while not timeless (sure people have done it better since this one was made.... but did anyone do it before this was made?) is enlightening enough to be in any open-minded musical fan's library.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wow, quite odd, February 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: One Step Ahead of the Spider (Audio CD)

I've never heard any of his other stuff, but I bought MC 900 Ft Jesus' "One Step Ahead Of The Spider" just to hear "If I Only Had A Brain", which in itself is worth the purchase. Being an odd song in the first place, I didn't know what to expect of the rest of the record. Allthough I only bought it last week, it has already become one of my favorite discs. The combination of funky hip-hop beats, jazzy melodies, and peculiar coffee-house poetry/lyrics help make this cd one of the most original in my collection of 1,500.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I have seen the future, April 7, 2003

By 

Keir H. Fogarty "funkarty" (fort collins, colorado United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Step Ahead of the Spider (Audio CD)

The song Bill's Dream on this album introduced me to Miles Davis (its a cover of "in a silent way")--and when I discovered the genius of Miles through MC 900, I thought "typical"--why? because Miles was one of the premier explorers of jazz (along with St. John Coltrane)--he invented an entirely new vocabulary in jazz--MC 900 Ft. Jesus, or Mark Griffin, needs to be recognized for what he has brought to the musical vocabulary of music--he combines such homages to the past as "Stare and Stare" and "Bill's Dream" with daring new excursions into the frontiers of jazz's vocabulary--people call this hiphop, but I really think that Mark Griffin is more of a jazz musician influenced by hiphop and techno/industrial--just as Miles Davis was influenced by rock and roll to create fusion--the one thing I would lament on this album, even though I like the track, is that I think "If I only had a brain" might have sprung from pressure by American records on MC 9-0-0 to come out with a hit single--notice that MC 9-0-0 hasn't come out with a record since this one? thats sometimes the story of an artist and a label having differences in opinion--the artist can't do what they want, they can't get out of their contract--and so they stop making music--we then become deprived of a unique and important voice in modern music--regardless of its record company woes, this album is still a daring excursion into the borderlands of the jazz format that largely succeeds--not to mention MC 9-0-0 has some of the most clever, intelligent lyrics of modern music