The Influence of Geto boys’ Mind Playing Tricks on Me
Four years before Outkast boldly and emphatically claimed that “the South got somethin’ to say” over a chorus of boos at the 1995 Source Awards, another southern group was making their impression- and their feelings- known to the world.
Comprised of the diminutive Bushwick Bill, the evocative Scarface and the prolific Willie D, Houston’s Geto Boys were pioneers in both musical quality and lyrical content. While it would be obvious to state that the Geto Boys’ far-reaching influence has inspired generations of rappers, producers and lyricists from Louisiana to New York - it was the content of their creations that provided a platform for future generations to speak their mind.
Released in 1991 and originally intended for Scarface alone - Rap-A-Lot Records founder J. Prince had bigger plans for “Mind Playin Tricks on Me”. The single, featured on 1991’s We Can’t Be Stopped, not only launched the Geto Boys into household name status for consumers of southern faire, but explored subject matter somewhat contrary to the timbre of the times.
Dropped in the incendiary opening stages of the decade-long East vs. West rivalry which ultimately saw the untimely deaths of both Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G, “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” strays appropriately from both the brash bravado of Compton’s NWA, and from the boom-bap jazz influences that were evident in New York’s reposts - formulating its own voice, born out of its own problems.
Arguably the first rap album to discuss themes such as mental instability, paranoia, anxiety and depression - “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” is a pivotal moment in the history of hip hop, both for its openness and honesty, as well as its portrayal of life on the streets from a different vista. While songs like 1993’s “Today Was a Good Day” by Ice Cube glorified the finer aspects of the hood lifestyle, the uncertain vulnerability introduced into the medium by the Geto Boys would serve as a stark warning about “the strength of street knowledge.”
I sit alone in my four-cornered room/ Staring at candles/ At night I can't sleep, I toss and turn/ Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies bein' burned/ Four walls just starin' at a n****/ I'm paranoid, sleepin' with my finger on the trigger
Rap music up until that point had largely fallen into one of two categories which was represented by the most popular groups of the time. NWA’s unapologetic and unrepentant anger towards authority, the social system and even their fellow man, and A Tribe Called Quest’s Afrocentric, laidback, and ultimately positive messages of self-assuredness and good times to come; Geto Boys, however, failed to conform. Scarface’s message lifted the balaklava that rappers had hid behind for half a decade, stripped down the braggadocio and let us into a mind far from peace.
Drawing from his own experience of attempted suicide, Scarface boldly used his medium to inform the world that he, and the millions in similar circumstances in the American south, were not okay. In a genre that almost forced themes of hypermasculinity and a subjugation of emotion, the Geto Boys took a personal stand, shedding light on what goes on behind the scenes, when all the flash and cash of hip hop hysteria is stripped away:
I make big money, I drive big cars/ Everybody know me, it's like I'm a movie star/ But late at night, somethin' ain't right/ I feel I'm bein' tailed by the same sucker's headlights
Far from Wu-Tang’s 1993 assertion that “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”, Willie D, Scarface and Bushwick Bill’s (a Jamaica native who found himself in Houston by way of New York) song was created under the belief that fame and fortune fail to solve life’s deeper problems. Not just the problems of a drug-dealer turned rapper, but of a generation of people who were treated as second class based solely on the colour of their skin. Running contrary to the confidence expunged by gangster and mafioso rappers the country across, Geto Boys gave their audience a real glimpse into the lives behind the Yo! MTV Raps scenes but more importantly, inside their minds.
Setting a template that would allow for rappers of a new generation, like Drake, Kid CuDi, Kanye West, Juice WRLD and Post Malone, to rap their darkest feelings, Scarface’s emotional outpour confesses that:
Day by day it's more impossible to cope/ I feel like I'm the one that's doin' dope
It created a space in hip hop for more than just what appeared on the surface. It’s to “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” that we can ascribe some of the 2000’s most influential songs, including Cudi’s “Day N Night'“ - a contemporary song for the isolated and the detached. Seeming more like a tribute than an isolated creation, Scott Mescudi’s opening lines harken back to Geto Boys and their anxiety riddled street sermon:
Day and night/ I toss and turn, I keep stressing my mind, mind/ I look for peace, but see, I don't attain
A cautionary tale against both the corrupting nature of fame and of the dangers, externally and internally, associated with crime and drug dealing, the track flew in the face of what seemed to be the general direction hip hop was trending towards. In a scene that rewarded machismo and cast aspersions upon genuine emotion, the south really did have something to say- or more accurately- something to show. A dark and oft-neglected aspect of the human psyche; a condition that had and has for far too long been kept hidden for pride or shame. Even more than a song, “Mind Playin Tricks On Me” has become a teachable, a tool used to illustrate the complexities of the human condition on a real and tangible level:
“Somebody was preaching at church — you know how preachers do analogies with their sermons. He was like: 'And you know, it's like that Geto Boys song, when your mind's playing tricks on ya.' He was breaking down the depression, the drugs, the anxiety, the everything — he was corralling all of this into his sermon. That was one of the first rap songs that I remember where topics like that were even touched on." -Maurice Garland
In an age where mental health has begun to lose the stigma that has been for so long associated with it, it is important to reflect on those who were bold enough to share their feelings and to confess their shortcomings long before it was seen as the norm. In their anti-glorification of street life, Scarface, Bushwick Bill and Willie D ensured that generations of kids, many of them aspiring artists, were understood both socially and mentally. They provided language, ideas and concepts that would be gifted to their successors, who would take up the mantle and create popular music that was not only a joy to bump but sonically therapeutic for both artist and consumer, both of whom faced the same trials and tribulations not only in avenues, boulevards, and cul-de-sacs across America, but in their minds.