{"id":9868,"date":"2016-12-20T14:20:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T14:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/megaphone.geeb.us\/?p=5795"},"modified":"2016-12-20T14:20:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T14:20:22","slug":"set-adrift-beneath-the-surface-of-p-m-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ghost.geeb.us\/?p=9868","title":{"rendered":"Set Adrift: Beneath the Surface of P.M. Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, P.M. Dawn exists as a faded memory for most music fans, if they\u2019re remembered at all. But Attrell Cordes made songs like nothing that came before. Beautiful, sweeping melodies paired with lyrics of regret, remorse, heartache and profound loss. And then there were those surreal, recurring images of water.
\n\"Prince
\nTo casual fans, P.M. Dawn was \u201cthe big guy and the other guy.\u201d The big guy was Attrell Cordes, known as Prince Be, who passed away yesterday. The other guy was his brother Jarrett, who usually went by DJ Minutemix until scandal pushed him from the group in the mid-90s. They grew up in Jersey City, which may be the only part of their story that sounds like a regular rap group. The standout moments of the group\u2019s history are like no other group in hip-hop\u200a\u2014\u200aenormous pop hits and groundbreaking production work, a deep catalog of songs suffused not just with pathos but often with genuine despair, a notorious and absurd run-in with a hip-hop legend, and a stream of profound moments of personal and professional tragedy.
\nP.M. Dawn\u2019s unique mix of extraordinary success, deep influence on current sounds, and a relentlessly heartbroken outlook raises the question: What on earth inspired Attrell Cordes in the first place?
\nIt\u2019s easy to forget, nearly 20 years after they faded from view, that P.M. Dawn enjoyed both enormous commercial success and broad critical acclaim. The conventional narrative of the early 90s in mainstream hip-hop is of a time when the genre transformed from a rebellious and challenging upstart artform to the dominant musical force in culture, maturing from golden age boom bap to globally-dominant gangsta rap with only a brief detour into the Native Tongues.
\nThe works we associate with that moment of transition in the early 90s are still respected as classics \u2014albums like 36 Chambers<\/em> and The Chronic<\/em>. But in 1993, those legendary albums sat on the charts and the critics\u2019 lists<\/a> right next to The Bliss Album\u2026?<\/em> Or, to respect the full title of P.M. Dawn\u2019s sophomore effort: The Bliss Album\u2026? (Vibrations of Love and Anger and the Ponderance of Life and Existence)<\/em>. The name alone does a good job of explaining exactly why P.M. Dawn was both beloved and mocked.
\nSo what is P.M. Dawn\u2018s rightful legacy in hip-hop history? Are they sidelined today because they were hippies? Maybe, but so were De La Soul until De La deaded the D.A.I.S.Y. age. Was it because they were too soft? After all, P.M. Dawn\u2018s catalog is full of overtly romantic songs suffused with heartbreak, as likely to be sung as rapped. But in a world where Drake dominates and everybody from Kanye to Lil Wayne gets some of their biggest pop hits by singing moody songs about their feelings, it seems as if history has come down decidedly in favor of the styles the group pioneered. So how did P.M. Dawn end up sinking into obscurity?
\nThe answer to P.M. Dawn may lie beneath the surface.
\n[Content notice: This piece includes references that may be troubling to readers sensitive to abuse\/violence.]<\/p>\n

1. Making Waves<\/h3>\n

Baby you send me, baby you send me<\/em>
Set adrift on memory bliss of you<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though they billed themselves as a group, P.M. Dawn was barely even a duo\u200a\u2014\u200aAttrell was always the creative force behind the work, the lead voice on every song. Those songs typically matched samples of very white, very pop artists to thick layers of Beach Boys harmonies. More than half a decade before the artist intermittently known as Puff Daddy would become one of the biggest stars in pop (and earn the ire of hip-hop purists) with tracks built entirely around top 40 hits, P.M. Dawn was riding a Spandau Ballet song to the top of the charts. Indeed, when SoundScan was first used to calculate music sales in 1991, the very first song to be certified #1 in sales was \u201cSet Adrift On Memory Bliss.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s hard to imagine now, but at the turn of the 90s, before the echoes of the Biz Markie suit<\/a> would change sampling culture forever, many hip-hop heads policed each other\u2019s use of samples. While the prior year\u2019s \u201cU Can\u2019t Touch This\u201d had been similarly brazen in lifting Rick James\u2019 work in service of creating an MC Hammer hit, nobody in 1990 defied convention so profoundly as P.M. Dawn did in lifting the entire hook of a sleepy adult contemporary staple that had only faded from radio only a few years earlier.
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