Sacred Hoop - Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta (SR-996)

Sacred Hoop self-released their second tape Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta on their own label, Miasmatic Recordings, in 1996, when West Coast indie rap was riding high on a Project Blowed/Ras Kass/Hobo Junction/Solesides/early-Stones Throw/ATAK Distro-fueled wave of dope shit. By the time Luke Sick, Vrse Murphy and DJ Fondouglas recorded the follow-up Retired, major labels were inviting them to showcase, Dr. Octagon had been picked up by DreamWorks, and Bay Area underground hip-hop was becoming a force to be reckoned with on a larger scale, making many an A&R uncomfortable and confounding marketeers industry-wide. Despite the mainstream tourism, 1997’s Retired, as well as 2001’s Sleep Over, were also self-released and heralded as DIY grails in their own right, which only made the group’s early tape-only releases rise to that mythical “you-had-to-be-there” level in the minds of the heads that went deep to cop and decided who was worthy of a dub. Original issue Runny Poop and Henrietta tapes have gone for $300+ a piece in internet resales. Three of Henrietta’s tracks were also released in 1996 on Miasmatic vinyl as a 12” maxi-single, which had the exasperating effect of revealing just how banging “Frrrnt”, “No Category”, and “Service and Maintenance” sounded through the dual-density, diamond-tipped stylus, while at the same time leaving hardcore backpackers wondering what the rest of the eight songs might sound like if they were on wax as well.

Until now . . .

This remastered for vinyl, re-release of Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta is definitive alone in its totality, but as a historical document, it becomes even more essential: As an early installation of what would be one of the ATAK Distro's most prominent components of the 90s Cali scene, Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta is an astonishing example of what a few stoner rapheads from Mountain View with an ASR10 sampler could pull off once they graduated from a 4-track to an ADAT digital recorder through a multi-track board. This is literature-minded, lyrically self-indulgent underground, 100% wax-sampled hip-hop at its rawest and, sometimes, at its all-the-way-to-the-brim most absurd.

Not that it needs a disclaimer, but the attractiveness of this recording does in fact hinge on the listeners’ appreciation for the end-of-the-millennium, 90s-type, over-sexualized braggadocio that plays seesaw with anti-happy self-deprecations in an all-out conquest for microphone dominance that signified the West Coast underground when everybody smoked Bidis and wore wool beanies regardless of the weather. The wired capriciousness of Luke Sick's delivery can be overwhelming, especially when he dispenses landslides of multi-syllabic script-flipping insults that seem to defy the status quo exponentially with every additional line. (Anyone trying to interpret "Famous Prostitute" or say "Thursday’s Forethought" without creating a subsequent tome of chrono- and socio-logical footnotes needs to do more research.) But while it's easy to label this MC style as "druggy backpacker", there's some real brain-splitting work here; at some points he approaches doing for West Coast rhyming what Charles Bukowski did for poems, middle-fingering traditions and pulling reality-rupturing levers in his flow that draw infinite marginalized urchins to the cypher, like a Bay Area version of Sadat X or Organized Konfusion, applying the template of 5%er griot thought to suburban/townie keg party and anti-police culture.

And while hyper-chaotic performances like his amuck first verse on "Pregnant Toad" shock the spirit ("It’s the Jack-In-The-Box drive-thru pirate, hoes sweated my athletic supporter/ your daughter loves disorder/ brought her up on chaos, hey boss/ it’s the plane that I maintain on, the drugs that my brain’s on . . . blessed, grotesque subject matter and the fact is there’s a plug in the back of your skull and I’m pullin’ it, drainin’ your brain into my skillet/ let’s fry it, let’s see how hot your wits can get/ ya big bad bitch, show respect for the way your wig got flipped"), Luke's more contemplative, capacious moments-- "Moe’s Lullaby", "9 Days"-- show that he still understood the potency of hitting hard in the structures of traditional (read: East Coast) hip-hop cadences as well. That observation also holds true when examining the other, most relatable quality of his 90s-style voice-- the gravel-dragged, snot-nasally tone that sounds agreeably heady even when he's unreasonably sociopathic and loquacious, ranting constant slander: "so when you’re sittin’ down trying to figure out ways you wanna wax me/ please write legibly and mention specific details/ your girl works that pussy like retail, sellin’ it off for earrings and hair-dos, I scare fools . . ." or some other similar bit of rap duel massacre. His loser-who-doesn’t-give-a-fuck-so-much-he-wins persona has always been one of Luke's more amiable qualities-- even if it backfires on him here and there, leading to an inadvertent glibness like throughout the alcoholic emotional rollercoaster of "Moe’s Lullaby". When it really works, it extends to an anomalous sense of modesty that undercuts his diabolical threats and repaints them as a necessity on a path of self-reliance in a cold world with no blanket. Another line from “Pregnant Toad" where he admits to “squattin’, pissin’ on your cushion/ I don’t really care for what you’re peddlin’ what you’re pushin’/ ‘cause I got my own stash, my own crop, my own way to get my rocks off/ clean my musket with a ramrod, crusted ear holes with clam sauce” is a golden example of this concept even if the very next line undermines it with his tried and true pessimistic apathy: “I don’t give a fuck about your bullshit style/ and don’t give a fuck about your plastic smile.” A bully move that would sound disingenuous if Luke’s self-effacement didn’t admit that not everybody is going to get it and then goes even a step further to give his critics equal airtime: “elastic rhetoric motherfucks front when it comes down to it/ ‘That’s wack it sounds like nothing, man, fuck that Sacred Hoop shit!” But, alas, the 90s narcissistic ego always returns to have the last word and let ‘em know, “your wrong kid, and full of it, I rock it like incomparable . . .”

This notion that Sacred Hoop “sounds like nothing, man” became a concrete fact as second and third generation dubs of their early tapes began to infect esoteric walkmans and boomboxes across the country, Europe and Japan, blessing the budding 4-track collagists that they influenced with a seemingly easily-attainable originality. Back then, Vrse was often known to brag that he made beats from records he stole from his girlfriends’ parents’ record collections whenever he slept over. A maxim that perhaps got lost as the Hoop added to their discography at the end of the century and into the next millennium—things like the samples from a vintage Crown Royal promotional record on Henrietta gave way to more standard digger contraband like the Buddy Miles, Donnie Hathaway and Velvet Underground deconstructions on Retired and Sleep Over. Put it this way: whosampled.com does not have a single listing for Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta, but neither does ASCAP or BMI. Frrrnt . . . Long live the underground.

Limited to 150 copies

Art and layout by Matt Loomis
Remastered by Dan Randall of Mammoth Mastering

Bring Me The Head Of Sexy Henrietta (SR 996) Track List:

Side A
Frrrnt
No Category
Service and Maintenance
9 Days

Side B
Moe's Lullaby
Famous Prostitute
Pregnant Toad
Thursday's Forethought

Rhymes by Luke Sick
Cuts & Scratches by DJ Fondouglas
Produced, Recorded & Mixed by Vrse Murphy
Managed by Oak D (Miasmatic Recordings, Palo Alto, CA)

Beats made on the ASR-10. Recorded in Mountain View, CA on Latham St. 1994-95 thru a Tuscan 688 to ADAT.
Originally released as a full 8-song cassette tape and 3 song b/w inserts 12" record in 1995-96 by Miasmatic Recordings and distributed by ATAK mail-order and TRC.

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