1993, 2003: Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf - Big Shots

It may seem startling that the most intriguing aspect about Big Shots, Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf’s apple juice-themed debut, is its history. Initially recorded in the early 90s under the Disney-owned Hollywood BASICS label, Big Shots sat for months without experiencing the slightest marketing development. Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf soon grew irritated with Hollywood’s lack of action, leaving the label shortly before its collapse. Then, just as the duo began to pick up steam once again, Big Shots was further delayed by Charizma’s murder in late 1993. It was only 10 years later — when Peanut Butter Wolf established Stones Throw Records — that the album finally found a platform.

How then, should Big Shots be interpreted? Being that its release was 10 years delayed, the record could be experienced either as an oddball re-release or a bona fide debut album. Strictly speaking, it isn’t a re-release — but to make equal company out of Big Shots and the remainder of 2003’s hip-hop productions feels unbecoming. The thing plays like a dusty 90s hip-hop LP for sure, but the release date listed on its wikipedia page reads 2003 regardless.

It is with these recorded gems that our DeLorean section thrives. One thing that’s often overlooked in the fast-paced abyss of new-music music-writing is the influence of temporal context in the interpretation of a piece of art; which makes sense, as it’s an easy assumption that a contemporary piece of art should only be evaluated in terms of the, well, contemporary environment. The only drawback in harboring this assumption is things tend to become complicated when unusual circumstances arise, such as those that surround the release of Big Shots.

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To those who remain unaware of their history, Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf sound like nothing more than a classic hip-hop revival act. Either that or the duo is hopelessly stuck in the past. Think about it — it’s nearly impossible to listen through Big Shots without having engaged a certain amount of nostalgia for hip-hop’s golden era. Peanut Butter Wolf’s lo-fi sampling (which wasn’t so lo-fi for 1993) and aged drum machine (once again, not so aged at the time) are chronologically watermarked by the time they were laid to tape, so there’s no getting around the fact that Big Shots sounds like it was written in 1993. All the uninformed audience knows is that the record came out in 2003, and that Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf’s music couldn’t be more reflective of the early 90s.

The tragic bit is, with either scenario — Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf being either revivalists or hopeless — the duo seems to suffer a loss in artistic credibility. Revivalists are scarcely recognized as closet geniuses, and the relentlessly nostalgic experience a comparable fate. But with Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf, the act is too spotless. Assuming that this uninformed audience does exist, and that they really do reach one of these two conclusions, then Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf should appear frighteningly on top of their game. As a revivalist record, Big Shots is too perfect an encapsulation of 1993. Every revival record works inside certain modern blemishes to give away the façade, but such is not the case with Big Shots. Likewise, if Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf really do become interpreted as stuck-in-the-past types, then the listener would have to reconcile their debut’s overarching excellence with its seemingly oblivious authorship.

No matter how you attack it, Big Shots is a difficult record to classify. Its release may have been embedded in misfortune, but its consequence is nothing short of fascinating.

DeLorean

There’s a lot of good music out there, and it’s not all being released this year. With DeLorean, we aim to rediscover overlooked artists and genres, to listen to music historically and contextually, to underscore the fluidity of music. While we will cover reissues here, our focus will be on music that’s not being pushed by a PR firm.

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