"pump it (nice an' hard)" || icy blu || 1991

If there any style of music that makes me unadulteratedly and genuinely nostalgic, it's hip-house.

Songs like this make me long for simpler days. They beam youthful jubilation, and bring to mind images of arcades full of brightly-dressed kids in cutoff jean shorts drinking Big Gulp sodas and shoving tokens into the Mortal Kombat II machine, in hopes of finally dominating Shao Khan. I think of roller rinks, and how they were very much the "place to be" at one time.

OK, back to reality.

Sure, Icy Blu is goofy. But who the hell cares? This music is fun. By the end of the song you're rooting for Icy to go ahead and find a dude that can "pump it, nice and hard." The rest of the disc has a similar feeling of adolescent ridiculousness. Rich kid adolescent ridiculousness. Icy's problems are certainly not high class, which is just more reason to giggle. (A fair warning though: Stay the hell away from "I Wanna Be Your Girl.")

Although the lyrics are charming, the jewel here is clearly the music. Hip-house dance beats are so delicious, and yet they go completely unnoticed by today's masses. The only hip-house artist that most will recognize is Technotronic, who are fantastic in their own right. Hopefully, though, you've learned by now that hip-house was an extremely rich style of music at a point in music history, and rest assured that there will be more of said glory found in later entries.

Listen to it here.