The Gourds chose to cover the most universal, relatable song on Snoop Dogg’s debut album, Doggystyle, and did so earnestly. These factors would go on to define the “genre,” inasmuch as you can even call it a genre, of acoustic rap covers. But Dynamite Hack’s cover has qualities that its predecessors lack: parodic sensibilities, unabashed usage of racial slurs, comic juxtaposition of soft instrumentation and explicit lyrics. According to a 2000 writeup in The Austin Chronicle, the song was a massive hit on Napster, though it was often mistakenly credited to Phish.ĭ-Hack weren’t even the first rock band to cover “Boyz-N-The-Hood.” The Red Hot Chili Peppers made a very abridged, decidedly non-acoustic version a live staple during their 1989-90 tour. As other devotees of ’90s gangsta rap, alternative music, and/or raunchy campfire singalongs may or may not remember, alt-country band the Gourds (coincidentally also from Austin, Texas) recorded a twangy version of Snoop Dogg’s “Gin And Juice” in 1996. Technically, Dynamite Hack’s take on Eazy-E wasn’t the first acoustic cover of a hip-hop song, if such a thing can even be determined. One Caddyshack-inspired video later, it became the band’s commercial high-water mark. “Boyz” was released as Superfast’s lead single. So instead of singing crappy lyrics, I started singing ‘Boyz-N-The-Hood.’ Chad came in the room and was like ‘Oh, that’s awesome. “Every lyric was, ‘Oh, I love you,’ and it just wasn’t working. The flukey hit has an origin story to match: “I had this guitar riff that was probably going to end up being a very stupid, shallow love song,” Morris said in the same interview quoted above. Outside of their biggest hit, the Austin-based four-piece play punk-tinged alternative rock, easily slotted alongside Blink-182, the Offspring, Harvey Danger, or almost anyone else in the sea of late-’90s, early-’00s radio rockers. This was an act that lasted just over three minutes - a well-informed one, considering the band’s fondness for both N.W.A and golf culture spoofs (“dynamite hack” is one of many nicknames Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler gives his weed in Caddyshack) - but otherwise, it was a complete departure from their norm.
Watch more of their music videos or live performances and you won’t see the sweater-vest-clad preps they play in the “Boyz In The Hood” clip. Peruse the rest of Dynamite Hack’s breakout album, Superfast, and you won’t find any other nods to hip-hop. The past 20 years, however, have shown just how banal acoustic rap covers can be. The cover, an acoustic pop-rock take on the late-’80s gangsta rap classic, has been called a lot of things in its lifespan - notably, one of the 50 worst songs of the 2000s by The Village Voice - but rarely has it been called “genius.” Perhaps a better descriptor, at least at the time of the song’s release, would be “novel.” In 2000, setting Eazy’s streetwise day-in-the-life tales to “sweet music,” as Morris called it, was intriguing enough to rocket the song to #12 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart and make its irony-driven video a mainstay on MTV. That’s Dynamite Hack frontman Mark Morris, discussing his band’s cover of Eazy-E’s “Boyz-N-The-Hood,” released 20 years ago this month.
Honestly, I really didn’t think about it that much.” “Some people tell me I’m a genius… that I’m forcing white America to listen to the problems of black America, that I’m tricking them into listening to the song by putting it to this sweet music.