311 - Music

Before the platinum records and the constant rock radio rotation, 311 were five kids from Omaha who convinced Eddy Offord to produce their debut. Offord had engineered Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which on paper makes no sense at all and in practice gave the record a strange spaciousness that most 1993 rap-rock did not have. Recorded across December 1992 and January 1993 at Ocean Studio in Burbank and released that February on Capricorn, Music is a rawer and considerably more hip-hop-leaning proposition than the blue album that made them famous two years later.

"Welcome," "Freak Out" and "Do You Right" lay out the template: Nick Hexum and SA Martinez trading vocals, Tim Mahoney's guitar cutting across the top, and Chad Sexton and P-Nut playing a rhythm section that is busier here than it would ever be again. P-Nut in particular treats every bar as an opportunity. "Unity" and "My Stoney Baby" lean all the way into the reggae side, and "Nix Hex" brings in ragga MC Daddy Freddy for the album's most unhinged three minutes.

It went gold in 1999, years after the fact, on the strength of listeners working backwards through the catalogue. That is a fair way to arrive at it. This is the sound of a band before anyone was watching, rough in ways they smoothed out later and never quite recovered.

180-gram double LP with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent and pressed at RTI. On Volcano / Legacy.