Da Storm, the debut album by Originoo Gunn Clappaz, was released on October 29, 1996, and turns thirty years old today. The Brooklyn trio’s first album remains one of the most complete records of a stacked year, the Boot Camp Clik’s secret weapon finally given a full album of its own.
O.G.C. were the three-man unit inside the Boot Camp Clik’s Fab Five: Top Dog, Louisville Sluggah and Starang Wondah, cast as the point guard, shooting guard and small forward next to Heltah Skeltah. What follows is a Da Storm deep dive, thirty years on, into an album built for late fall weather and built to last.
The Boot Camp Clik’s Secret Weapon Steps Forward
By the autumn of 1996 the Boot Camp Clik blueprint was already proven. Black Moon had opened the account with Enta Da Stage in 1993, anchored by Buckshot and DJ Evil Dee. Smif-N-Wessun blew the doors wider with Dah Shinin’ in 1995, and Heltah Skeltah arrived with Nocturnal in the summer of 1996 behind the imposing pairing of Ruck, later Sean Price, and Rock. Each crew in the camp had a defined role, and O.G.C.’s was precision: three emcees who were not flashy, but effective, trading verses like a unit that had been drilled together.
Da Storm delivered exactly that. Across the album the three voices work in tandem, finishing each other’s momentum rather than competing for the spotlight, over production that stays jazzy and mid-tempo even when the verses turn confrontational. It did not chase the attention some of 1996’s bigger releases commanded, and thirty years later that restraint reads as confidence. The album knew what it was.
Beatminerz Production Sets The Weather
Much of the album’s tone is set behind the boards. As on Nocturnal, many of the beats come from Da Beatminerz camp, the production house that had steered the Boot Camp sound since its launch, with further tracks from DJ Ogee, Lord Jamar, Shaleek and Buckshot himself. The result is an album suited to its release date: rain-season New York music, muted horns and thumping drums under torrents of verses.
No Fear, the album’s first single, is the early highlight and the most traditional structure on the record, each member dropping a solid sixteen-bar verse over Mr. Walt’s chopped, jazzy bassline. Evil Dee answers with one of his most spartan productions on the title track, looping a tiny section of an obscure jazz song while the trio deliver their most energetic performances on the album, warning anyone listening not to underestimate them. Mr. Walt returns on Gun Clapp, and Evil Dee’s X-Unknown rides muted horns while the group dismiss the slackers trying to bury them.
I be rubbishing any crew that claims that they be bubbling.
Three Voices, Then Each One Alone
The album’s middle stretch shows what the members could do apart. Starang Wondah takes a mostly solo track, Hurricane Starang, weaving a complex flow and clever wordplay through his distinctive croak of a voice. Top Dog and Louisville Sluggah then hold down Danjer together, a two-emcee narrative in the great mid-nineties New York tradition, plotting an escape from a city in full uprising.
Da Storm also did something rare for the early Boot Camp releases: it opened the door to guests from outside the collective. Sadat X and Sean Blak appear on Wild Cowboys and Bucktown, produced by DJ Ogee, with Sadat X arriving months after his own Wild Cowboys project and keeping his hot streak alive across a whirlwind of brief verses. Elite Fleet answers as the in-house posse cut, joining O.G.C. with Da Representativez, M.S. and Bad Vybes over Baby Paul’s chopped piano, while Lord Jamar and Buckshot turn smooth jazz into the smirking God Don’t Like Ugly.
The closing track carries a footnote that grew with time. Flappin’, produced by E-Swift in the closing-slot tradition Nocturnal had started, carries an early outside co-production credit for Madlib, years before Lootpack and Quasimoto made him a super-producer. You can hear the seed of his sound in it, which makes Da Storm a record where both a crew’s present and hip hop’s future were audible at once.
Thirty years on, Da Storm exemplifies the hard-hitting, gimmick-free ethos of the best East Coast hip hop of the 1990s, and it did as much as any record to establish the Boot Camp Clik’s legend. When the rainy days arrive, and they always do this time of year, this is the album that was made for them. Give it its plays.
