Naughty by Nature - hard-working icons

By REBECCA BARRY

Being icons isn't easy, say Naughty By Nature, who dropped some of the biggest party anthems of the 90s, were dropped by their label, then dropped off the commercial radar. "They think it's all glamour, all lifestyle but it's a real hard job."

This is what founding member Vinnie Brown now warns schoolkids, part of a voluntary community service he undertook in the quieter moments of the hip-hop group's career.

"If you think going to school and getting a form of training is not going to help you, then even if you come up on success you have to know what to do with this money. Don't think what we do is some kind of shortcut."

His pastime might seem a tad inappropriate - after all, Naughty became famous in 1990 with the sexually promiscuous hit OPP - "Ya down with OPP, yeah you know me!" - that had kids singing along blissfully unaware the title stood for Other People's ... er, another name for cat.

It sold more than a million copies in the US alone, proving hip-hop could still execute streetwise ghetto vernacular without subscribing to the darker aspects of gangster rap. A couple of years later came Hip-Hop Hooray, yet they were never able to repeat that success.

Brown cites growing pains as the reason their producer, Kay-Gee, left the group in 1995, a blow made all the worse when Arista decided they were too big a risk without him and swiftly cut them off.

"We felt like it was a slap in the face, but it was also a challenge," he says. "It was like we were abandoned and blacklisted at the same time."

After a two-year recording hiatus since 19 Naughty Nine: Nature's Fury, they released last year's self-congratulatory album iicons to resurrect their flagging careers. They were too old to be new school and too new to be old school, so used the tried and tested hip-hop formula of feeding off the popularity of younger, more topical artists. First single Feels Good (Don't Worry Bout a Thing), with R&B singers 3LW, propelled them back into the charts.

There were also collaborations with Pink, Method Man, Redman, the Rottin Razkals and with their former mentor, Queen Latifah.

"It's like playing to a brand new audience," Brown enthuses. "We've definitely got new fans. The single with 3LW revived us with the younger market and that's exactly what we were going for."

But the old school fans were less impressed, dismissing them as glossy, throwaway tracks that probably did more for their collaborators than Naughty themselves.

"The Pink record, we couldn't have come up with that kind of vibe with Kay-Gee," defends Brown. "Or Feels Good - that's like a classic Naughty by Nature track."

It's those classics - along with Everything's Gonna Be Alright, Feel Me Flow, Ghetto Bastard - that keep their old fans coming back to their gigs. "We wouldn't be allowed out of the country if we didn't play them," quips Brown, who loves the material as much as he did when he first wrote it.

"We came up in the 80s where it's nothing but love. You never imagined getting paid for rapping or beat-boxing or breakdancing and doing graffiti. Now it's so commercialised everyone wants to do it for the wrong reasons, not for the love of the art, but for the money. What's the line? How far is the line of people who are just blatantly exploiting it, and people who really care about the culture?"

For all his righteousness, Brown is an astute businessman. These days he runs Naughty "like a retailer", much the same as the Wu Tang Clan forged a multimedia approach to their business.

Their crew, Flava Unit, are proudly independent, refusing to give away the master use of their material. While Naughty look after the music side of the business, Queen and Treach pursue their film careers. There's the clothing label, Naughty Gear. And they even have a "new working relationship" with former producer Kay-Gee when he's not running his record label.

"We're going to invest in ourselves, retain these masters, we're doing only pressing and distro deals. That's part of our growth now, it's time to really run a business, run a label.

"If we didn't have a good time and feel the crowd's energy, we definitely wouldn't do it. It could be humiliating. I've seen a lot of artists like wow, with current records like, they really need to get themselves together on that stage, and we get out there and it's just a real blessing."

He takes solace that "a little bit of everybody" is influenced by Naughty By Nature, citing Ludacris, G-Unit, Mary J Blige, Jay-Z and Jagged Edge. "That's what makes us say, well you know what? We need to keep giving people more of us."

Performance

* Who: Naughty By Nature

* When: Tonight

* Where: St James Theatre