Sonicnet Music News

MC Serch (born Michael Berrin) said he and Prime Minister Pete Nice (born Peter Nash) are busy working on rhymes and tracks for an album they hope to have in stores by early next year, and a single and video they expect to put out as early as September on Serch's own Serchlite imprint.

In the meantime, they got the buzz going with a brief, energetic performance for a crowd of label reps, distribution execs, and a few fellow artists at Red Distribution's showcase at the Heritage Convention Resort.

Although it's been more than seven years since 3rd Bass' most recent release, 1992's "Gladiator" EP, Serch and Nice insist this is not a comeback or reunion project.

"We didn't go nowhere," the pair said during a string of interviews after the show.

Oh, and one more thing: Don't call them "old-school." "I don't think anyone looked at Aerosmith, who took a 15-year hiatus, as 'old-school' when they returned," Serch, 33, said. (In fact, Aerosmith's original lineup splintered for five years, from 1979 to 1984, though the band continued performing and recording.) "It's so sad that we classify artists, because we feel like this music has to be typified by young buyers. I don't feel old-school. We come from a class of MCs that you'll never see again. We come from a class."

On the one hand that you need to count the white hip-hop groups that have any cred with the heads, 3rd Bass definitely takes up a finger. Signed to Def Jam in 1988, the duo (along with DJ Richie Rich) released "The Derelicts Of Dialect" in 1991 to critical kudos and street approval.

Before Tuesday night's show, according to 3rd Bass spinner DJ Eclipse, they'd performed together only twice in the past year, including a set at Woodstock '99 (see "Nudity, Sunburn, And Music Get Woodstock Warmed Up"), and rehearsed once. Their 20-minute set showed a lot of rough edges, as Serch, dressed in a Phat Farm denim suit and Nice, in his trademark suit and cane, ebbed and flowed through verses of old hits including "Products Of The Environment," "Brooklyn Queens," "Gas Face," and "Pop Goes The Weasel."

The crowd, however, didn't mind and afterward happily mugged for "prison posin' shots" with the pair in front of a huge airbrush-painted backdrop. The picture even came with its own sparkly cardboard frame, inscribed with the words "Let's Light Up The Night!"

"I don't know if they're gonna make it this time around," Jason Moscowitz of Red Distribution said as he watched Serch and Nice chat up some people before going onstage. "But I don't see why not. Serch has been in the business, and he knows what people want to hear on the street and underground, and they've definitely got the talent to make a great record again. It's just a matter of if it's a great record that people are gonna buy."

• 3rd Bass

Reunited rap act 3rd Bass performed at a surprise birthday bash at Studio 450 on Tuesday night in New York for Tommy Jeans vice president Andy Hilfiger, brother of designer Tommy.

• 3rd Bass

On Tuesday, 3rd Bass rapper MC Serch confirmed that the seminal, Caucasian, Vanilla Ice-dissing hip-hop group is, in fact, preparing to reunite.

Serch told MTV News that he will join original partners Pete Nice and DJ Daddy Rich at a surprise show next week at an undisclosed club in New York City. In addition, the band is currently working on a new album featuring cameos by Wylcef Jean and Organized Noize, and hopes to have it released in early 1999.

So what have the creators of such classic songs as "Pop Goes The Weasel" and the "Gas Face" been up to for the last seven years? Well, Serch currently has his own label, Serchlight Productions, while Pete Nice has apparently left the music business altogether and has been operating a baseball memorabilia business in Cooperstown, New York.

• 3rd Bass