Das EFX pose during KMEL Summer Jam at Shoreline Amphitheatre on August 1, 1992 in Mountain View, California.
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The Das Effect: The Songs Directly Influenced By Das EFX

The Das Effect: The Songs Directly Influenced By Das EFX

Published Thu, April 7, 2022 at 10:00 AM EDT

In 1991, Das EFX climbed out of the sewers of New Jersey and hit America by way of Virginia State University; bringing a style and cadence that would be copied throughout the 1990s and beyond. The influence can be heard in everyone from MC Hammer and Chuck D to Onyx and Fu-Schnickens. On a recent episode of DJ Premier's So Whats Up, Preemo noted: "Their first album Dead Serious was like Raekwon's purple tape. You couldn't take it outta the tape deck. So many people were copying their "diggity" style that Straight Up Sewaside (their sophomore album) had less "diggity" in it, although they were still nice with the pen."

Although the Fu-Schnickens' debut album F.U. Don't Take It Personal dropped two months before Das EFX's Dead Serious, Drayz from Das EFX said on an Industry Muscle documentary that both groups befriended the same Jive Records A&R person. This person would play Fu-Schnickens demos for Das EFX and vice versa, and Drayz believes that Das influenced the Fu-Schnickens via that mutual connection. In all fairness, the triplet and staccato style of rhyming that gained popularity in the early 1990s was being done by many groups and many MCs, but that "iggity" style can be directly attributed to Das and the following songs illustrate that influence much more directly than others.

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