Songoftheday 5/29/18 - So Peter Piper I'm hyper than Pinocchio's nose, I'm the supercalafragilistic tic-tac pro...

"They Want EFX" - Das EFX
from the album Dead Serious (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #25 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12

Today's song of the day comes from the rap duo Das EFX, who came together in the late 1980s in Brooklyn. Dray and Skoob met in college and with some help from hip-hop giants EPMD, released their debut album Dead Serious in 1992. The first single from the set was the name-checking "They Want EFX", which laid childhood rhymes and silly verses over a real street-sounding sample (James Brown's "Blind Man Can See It"). The result was their first and biggest pop hit...

"They Want EFX" became Das EFX's first and only top-40 pop hit in July of 1992. The song went all the way to #5 on Billboard's R&B chart, and topped their Rap Singles list for three weeks. The second release from Dead Serious, "Mic Checka", missed the pop chart, but climbed to #22 on the R&B list and again topped the rap singles chart. The third release, "Straight Out The Sewer", made it to #66 R&B and likewise missed the pop chart.

The following year, the duo released their sophomore effort, Straight Up Sewaside. The lead single "Freakit" almost made the top-40 at #43, while hitting #24 R&B. In 1996, they returned with a third disc, Hold It Down, and while the album charted top-40, the lead single "Real Hip-hop" stopped at #61 on the pop Hot 100. On the collapse of their label EastWest, Das EFX ended up on Elektra, and while their first set there Generation EFX only reached #48 on the albums chart, it landed the pair their first chart hit in the UK with "Rap Scholar" (UK #42) in 1996. Dray and Skoob still record and perform live together; their most recent set Old School Throwback came in 2015.

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The single version of "They Want EFX" above was a big revamp off the original mix of the track...