The Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride, 20 Years Later: 
An Appreciation
See also: ![]()
Suzu Fresco Slimkid3 and Fatlip
*Our review of the Pharcyde at the Roxy, 5/23/12
*J-Swift Made Big Hits 
With the Pharcyde 
Before Tragedy and Drugs 
Nearly Took Him Down
*Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: The Complete List
To fully appreciate the impact of The Pharcyde's "Ya Mama," you had to be in a junior high lunchroom in the spring of 1993. It was mama manna from the heavens nourishing the impressionable youth with disses for days. Two decades later, the lines still detonate. Things ya mama had: a peg leg with a kickstand, an afro with a chin strip, Play-Doh teeth, the wings and teeth of an African bat, hair on her tongue, and a 99-cent sign on her back (while walking down Sunset).
Currently touched up for 20th-anniversary reissue treatment, the album from which the song sprang, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, was a rap gateway drug, a powerfully psychedelic expansion. After all, earlier this year, the group's producer J-Swift told me that the name came after a mushroom binge while watching Oliver Stone's The Doors.
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