🧢 Old School Wednesday
3rd Bass ~ “The Gas Face” (1989)
Black cat is bad luck…
Bad guys wear black…
Before the punchlines, the parodies, and Pop Goes the Weasel (with Henry Rollins doing his best Vanilla Ice impression), there was The Gas Face.
Released in late ’89 off their debut The Cactus Album (🔥 Emerald Vinyl Double LP 🔥), this was the track that truly introduced 3rd Bass to the world ~ funny, raw, innocent, and smart. Bars for days and a genuine connection to the culture. (The video alone has cameos from Flavor Flav, Kid ‘n Play, EPMD, DMC, Jam Master J, and Salt-N-Pepa.)
Prime Minister Pete Nice ~ the gentleman bruiser with a cigar and a cane.
MC Serch ~ pure energy and bounce.
DJ Richie Rich ~ slicing through on the decks.
And some guests:
Don Newkirk did the introductions.
Verse 3? A guest MC with a standout verse… who disappeared ~ until he returned as a supervillain.
🎙 What Got Me Thinking About This Track Again?
I was watching Drink Champs, and for the first time in forever, MC Serch and Pete Nice sat down together.
It was surreal. Not long ago, Serch told Math Hoffa it would never happen… and here they were, squashing decades of beef and talking about old times. 🙌
The 3rd Bass story is wild. Two white MCs actually co-signed by the culture. They worked with legends, toured with icons, and navigated credibility, beefs, and industry politics ~ in a pre-Internet world.
They talked about everything from:
- Serch going to high school with Slick Rick and the Kangol Crew
- Learning from Chuck D that “hottest act closes”
- Being on stage at Rakim‘s first show
- Touring with Digital Underground and a young Tupac
- Nas
- To running around NYC with the Get Yourz Posse and KMD
*Drink Champs is always great to watch. The 3rd Bass episode is 🔥
🎭 The Rise of the Supervillain
So why include ZEV LOVE X on this track?
Before The Gas Face was a track it was shorthand slang inside the GYP for rejection (spending all that money on gas to get somewhere just to get that face) but the term became something bigger. A lowkey diss. Disrespect. It was a meme before meme culture existed.
So 3rd Bass got the nod from the rest of the GYP before making the track, and wrote the track on the Subway going to Prince Paul’s studio to record it. In true “when we make it, y’all make it” style they had ZEV LOVE X do the last verse.
He didn’t just rap ~ he anchored the track.
Years later, after tragedy and label chaos, ZEV LOVE X would disappear…
…and return as the masked lyricist we now know as MF DOOM.
It’s wild hearing his verse now ~ you can already hear the weird flows, the sly twists, and that signature presence. Watching this is like discovering a lost clip of your favorite actor before they blew up.
🧪 Sample Breakdown
The beat is that gritty, funky, minimal golden-era stew ~ cooked up by Prince Paul on a 4-track cassette deck. Raw and brilliant.
Main Samples:
🗣 Aretha Franklin ~ “Think” (1968)
🎸 The Emotions ~ “I Like It” (1968)
It’s not a loud beat. It doesn’t punch you in the face. It sits back, lets the MCs cook, and gives you that spacey boom-bap texture that ages well.
💭 Final Thoughts
The Gas Face is clever. Confrontational. Lowkey brilliant. And still fun as hell.
A time capsule that captures the moment when hip-hop wasn’t quite mainstream, but was already expanding. It showed how a track could be self-aware, funny, and complex ~ and still go hard.
More than that, it gave us a glimpse of MF DOOM’s origin story. Hottest act closes!
