3rd Bass is celebrating the 35th anniversary of their debut, The Cactus Album, which arrived via Def Jam Recordings/Columbia Records in November 1989. After years of not speaking, MC Serch and Pete Nice have seemingly mended fences to reunite for not just a show but an entire tour.
MC Serch shared the news on Instagram, writing, “Swipe right for the surprise of the night…@djcassidy has created a show to truly be proud of. We were glad when we were asked to perform.
“As we plan to tour North America next year, it was good to get on stage with Pete and do what felt the most natural for us to do. Which is perform our music for those fans who love our music. Everything has its time, and as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the release of the Cactus Al/Bum, this is ours.”
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The long-awaited reunion took place on November 8 at DJ Cassidy’s Pass the Mic event at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Several of MC Serch and Pete Nice’s peers hopped in the comment section of Serch’s post to express their excitement, including longtime Bone Thugs-n-Harmony manager Steve Lobel, Exile, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious 5’s Scorpio, Loud Records’ Steve Rifkind and DJ EFN.
“I have to credit my brother Van Silk for this reunion with Serch,” Pete Nice said in a statement to AllHipHop. “For the past 15 years his two pet projects have been to get The Furious 5 and 3rd Bass reunited, he finally did it. Thanks to DJ Cassidy for making it possible for us to perform tonight along with our brothers Melle Mel and Scorpio, the men who literally created emceeing and the blueprint for Hip-Hop, it is a great honor.
“I will have to work around my schedule as the curator at The Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx, but I look forward to the opportunity for our fans to see me, Serch and DJ Daddy Rich on stage performing together in the future.”
Following The Cactus Album, 3rd Bass dropped what would become their second and final album, Derelicts of Dialect, in 1991. The album was anti-pop and focused on the growing mainstream presence of rap. It targeted trends that the group believed threatened the culture’s integrity and featured several tracks critical of Vanilla Ice.
3rd Bass, which also included DJ Richie Rich (now DJ Daddy Rich), broke up due to “personal and creative differences” and growing disdain from living on the road for two years. Their final track was the theme song for the 1992 Cuba Gooding Jr. movie Gladiator.