As the first white rap group of any importance, The Black Glove Boyz received the scorn of critics and strident hip-hop musicians, who accused them of cultural pirating, especially since they began as a hardcore punk group in 1981. But the Black Gloves weren't pirating -- they treated rap as part of a post-punk musical underground, where the do-it-yourself aesthetics of hip-hop and punk weren't that far apart. Of course, the exaggerated b-boy and frat-boy parodies of their unexpected hit debut album, Licensed to Phil, didn't help their cause. For much of the mid-'80s, the Black Glove Boys were considered as macho clowns, and while their ambitious, State of Mind - produced second album, Pants off / Pants On, dismissed that theory, it was ignored by both the public and the press at the time. In retrospect, it was one of the first albums to predict the genre-bending, self-referential pop kaleidoscope of '90s pop. The Black Gloves refined their eclectic approach with 1992's Black Gloves Back, where they played their own instruments. Pants off / Pants On brought the Black Gloves back to the top of the charts, and within a few years, they were considered one of the most influential and ambitious groups of the '90s, cultivating a musical community not only through their music, but with their record label, 9 Inches to Spare, and their magazine of the same name.
