Robbin' the Hood
Album Specifics
Artist: Sublime
Released: 1994
Tracks: 24
Label: Skunk Records
Album Information
Robbin the Hood is Sublime’s 1994 follow up release to their debut 40oz to Freedom. The album features a distinct departure from it’s more polished sounding predecessor. Boasting on the cover about 13 self-produced 4-track home recordings, most of Robbin the Hood was recorded in the various homes around Southern California that singer Brad Nowell found himself staying at. Co-producer and album collaborator Michael Happoldt described this period as the band’s most strained and uncertain time. Pressures from the lack of response to the band’s music outside of Long Beach and it’s immediate surrounding area begin to chip away at Nowell. To better handle these pressures Nowell seeks shelter in hard drugs as he begins to work on the band’s next release.
Robbin the Hood plays out in a Burroughs’ esque fashion; offering alcohol and drug fueled vignettes set to the soundtrack of an artist and his band in no particular order or style. Some tracks feature Nowell as the sole Sublime member performing them while in someone’s living room, others are rounded out as a full-piece band in a proper recording studio. In between the chaos and binges that fuel the album’s tracks are soliloquies by a mysterious and deranged character the band credits only as Raleigh Theodore Sakers.
Robbin the Hood stands as a sampler dish to Sublime’s wide range of styles and ideas. The computerized dub styles of Courtney Melody can be heard on tracks like Free Loop Dub and I Don't Care Too Much for Reggae Dub. While turntable scratches, samples, and Roland 808’s fill out most of Steady B Loop Dub, Steppin' Razor and Q-Ball. The album closes with a couple of Nowell’s stripped down acoustic numbers before sending the listener off with one last thought brought into the universe by Mr. Sakers. The roughness of Robbin the Hood’s production may be a deterrent upon first glance but in time the album matures into it’s place in the band’s catalog.
Track Listing
- Waiting for Bud (Sublime) - 1:02
- Steady B Loop Dub (Sublime) - 1:23
- Raleigh Soliloquy Pt. I (Sublime) - 1:46
- Pool Shark (original) (Sublime) - 0:57
- Steppin' Razor (Joe Higgs) - 2:24
- Greatest Hits (Sublime) - 2:53
- Free Loop Dub (Sublime) - 3:08
- Q-Ball (Sublime) - 0:43
- Saw Red (Sublime) - 1:57
- Work That We Do (Sublime) - 2:34
- Lincoln Highway Dub (Sublime) - 2:21
- Pool Shark (acoustic) (Sublime) - 1:25
- Cisco Kid (Sublime) - 4:38
- Raleigh Soliloquy Pt. II (Sublime) - 3:39
- STP (Sublime) - 2:57
- Boss D.J. (Sublime) - 2:51
- I Don't Care Too Much for Reggae Dub (Sublime) - 5:20
- Falling Idols (Ross Fletcher/William Pangborn III) - 2:37
- All You Need (Sublime) - 2:45
- Freeway Time in L.A. County Jail (Sublime) - 3:17
- Mary (Sublime) - 1:34
- Raleigh Soliloquy Pt. III (Sublime) - 8:29
- Don't Push (Sublime)*
- Hidden Dub Song (Sublime)*
* Starred items are hidden tracks at they end of Raleigh Soliloquy Pt. III. Don't Push is an alternate version, and the hidden dub song has a snippet of Boss D.J. over the intro and at the end.
Pressing Variations
Cassette
- Album Preview - Clear tape w/ white label [Skunk Records 1994]
- (MCA version) - Clear tape [MCA/Gasoline Alley 1996]
CD
- 1st pressing (996 Redondo address, w/o barcode, w/Farther I Go) [Skunk Records 1994]
- 2nd pressing (996 Redondo address, w/ barcode, w/Farther I Go) [Skunk Records 1994]
- 3rd pressing (203 Agonne address, no number under barcode, w/Farther I Go) [Skunk Records 1994]
- 4th pressing (203 Agonne address, SKD-11284 under barcode, w/Farther I Go) [Skunk Records 1994]
- 5th pressing (203 Agonne address, SKD-11430 under barcode, w/o Farther I Go) [Skunk Records 1994]
- 6th pressing [MCA/Gasoline Alley (Uni) 1996]
- 7th pressing [MCA/Gasoline Alley/J.V. (BMG) 1996]
- Advance Copy [MCA/Gasoline Alley 1996]
- AU 1st pressing [Liberation/Skunk Records 1996]
- AU 2nd pressing [Liberation/Mushroom/Skunk Records 1996]
- JAP 1st pressing[Gasoline Alley 1997]
- JAP 2nd pressing[Geffen/Gasoline Alley 2006]
- CAN 1st pressing [MCA/Gasoline Alley 1996]
- CAN 2nd pressing [MCA/Gasoline Alley 199?]
Trivia
- It is Opie Ortiz (Friend of Sublime and Long Beach Dub Allstars singer) on the cover of Robbin' The Hood.
- Part of the recording was done at 23032 Carreterra Lane, San Juan Capistrano, CA.
- Turntable work done by Doug (DJ Product © 1969) Boyce of Hed PE.
