Hell With the Lid Off, released in 1990 (see 1990 in music

1990 in music

This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1990.-Events:*January 21 – MTV's Unplugged premieres on cable television with British band Squeeze...

), is the first album by MC 900 Ft. Jesus

MC 900 Ft. Jesus

MC 900 Ft. Jesus is the stage name of Mark Griffin, a classically trained musician turned rapper and experimental musician born in Dallas, Texas....

 collaborating with DJ Zero (For more information on DJ Zero, see MC 900 Ft. Jesus

MC 900 Ft. Jesus

MC 900 Ft. Jesus is the stage name of Mark Griffin, a classically trained musician turned rapper and experimental musician born in Dallas, Texas....

).

Hell With the Lid Off was released on Nettwerk Records. It has a heaven

Heaven

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...

-and-hell

Hell

In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

 theme to it; the name of the album is indicative of such a theme, and track titles repeatedly mention such topics as God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

, heaven, and angels. The songs themselves are often about mental illness, UFOs, voodoo, and violence; the comic delivery and tongue-in-cheek lyrics put this far outside the norm for a typical Nettwerk release. The album is sample

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

-laden, and has a hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 feel to it, though it shares little with that genre either.

The title of the album is taken from a sermon by child evangelist Marjoe Gortner

Marjoe Gortner

Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner, generally known as Marjoe Gortner , is a former revivalist who first gained a certain fame in the late 1940s when he became the youngest ordained preacher at the age of four...

 whose voice is sampled on the song "A Place of Loneliness."

Track listing

The title references a 1868 quote about the city - Pittsburgh, PA - made by 19th-century author James Parton in an article he had written for Atlantic Monthly.

(all songs written by Griffin

MC 900 Ft. Jesus

MC 900 Ft. Jesus is the stage name of Mark Griffin, a classically trained musician turned rapper and experimental musician born in Dallas, Texas....

, except where noted)

1. "A Greater God" – 2:52 (Chaney/Chaney)
2. "Real Black Angel" – 4:21
3. "Truth is Out of Style" – 5:43
4. "UFO's Are Real" – 5:21
5. "Shut Up" – 5:42
6. "I'm Going Straight to Heaven" – 4:03
7. "Spaceman" – 6:55
8. "Talking to the Spirits" – 6:31
9. "Too Bad" – 5:33
10. "A Place of Loneliness" – 0:47
11. "Born with Monkey Asses" ^ – 5:43
12. "Straight to Heaven" (instrumental) ^ – 4:04

^ CD-only bonus tracks