19.99 (album)

19.99 (EP)19.99 (EP) May 2025 19.99 studio M.O.T. 19.99 album cover.jpg 1998 Hip hop; Jewish 37:57 Sire, Warner 19.99 is the 1998 debut album of American Jewish hip-hop duo M.O.T. (Members of the Tribe), which consisted of Hillel Tigay (Dr. Dreidle) and Andrew Rosenthal (Ice Berg). Tigay and Rosenthal conceived the group and album as a legitimate Jewish foray in the steps of groups like the Beastie Boys, but reviewers by and large refused to take the album seriously, instead characterizing it as parody and reviewing it fairly positively as such. 19.99 was a commercial failure; Tigay would later leave the duo, joining Los Angeles congregation IKAR some time after. Background Hillel Tigay and Andrew Rosenthal met in the late 1980s, over nine years before releasing their first album as M.O.T., at a meeting for breakfast with a mutual friend. Tigay had recently moved to Los Angeles to begin a music career; Rosenthal was already established as a member of Martini Ranch and as a scorer of electronic music on children's shows. Around seven years after that and two years before their first album, Tigay convinced Rosenthal to form their rap duo. Bringing on Roy Trakin (Meshuggeh Knight) as their manager, the pair signed Sire Records and Warner Records. Tigay told Los Angeles that it "started as a tax write-off, and then it snowballed".July 1999 Jewish rappers Los Angeles 77 1522-9149 Tigay remarked to The Daily Breeze that the duo frequently draw comparisons to 2 Live Jews; but for him and Rosenthal, the album was not meant to be a parody of hip hop. They compared themselves to the Beastie Boys, another Jewish rap group, except that Tigay and Rosenthal wanted to take that format and apply it to tracks about Judaism.Levitan Corey December 4, 1998 The Yiddish invasion K24, K30 Daily Breeze Style 19.99 combines a Borscht Belt brand of Jewish humor with hip hop music, referred to by the artists as "Hebe-hop". Through the hip-hop, the artists engage in spoofs of black, Italian, and Hispanic masculinity, while simultaneously undermining that spoof with Jewish puns. "Oh God, Get a Job", for example, features one of the artist's mothers on the track repeating the title as an admonishment, as well as a "punked-out" version of traditional Jewish tune "Hava Nagila". Other titles include "Emmes G", which is about non-kosher Chinese food;Weisblott Marc February 9, 1999 M.O.T. The Village Voice https://www.villagevoice.com/m-o-t/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231204203425/https://www.villagevoice.com/m-o-t/ dead December 4, 2023 December 4, 2023 "So Sue Me", which contains the lines "So sue me! / c'mon do me! / My uncle is a partner at Silverman & Clooney!"; and "Kosher Nostra". Some of the references made in the album are fairly obscure, such as a reference to a line of Manischewitz crackers widely reputed as tasteless. 19.99 track listing Dr. Dreidel and Ice Berg, unless noted. Messiah Records Theme 1:08 Emmes G 5:51 Psychosemitic 3:13 Town Car 3:45 Double Dutch Lunch 3:38 So Sue Me 2:57 Havana Nagillah 3:55 Kosher Nostra 3:49 Hebro National Anthem 1:44 Oh God, Get a Job 2:40 Viva Oy Vegas 4:17 19.99 1:00 37:57 Reception and legacy Reception for 19.99 was mixed – despite the wishes of M.O.T. to create a serious Jewish hip hop album, reviewers largely treated it as a kitschy and satirical but musically lacking album.Cohen Judah January 2009 Hip-Hop Judaica: The Politics of Representin' Heebster Heritage Popular Music 28 1 7 10.1017/S0261143008001591 154766477 John Carmen of Variety compared the band to 2 Live Jews, complimenting their brand of humor and quipping that the duo were doing their level best to kill the hip hop genre. Marc Weisblott of The Village Voice characterized the album as dated and "half-witted", even for its time, and referred to the tracks as neither particularly exciting nor "schnorrers". Daniel Balasco of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles characterized the album as a "proudly derivative" riff on hip hop tropes.Balasco Daniel September 14, 2000 Jewish humor's new new rap The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/3288/ December 4, 2023 Live performances were well-received; John Carmen wrote that M.O.T.'s performance of the album "jaded Viper Room full of guest-listees to do a hora to their catchiest number, 'Havana Nagilah.Carmen John April 27, 1991 Mot Variety https://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/mot-1117499694/ December 4, 2023 At a concert full of music industry attendees at Canter's Kibitz Room, a local Jewish deli, Corey Levitan of the Daily Breeze wrote that the duo had them "behaving unprofessionally". An article in The A.V. Club listed 19.99 as one of the "least essential albums of the 1990s".Thompson Stephen Phipps Keith Rabin Nathan December 22, 1999 Least essential albums of the '90s [sic] The A.V. Club https://www.avclub.com/least-essential-albums-of-the-90s-1798208448 December 3, 2023The article alleges that both Tigay and Rosenthal are high-ranking music executives; this is likely false. In the long run, the album proved to be a commercial failure; Tigay left the duo, later becoming a musical director at IKAR.Spence Rebecca November 23, 2012 New album attempts to recapture 2,000-year-old sounds from the Temple The Times of Israel Jewish Telegraphic Agency https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-album-attempts-to-recapture-2000-year-old-sounds-from-the-temple/ December 3, 2023 Notes Further reading Aushenker Michael January 8, 1999 Look out Dr. Dre: Dr. Dreidel and Ice Berg are out for gelt https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/jewishweekly?a=d&d=JW19990108.2.91&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-------- June 15, 2025 Jewish Bulletin of Northern California The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles References Category:1998 albums Category:Hip-hop albums by American artists