by Nathan RabinYears before Puff Daddy found multi-platinum success sampling David Bowie and the Police, Nice and Smooth were perfecting their own unique style of guilty pleasure hip-pop, scoring big hits with the infectious singles "Hip Hop Junkies" and "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow," which sampled the Partridge Family and Tracy Chapman, respectively. The underrated duo's knack for irresistible pop hooks continues on their forth album, beginning with "Return of the Hip Hop Freaks," a jazzy leadoff track so insistently, irritatingly catchy -- its chorus is the kind that sticks in your head for weeks at a time -- that it makes "Hip Hop Junkies" sound like a tuneless dirge. A mere 11 songs long, including a CD-only remix of "No Bones," Jewel of the Nile is an unfairly ignored treasure of nineties hip-pop at its most ingratiatingly mainstream, a nearly perfect little album that proves that hip-pop needn't be a pejorative label. Never the world's greatest lyricists, Greg Nice and Smooth Bee instead excelled at left-field but enormously effective samples (Jewel of the Nile's "Do Watcha Gotta" skillfully jacks the snake-charmer groove from Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"), undeniable chemistry and remarkable pop savvy. Whether mixing it up with a pre-Whitey Ford Everlast over crunchy rock & roll guitars on "Save the Children" or holding their own alongside hip-hop royalty Slick Rick, Nice and Smooth are at their infectious, upbeat best throughout Jewel of the Nile, one of the most underrated and unfairly overlooked hip-hop albums of the '90s.