Act Like You Know is the third studio album by American hip hop recording artist MC Lyte. It was released on September 17, 1991, by First Priority Music, distributed by Atlantic Records, and featured production from Audio Two, The 45 King, Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez, The King of Chill, Pal Joey, Epic Mazur, Richard Wolf and DJ Master Tee.
In this album she develops in some tracks a softer sound influenced by R&B, having more mixed reviews than in her previous albums. Commercially it performed weaker than its predecessor Eyes on This, peaking at 102 on the Billboard 200 Top Albums and 14 on the Top R&B Albums.
Two singles made it high on the Hot Rap Singles chart with "When in Love" peaking at 3 and Poor Georgie reaching 1. "Poor Georgie" also cracked the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at 83 in March 1992.
Recording and production
During an interview with Angie Martinez in 2019, Lyte said that during this time she "was ready to be sexy" but was prevented by an executive. Lyte revealed "I was reprimanded by my label exec like, 'No, you don't have to do that.' (...) When she saw the photo shoot she called me and she said, 'What is this? I need you to put your jeans on and I need you to take a photo shoot on the streets of New York.'"
Unlike her previous work, on this album Lyte features a more diverse production team, which includes her usual King of Chill and Audio Two adding to The 45 King of Queen Latifah's Flavor Unit, Ivan "Doc" Rodriguez, Wolf & Epic (who have previously worked with Seal, Sheena Easton, Bell Biv Devoe and Ralph Tresvant), among others. On some tracks the album also had a softer sound influenced by New Jack Swing and R&B. Regarding this Lyte commented in an interview to The New York Times "Oh, there are nutty people out there who want rappers to be this or that. I see rap melding into other types of music - reggae, house, R-and- B - to stay alive. After being underground for too long, you get ready to blow out. To me, the tracks still sound street, but they have something that adults could like, too. I'm the common denominator on all the tracks, and I tried to stay MC Lyte."
In an interview with Vibe in 2011 Lyte commented "First you come into the game and you have no expectations. You just want the microphone to say what you want to say. But before long the pressure is on to actually sell records. Once you have that pressure on you, you have to come up with new and inventive ways to get there."
On working with the Wolf & Epic production team, MC Lyte stated:
Music and lyrics
The album addresses topics such as sexuality ("Like a Virgin", "2 Young 4 What"), teenage pregnancy ("Eyes Are the Soul"), dysfunctional relationships ("Poor Georgie"), alcohol and drug addiction ("Poor Georgie", "Eyes Are the Soul") and AIDS ("Eyes Are the Soul", "Lola from the Copa"). She said about the album content "I'm talking about so many things, from drinking and driving, smoking causing cancer, losing virginity, abortion from a pro-choice stance, drug addiction, AIDS. I tried to pick topics and issues that hadn't been done to death by rappers. Then I tried to make it seem funny, to put the message in a palatable way."
In "Kamikaze" Lyte blasts rap that does not deal with real issues, singing: "They try to keep me down because I talk to a beat / In other words I try to teach / But if I talk that Yang Yang s—t / Like You Can’t Touch This/That s—t’ll hit." in reference to MC Hammer's hit song. On the album Lyte also covers "Take It Off" by Spoonie Gee (1986). In the CD version of the album "K-Rock's the Man" was included as a bonus track, which is performed by Lyte's disc jockey, DJ K-Rock.