By All Means Necessary--Boogie Down Productions (1988)



“After Scott La Rock’s death the other members of BDP said, ‘We can’t go on. It’s over.’ Everybody thought Boogie Down Productions was finished. I was battling Melle Mel at the Latin Quarters when Criminal Minded was out. When Scott was killed trying to break up a dispute in the Bronx, I as a metaphysician and a philosopher knew what his death meant. Ironically, the lyrics to ‘Stop The Violence,’ which was featured on By All Means Necessary, was already written during this time when Scott was still alive. As sad as the situation was, it was the beginning of a new era in hip-hop and Boogie Down Productions was at the forefront of that era. I said that to everybody else in the group, but they didn’t feel it like that. They didn’t understand spiritual law. I knew it wasn’t just about Boogie Down Productions…it was about hip-hop. So when Scott passed for me he had become our guardian angel. That was my mindset on By All Means Necessary.

Why did I write ‘My Philosophy’? In 1988, when By All Means Necessary comes out, hip-hop had become officially mainstream. And with becoming popular it was becoming quite like a minstrel. It was taking us back a little to Al Jolson because now rappers were expected to play a certain part…a certain stereotype. And I’m not going to say it was Run-DMC’s fault because it wasn’t. They were leading the way as far as hip-hop goes, but they were also playing the mainstream game of getting played on television. They had to put a little white boy in the video for ‘Rock Box’ just to get played on MTV. This was this climate that we were in before Yo! MTV Raps. MTV was dissing hip-hop music and BET was just trying to catch up. And you can’t take anything from the Fat Boys. They are true hip-hop legends. But if you look at their movies they started to get a little silly. So guys like me on the street level was like, ‘Nah…that ain’t hip-hop. We don’t look and act like that. We are on this shit over here.’ And those people were Eric B & Rakim; that was Public Enemy; that’s Big Daddy Kane; that’s MC Lyte, that’s NWA; that’s Salt-N-Pepa, who came out gangsta with ‘I’ll Take Your Man.’

So this is where you get that attitude from on ‘My Philosophy.’ I’m saying, ‘It’s my philosophy, on the industry, don’t bother dissing me, or even wishing we soften, dilute or commercialize all the lyrics, ‘cuz it’s a about time one of y’all hear it!’ That was my point. People had felt this way for a minute. These rhymes resonated with many of the new generation of MC’s. You can even hear that rawness in the production…this was the new age of sampling. Hip-hop was now an art. And I wasn’t just rhyming to my fans…I was rhyming to other MC’s. By this time, I was really calling myself The Teacher. And the truth is being a teacher was not a thing that hip-hop took to with open arms. I had to fight every step of the way to convince hip-hop that it was more than just music. I’m going to battle you with knowledge on a song like ‘I’m Still #1’. I’m going to show you that knowledge is superior to these average rhymes that you might be hearing. It’s important that you don’t think KRS is superior, but that you think knowledge itself is superior.”

GOAT of his era......long live Prince.....God is alive....