https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/18/arts/music/hiphop50.html#q-tip

I'm picking and choosing certain MCs right now but I eventually wanna go back and read all of these.

Our local library provides NYT access. You just have to renew it online every 3 days.

***

My sister was best friends with Sweet Tee — she made that record, “It’s My Beat.” So back when I was little-little, I remember hearing them talk about records, like, you heard that Treacherous Three record? I’m like, Treacherous Three, I’m thinking it’s like superheroes.

There was a record store on Linden Boulevard, like, right up from my house — I forget the name of it. I used to go there with no money and just ask him about the records and just to see the records. And he would play them for me. You had hundreds and hundreds of 12-inches that would just start popping up. Back then it was still coming out of the disco culture — “Rapper’s Delight,” Fatback Band, “King Tim III (Personality Jock),” Ronnie Gee, “Raptivity.”

We heard “Rapper’s Delight,” and I’ll never forget Phife calling me like, yo, we can do that! The newness of it left us wide-eyed and inspired and hopeful.

You think about the Treacherous Three, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Fearless Four, everybody had a group. So you have all these vocalists trading off. And if you even wanna get geekier about it, it goes back to like the old doo-wop street-corner harmony. Famously RUN-DMC obviously took that whole interplay between them two and made it worldwide. And of course we wanted to be like them.

I was a big fan of LL Cool J, KOOL MOE DEE, T La Rock, L.A. Sunshine from Treacherous Three. All of the dudes where the vocabulary was just a little extra. Slick Rick was huge — his sound, his tone, his voice and the confidence, you know?

Obviously coming up with the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul and the whole Native Tongues, we were tuned to be a little bit more cerebral. And all of the aforementioned icons got us to that point where we knew that we could cannonball off of the diving board. But I remember us wanting to even go further, to be like some Earth, Wind & Fire or some Parliament-Funkadelic. Like to really try to turn it on its ear, and just let that flag fly.

Our thing was to try to marry the two, the music and the content of the lyrics. And to try to be differentiators even amongst our caper partners. And to our left and to our right, when you would look, there’s N.W.A doing that same thing. The music that Dre was putting with the subject matter fit so perfectly. It was fresh, it was just new and it was exciting to be able to emotionalize the music.

Dre and I speak all the time. That’s my bro. We actually have great musical volleys. Obviously LL. I still speak to the De La guys, of course. I catch Latifah here and there. A good deal of us still keep up. I still speak to Lauryn. It may not be like a full open faucet stream of conversation all the time, but we still keep up. I remember talking to Snoop years ago and he was like, man, when y’all made that “Back in the days in the boulevard,” me and Warren G used to rap y’all .

I think it was 1991, we were doing a Midwest and South gauntlet with the GETO BOYS. We were opening for them — they were huge down there. Probably the two most unlikely groups, right? But we had so much fun, man. We was big fans of them, we was rapping they to them and they was rapping our back to us. It was just amazing. I remember very early on we had a show with DJ Quik and KRS in Compton, and just seeing all the Bloods, and they was just rocking to “El Segundo” and “Bonita” and it was just like, wow, this is really a unifying music.

Because of the scarcity then, when you got in, you had to be good. To be good was the average. I think that everybody’s grind back then to get on was something that created conduits of empathy amongst us all. So that when we did see each other, we were able to tell each other griot tales of how we all got on. “Y’all too? Even in Houston? Even in Cali? Even in Miami?”

When you’re doing it, you feel like you’re on your own planet, right? But then when people dig it and you start seeing other people draw inspiration from what we did, it let us know that we were onto something and it also made the world a little less scary, if that makes sense.

It’s just a great moment of, for me personally, humility and appreciation, when you see a Digable Planets or Arrested Development, a Pharcyde or Souls of Mischief, the Roots. You could go to Badu, the Fugees. And Dilla, who was the great extender of the parlance and endowed it with his own beautiful traits.

That’s to me what I take a great sense of pride in, that I can see all of these guys go on and do honestly better than what we did and to lay even more tracks for us. And it’s like, “Come on, let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

It's working for me. It's supposed to be free even without a subscription but I've had trouble other times.

50 is a lot of rappers but it doesn't look like it on the website and it makes me wish they did 50 more then another 50 lol

I wonder if the link NYT posted on reddit is different

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/18/arts/music/hiphop50.html?unlocked_article_code=erj9vv8-hNeFjofaIpFHXPCq1X2u94SvABaiY_1kmbGeY4D5mWjYVNd07Cyki4F50Ycb1iijAq1TZLlIaeClBwfQ94JLKuibrn1P5-4xfnxEC4wIIcO0ytUN5VRPpuwy-Bi8hLbh6M_YJUXO7RAzkCMFTzeA5g9ILnZx6D6vomv5OXqgLKQxX2xgnHmBpjTMQcW6hcnhHcvr6yqYJVEAX8hi79uCc1SJ8QorHjDelIdRFgLaX7I7JzcG9jltvJ0qK2ARsz8qQhXs0nBJdlEgncA8rILCs-RdujKvqmeXLflCJIbNMUElUQzjXUxOy76wTz5npHm9cS2-MMtLYdUNJJ8KJlVcUA

I'm trying to listen through in the order they present the artists up front 'cause it looks like some fun juxtapositions. For what it's worth I'm working off the order of the mobile app, which is pretty different from the desktop page, because that's where I started reading it and frankly it's a more interesting sequence IMO.

Edit: Actually, seems like the artists randomize every so often, so...whatever! But when it seemed purposeful how the first few swipes were laid out, I dug it.

Anyway, here's Caramanica's opening essay, which is enjoyable on its own and post-edit does a good job explaining why these blurbs randomize anyway (naw, I'm not cleaning up all the image and ad descriptors, sorry):


------------------------



Hip-hop is a wondrous and centerless tangle, ubiquitous even if not always totally visible.

It is a fount of constant innovation, and a historical text ripe for pilfering. It is a continuation of rock, soul and jazz traditions, while also explicitly loosening their cultural grip. It is evolving more rapidly than ever — new styles emerge yearly, or faster, multiplying the genre’s potential. And it has impact far beyond music: Hip-hop is woven into television and film, fashion, advertising, literature, politics and countless other corners of American life. It is lingua franca, impossible to avoid.

It is far too vast to be contained under one tent, or limited to one narrative. The genre is gargantuan, nonlinear and unruly. It has its own internal quarrels and misunderstandings, and its stakeholders are sometimes friends and collaborators, and sometimes view each other warily.

So when trying to catalog hip-hop in full, it’s only reasonable to lean into the cacophony. The package that accompanies this essay does just that, collecting oral histories from 50 genre titans of the past five-plus decades. The number matters. It’s an acknowledgment that at 50 years old — a mild fiction, but more on that later — hip-hop is broad and fruitful, enthralling and polyglot, the source of an endless fount of narratives. Its fullness cannot be captured without sprawl and ambition. Many voices need to be heard, and they won’t always agree.


50 Rappers, 50 Stories
Over five decades, hip-hop has grown from a new art form to a culture-defining superpower. In their own words, 50 influential voices chronicle its evolution.
Side by side, there are stylistic innovators, crossover superstars, regional heroes, micromarket celebrities. There are those who insist on their primacy and see themselves as a center of gravity, and those who are proud students of the game and understand their place in hip-hop’s broader artistic arc. There are those who are universally recognized, and those known mainly by connoisseurs. There are agitators and accommodationists. The revered and the maligned. Some even play with the boundaries of what rapping is ordinarily considered to be.

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All taken together, these artists form a family tree of the genre, one that highlights bridges between groups that are typically discussed separately, and that underscores the ways in which rappers — no matter the city they hail from, or the era in which they found their success — have been grappling with similar circumstances, creative questions and obstacles.

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A black-and-white photo of two pairs of men sharing microphones, outfitted in 1970s chic.
The Cold Crush Brothers in the Bronx, 1979. Credit...Joe Conzo, via Easy A.D.

These 50 histories detail hip-hop from countless vantage points: the past forward, and vice versa; the underground upward; the less populated regions outward; the big cities out into the suburbs. They tell the story of a makeshift musical movement that laid the foundation for the defining cultural shift of the past few decades.

Fifty years ago, though, that outcome seemed fanciful at best. In the 1970s, Bronx block parties gave way to nightclubs, and talking D.J.s laid the foundation for dedicated M.C.s to begin taking over. Soon, the intrusion of capitalism removed and packaged the part of these live events that was the easiest to transmit: rapping.

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Then it was off to the races. By the mid-1980s, the hip-hop industry was a small club but big business, as audiences around the country were primed by the commercial release of recordings from countless New York artists. A wave of soon-to-be-global stars arrived: Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys. Hip-hop became worldwide counterculture.

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A view from the back of the stage as Run and DMC of Run-DMC, outfitted in Adidas and hats, stand in front of a crowd.
Run-DMC in 1985, onstage in Providence, R.I.Credit...John Nordell/Getty Images

By the dawn of the 1990s, it flowered everywhere in this country — the South, the West, the Midwest — and seeped into the global mainstream. In the mid-90s, thanks to the work of Biggie Smalls and Puffy, Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre, Bad Boy and Death Row, it became the center of American pop music, despite resistance from those convinced rock was destined to forever reign supreme.

Into the 2000s, the genre’s power center shifted from the coasts to the South, where the genre was flourishing (largely away from the scrutiny of the major labels) in Miami, Houston, Virginia, Atlanta and Memphis. 2 Live Crew, the Geto Boys, Missy Elliott, Outkast, Three 6 Mafia — each had absorbed what was being imported from the rest of the country and created new lingo and sonic frameworks around it. Hip-hop was becoming a widely shared language with numerous dialects.

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A shirtless T.I. raps into the front rows of a crowd.
T.I. onstage in his hometown, Atlanta, in 2005.Credit...Ray Tamarra/Getty Images

All the while, the genre was expanding, becoming more commercially successful and inescapable with each year. It became centrist pop, which in turn spun off its own dissidents: the New York and Los Angeles undergrounds of the 1990s; the progressive indie scenes of the 2000s; and the SoundCloud rap of the 2010s. In the past 20 years, hip-hop has been responsible not only for some of the biggest pop music of the era — Drake, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Cardi B — but its templates have become open source for performers in other genres to borrow from, which they did, and do, widely. Hip-hop became a crucial touch point for country music, for reggaeton, for hard rock, for K-pop and much more.

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What’s striking in the histories collected in this package is how no part of that ascent has been taken for granted. In every era, there were stumbling blocks. For each artist, there was a promise of a scene just out of reach. And for all of these rappers, that meant leaning in to a new idea of what their version of hip-hop could be, and hoping ears would meet them in this untested place.

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Missy Elliott, wearing a pink Adidas track suit top, smiles into a microphone onstage in front of photographers and fans.
Missy Elliott performing in New York in 2012.Credit...Jerritt Clark/FilmMagic, via Getty Images

There is also the matter of untold history — to read these recollections is to be continually reminded of those who are no longer here to share their tales. There is a punishing catalog of before-their-time deaths just below these stories, a reminder that canons can’t include songs that never got to be made.

As for the 50th anniversary, well, it is a framing of convenience. The date refers to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc — in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx — reportedly first mixed two copies of the same album into one seamless breakbeat. That is, of course, one way to think about hip-hop’s big-bang moment, but by no means the only one. If you think of rapping as toasting, or talking over prerecorded music, or speaking in rhythmic form, then hip-hop has been around longer than 50 years. Just ask the Last Poets, or DJ Hollywood, who would improvise rhymes on the microphone as he was spinning disco records. There are also, depending upon whom you ask, others who had previously mixed two of the same record.

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Kanye West stands with his arms outstretched on a platform high above an arena crowd.
Kanye West’s Saint Pablo tour opener in Indianapolis in 2016.Credit...AJ Mast for The New York Times

But the canniness and the cynicism of attempting to enshrine a date that everyone can stand behind reflects a darker and more worrisome truth, which is that, for decades, hip-hop was perceived as disposable, a nuisance, an aberration. Commemoration and enshrinement seemed far-fetched. For a long time, hip-hop had to argue for its rightful place in pop music, and pop culture, facing hostilities that were racial, legal, musical and beyond.

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Insisting that the genre has an origin point, therefore, is really just another way of insisting on its importance, its stability and its future. You can quarrel with the specific details — and many do — but not with the intent, which is to ensure that no one again overlooks the genre’s power and influence.

That said, hip-hop was never going anywhere, because no style of pop music has been as adaptive and as sly. Hip-hop directly answers its critics, and it voraciously consumes and reframes its antecedents. It is restless and immediate, sometimes changing so quickly that it doesn’t stop to document itself. So here is a landing place to reflect, and a jumping off point for the next 50 or so years.



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

That era, the late ’80s and ’90s, was like the Marvel Universe but for rappers — same universe, different heroes. It felt like we were witnessing the evolution, the growth of this thing we have.

What I felt was always great was the Native Tongues, from De La Soul, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST to Queen Latifah to Black Sheep. It was always dope to have people — especially during that time period when it was pretty rough in the ’80s, early ’90s — have that amount of confidence to be different. It solidified how dope they were, because most people were just emulating what was hot. I think De La and Tribe was good especially for young fellas on the block who didn’t want to be a drug dealer, you know what I’m saying? To know I could be cool and not be into violence. I thought that that was an important element to add into what was going on.

In our lane, we were looking at Mobb Deep, M.O.P., Wu-Tang, those three immediately come to mind. Nas kind of ushered in our age class, and what was going on with the youth outside during that time period. He was a child of the grandmasters, I would say. He was definitely a product of Kane, Kool G Rap, KRS-One and Rakim, but mixed with what was going on outside at that time. We’re getting cars and chains and nice gear and all of that off of the streets, but we into our rhymes. The Golden Era babies is what I like to call us. I don’t think before that nor after that was ever as competitive as that time period.

Kool G and Kane are on “The Symphony,” but there is no Kane and KRS song, no Kane and Rakim song. In the ’90s, though, you was hopping on verses with each other, you got people from different boroughs, different places. You couldn’t be trash during that era — you was not getting recognized. I would never disrespect those who came before me, but there was people out when Rakim, Kane, Kool G Rap, KRS, EPMD, Jungle Brothers, all of them was out that was absolute trash and still getting recognition, getting honored, getting love. During Mobb Deep, Wu, us, Nas, Hov, Big, Rae, Ghost, you couldn’t say a trash verse or you was trash. Our whole career was that competition. I definitely believe people got scared to put us on their records.

But let’s even take albums out the mix. With mixtapes, you wanted to be in that No. 1 slot. So if you know anything about the Lox in the mixtape era, we was always the No. 1 slot. I remember going to DJ Clue sessions and seeing different artists there and going, oh, we’re gonna absolutely make the illest record. This gotta be No. 1 when the tape come on. I remember doing the Stretch Armstrong freestyle going, oh no, we gotta burn this. This is Stretch. This is getting heard.

And then after that period, everybody’s all super friendly. Internet fame and Instagram and Twitter and all of this to where it’s a lot of fluff. Celebrities like being with other celebrities, but they wasn’t trying to burn nobody on the mic. I can’t say the whole era is guilty — Cole is gonna try to burn you, Kendrick’s gonna try to burn you. But that don’t stand for the whole. They just rather stand with each other, take a picture and be dope, get in the studio, make a catchy song but not really try to burn each other. So I feel fortunate we came from the most competitive time period in hip-hop that may ever exist.

I’m from the Lox. When you’re in a group, that natural sense of competitiveness comes out. You want the best for the group, but nobody ever wants to be second fiddle. You don’t wanna get ate. Never. I never make a verse and go, I want to have the least favorite verse. Never. I always want the best verse. If it doesn’t happen, I’m cool and I’m comfortable and it is what it is. It’s like ballplayers getting on the court. Yeah, you on your team and you want the team to win, but who goes, “I want him to win M.V.P.”? Nobody.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My beginning is watching Queen Latifah, MC LYTE, Salt-N-Pepa. I just loved them. They were different because they were from up north and wore the baggy clothes. They were just girls and they was so fire. I saw them on TV and I was obsessed.

I remember begging my mom to take me to Salt-N-Pepa’s concert in Miami. I had to be 14, 15. I had my asymmetrical haircut, my little colorful jacket on and my long onesie thing. I was dressed just like them. I thought I was one of the girls.

In concert, it was really overwhelming because they were really, really good. They were dancing and singing and rapping and performing and the D.J., Spinderella, was there. I thought, wow, this is just amazing. And it’s just all girls.

I first did the record with Trick Daddy as a favor. I didn’t know it was going to be a song. I just thought it was an intro of me talking slick to him, going back and forth, arguing with friends. But when I got there, and he played it, I was like, “What do I say to this?” I was so nervous.

But I had my friends with me and they’re real feisty. They was just like, boosting me up: “Oh, no, we got to get him out of here. We got this.” We was all in the booth and they was like, “You gotta kill him on the track. You gotta go nastier.” I was writing stuff down, scratching it off, balling the paper up. And they were like, “No, nastier. We gotta go harder.”

We called Trick, and when he came back and heard the song, he went nuts. He called the owner of the label, and I knew him from growing up. He was like, “That’s Trina who?” Trick was like, “Trina — the only Trina.” “No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is!” And when he came to the studio, he was like, “Oh, no, we signing you to a record deal.” I just left and they were stalking me for weeks and weeks.

They came to my mom’s house looking for me. I’m not interested. I’m going to be a Realtor. I just got my license. There’s no way. I went to Trick’s birthday party, and they tricked me. He wanted to perform the song and I was too shy. I got on the stage and when the song came on, I didn’t say nothing. My eyes was closed. I didn’t say not one word, but every girl in the whole entire club said the song.

The next week, he had a birthday party in Tallahassee. I came out and killed it. I was scared, but I was ready to perform after that.

Once I did the “Nann” record, immediately, I got signed to Atlantic Records. Boom, right after that, I got called to do a Ludacris record, the remix to “What’s Your Fantasy?” So now it’s these two records blowing up at the same time.

I was in the studio a lot with Trick. We had Money Mark and C.O., Tre+6, Duece Poppi. There was Plies and there was Rick Ross. I kind of followed Ross. I would not turn in no records if he didn’t approve. That gave me security of how to put the records together.

Later on, I was battling with the label about certain records that I wanted to do, because I had grown from the records like “Nann,” and they wanted those particular records. I wanted to do these records talking about how I really felt. They felt like that stuff’s soft and your fans are not soft. I had to stand firm in the paint, do what I felt and make them believe that I can make music that I believed in.

“Nann” was fun. That was dope. That was Trick’s idea. I came in, I did my thing. But now here is Trina, and Trina is a woman and she is not 19 anymore. She’s growing, and she’s been through all different kinds of things. And it worked.

Here we are 23 years later. There’s so many girls, you can’t even keep count now. What I love about that, is there was a time there was no girls. It was just four or five of us. Now there’s so much more versatility — there’s the City Girls, there’s Flo Milli, Lady London, KaMillion, Coi Leray, GloRilla, Doechii. It just feels like Ladies Night right now.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I grew up in the DMV, and my friend had a lot of family in Brooklyn. So he would travel there and spend summers and he would record the Red Alert radio show on cassette. At that time in the DMV — this was like ’85, ’86 — go-go had more presence than hip-hop, so we were a select few that were even into it on that level. I became obsessed. It was just so fly and next level. I had already been writing my observations about the world down on like, little pieces of paper or napkins. So hearing people expressing themselves through words, through rhymes, through cadence, it just grabbed me, you know?

The Jungle Brothers really stands out for me in terms of those cassettes. Everything sonically, like the rhythms, the tone of their vocals, their wordplay. Musically, it was just a sound that I hadn’t really heard. It felt like the future, like complete freedom of expression, being like completely free in your skin. That’s the best way I can explain it.

I learned to rap by listening. I really loved MC Lyte. Queen Latifah’s “Wrath of My Madness” was mind-blowing, just out of this world. And Public Enemy, their rhythm spoke to my internal rhythm, you know what I mean? It was just like family, you know, I don’t know how else to explain it.

In high school, my other close friends had a hip-hop group and I started off dancing for them. And then I started writing and doing little shows, like local stuff. And it became very, very serious once, you know, Knowledge and Ishmael asked me to be in the group. That’s when it became a reality, like I could do this possibly for a living.

When we were out, we felt connected to the whole Native Tongues. Tribe, De La of course. Arrested Development. Gang Starr. I’m heavily influenced by Sweet Tee’s music. I looked to everyone, like Special Ed, Big Daddy Kane, all these people, they’re my inspiration. Daddy Kane was so smooth and cool, he was just everything. I couldn’t wait to get home to turn on the TV and watch music videos and just see what new I could absorb.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I’ve made a special contribution to hip-hop, and I feel like that gets overlooked a lot of times. Hip-hop is Black culture. People say, “Oh, you make house music, a.k.a white people music.” I’m like, honey, no. House music is Black music. Everything I do is in the spirit of hip-hop.

My first memory of hip-hop, even though I had no clue what was going on, was O.D.B. on Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” remix. I was like 2, going on 3. And Lil’ Kim’s verse on “All About the Benjamins.” The audacity was just so fab. I remember the video with the fisheye lens, the see-through dress and the blonde wig. And she started off with: “What the bloodclaat?/Wanna bumble with the bee, huh?/Throw a hex on the whole family.” I didn’t know what a hex was until I was maybe 16, but I could spit that word for word.

I was a theater kid, and LIL WAYNE, for sure, was like a thespian. It was theatrical and the jokes were funny. “Cannon” is probably one of the best Lil Wayne verses ever.

But my favorite rapper of all time is STYLES P, from hearing the Lox at block parties. Then we had the DatPiff era, so I would download like, “Ghost in the Machine.” I just like how unrehearsed he is. And the swag. He was talking to you rather than trying to create a fantastical world.

We actually have a song together on my first mixtape. He did it for free. I’ve done collabs with other male rappers that will probably never see the light of day because I wouldn’t sign their record deal. Like, damn, Yeezy — I loved you my entire life and that’s what you do?

I started rapping because I had this boyfriend who rapped and they would do these cyphers. If your bars were wack, they would, like, snatch the blunt from you, you know? I skipped the cypher for like two weeks and I came back with a vengeance. I had to learn all these different words for “firearm.” I wrote “Seventeen” over that Ladytron beat and when they passed me the blunt that day, I came out with: “I’m not the don diva/I’m beyond ya don skeezers/I get cake from quick chicks with long heaters.” They was like, “Ohhhhhh. Shorty, you can rap! You should record that!”

The very first record that I ever recorded was into a microphone in a sock in this guy’s closet, in between all these Supreme jackets. Two weeks later, I was featured on the Fader blog. I blew up overnight and then it was just kind of like, OK, I have a job to do now.

I think that all of that theatrical training definitely helped. When it came to “212,” that white girl Valley Girl voice, I was really just making fun of dumb bitches who come to New York for like two years and are like, I’m a New Yorker!

I think that everyone at XL Recordings forgot that I was 17. I felt like there was no mentorship. Everybody just kind of abandoned me and expected me to know what they wanted.

At the same time, they had just signed Odd Future, who were super, super duper crass. I won’t lie — I was so jealous just watching them put all this love into Odd Future. Just to see them be given the support to be kids. It’s a classic tale of boys can do whatever they want, but girls need to be like, prim and proper. I sent “212” in to XL and they dropped me. It was 100 percent a bunch of misogynoir.

I was thinking maybe I should go get a G.E.D. and go to college. Then I just get this phone call from Nick Grimshaw on BBC Radio 1, and he’s played it like a million times. I didn’t even know what BBC Radio 1 was. And then very quickly you go from getting paid $150 and a bottle of Smirnoff to perform to getting like, €5,000 at some weird charity event. I’d never had 5,000 anything all at once in my hands, ever. All I could think was, I’m going to get a weave and a laptop.

One thing leads to another, and then I’m at Karl Lagerfeld’s house. I didn’t even know who Karl Lagerfeld was when he invited me to perform at his house in Paris. I didn’t know what Coachella was when I got booked for Coachella. That Coachella date in 2012, it was like, all right, I’m here. I’m a star.

Jimmy Iovine, the very first day I met him, he said to me, “The best thing you can do for a woman is get the out of her way.” He actually bought me my first, like, three pairs of Louboutins, my first Chanel bag, my first real bottle of perfume. He was always a gentleman and he always thought my jokes were funny.

“212” was such an anomaly that no one has been able to successfully build upon it outside of me. What I see is people doing an Azealia Banks impression, and that is partially due to just the belief that a woman couldn’t be the mastermind behind the sound, the aesthetic, the everything. I’m still alive, girls.

There’s no magic in hip-hop now. Hip-hop has been taken from us and used as a weapon against us. No one is talking about anything. Just for the record: All these little new rap girls — they really suck.

Related Artists
STYLES P
LADYBUG MECCA
LIL WAYNE
ICE SPICE


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

of course she dissed all the women after her and had to talk about getting shoes and perfume.

She a wild one.

“I’m not the don diva/I’m beyond ya don skeezers/I get cake from quick chicks with long heaters”

I read this in her voice n said “oh yea thats hard” lol…

because even when she is winning she finds a way to turn it into an L.

Look at her story compared to everyone else’s.

Everyone is talking about inspiration and she is talking about shoes, handbags and how everyone else sucks.

she wild toxic.

i been a fan since day one (of the music) and almost everytime she HAS dropped something it's been fire.

but, she don't drop enough. she's more known now for just saying crazy shit than music, at this point.

if you're gonna be a kook and toxic and whatever, at least offset it w/ some output.

I will never get the image of the rotten blood chicken carcass crusted altar she had in her goddamn uptown apartment out my third eye, EVER

nfn, I think she for real inspired a lot of these new UK based emcees. The fact that she could change her pitch, change her accent, and sound good on the beat, for real I think inspired a new generation of female rappers, even the conscious ones. I listen to a lot of bandcamp weeklies and they play so much UK shit I feel like I get exposed to a lot more than in everyday life. And I gotta say, she should really connect with up and coming rappers like that who I think don't even know they are influenced by her, instead of just shitting on women rappers as a whole.

My first memory of hip-hop would have to be around third grade when I first heard 2 LIVE CREW. Bass music was basically taking over Miami and, you know, you always wanna listen to what you’re not supposed to be listening to. You could hear it in the corner spots where they were washing cars and the flea markets. Another place where I would find music was this thing called the Box, that was basically something that you could see on local television. At the time that was our MTV before MTV.

But bass music has always been about underground. It’s all about pirate stations. It was all about, No. 1, finding a way to get this music out because nobody would believe in it. No. 2, it was too nasty, too dirty, too raunchy for them. And so we always had to find ways to get this out.

It always feels like we’re the underdogs in Miami, because we’re used to being counted out. Pirate radio, independent labels — that independence allows us to maneuver and navigate differently so we are not, for lack of a better term, choked by a major corporation or company.

I started the whole freestyle thing when I was about 15, 16 years old. I went to a lot of different schools in Miami. Lived in a lot of different neighborhoods, good neighborhoods, bad neighborhoods, worse neighborhoods. And Miami being the melting pot that it is, it allowed me to dibble and dabble in different genres and different cultures. So I could spit at you in English, Spanish, throw some patois at you, throw a little Creole in there as well.

A teacher happened to change my life. Her name is Hope Martinez, and she gave me an invitation to a DMX video shoot. I ended up battling an artist from the Ruff Ryders called Drag-On. It went eight rounds. I did my job, and Irv Gotti pulled me to the side and asked me, “Hey, do you write music?” I said, no, I just freestyle. He said, “Yeah, freestyle is great, but it don’t make no money.”

My brothers had a lot of Eric B. & Rakim, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Black Moon — they had a lot of hip-hop. But what I really related to is when I heard Nas, “Illmatic,” when he’s using lines like “Got my first piece of ass, smokin’ blunts with hash/Now it’s all about cash in abundance.” You know, these are things I can relate to, these are things going on in my neighborhood.

B.I.G. was such an amazing storyteller. Pac was a revolutionist, Snoop had a flow that you never heard before and Jay-Z was the ultimate hustler-slash-entrepreneur at the time, and I grew up around a lot of entrepreneurs. They had their start-ups. They were looking for angel investors. They just had a different product. It was called cocaine.

Latins have always been involved in hip-hop, from the days of graffiti and breakdancing. You had your Mellow Man Ace, you had your Kid Frost. You even had Gerardo, which is what really broke Interscope Records. Then you had Cypress Hill, where you had a Mexican and a Cuban represented at the same time. And then you have Fat Joe, and from Fat Joe, you have Big Pun. Pun was arguably one of the best rappers ever in the history of hip-hop. He just didn’t have the time to prove himself.

Now remember I grew up around merengue and salsa. And then around dancehall reggae, and you have reggaeton, all this that you could throw in the pot with rap. I was never afraid to think out of the box. People don’t want to try that because it might mess with their credibility. I say if you’re worried about your credibility, you were never credible in the first place.

The person that really pulled me to the side, this had to be about 2002, was Lil Jon. He said, “You need to rap more in Spanish. I see how you flipping it. I see how you taking it in and out, but you need to rap more in Spanish.” So he’s the one that really saw it and said, there’s gonna be a lane here. And sure enough, the lane exploded, in the middle of hip-hop, crunk and reggaeton. And that’s where I was at.

Bonus
PITBULL ON TONY ROBBINS
Related Artists
UNCLE LUKE
TRINA
AZEALIA BANKS
DJ JUBILEE


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(As an aside, real quick, as this was my era......WOOOOOOOF did this song blow the roof off every room or car that tried to contain it!)



The New Orleans hip-hop scene was way more captivating than the worldwide hip-hop scene, because it was more in your face. Our local radio stations, they favored our artists, so our Top 10 songs would always be full of New Orleans. You’d probably get a Billboard No. 1 hip-hop song thrown in there at, like, No. 8.

Our block parties were a bit different; they were more like a concert. There’s a big crowd, there’s a D.J. and there’s a microphone, but it’s not for the D.J. The D.J. would introduce the artist coming on, and it was up to that artist to keep the party going.

All these names are a chain link to me getting a deal: This first artist, his name was Roni. Roni was one of the best. He reminded me of Juvenile a lot. His niche was finding a way to tell you exactly what he’s doing every day — walking to the damn corner store — and he found a way to make you love it, feel like you could relate to it, like you just took that same walk. He’d go through his day and people would love it.

You could get a recorded tape of that whole block party, sold after it was over. I would only want to hear Roni’s part, backwards and forwards, over and over and over. He was from my hood, but he was a grown-ass man, so he didn’t know too much about me.

From the other side of my hood, there was another guy named Lil Slim and he was a bit different. He talked about the hood, and the hood only. I meshed those two guys together, and I couldn’t wait to get my opportunity.

I was every bit of 9, 8 years old. Thank God I was always a smart kid in school, so I was interested in words, always interested in words. Never knew why; I still don’t. I always was the main person in the play. Whatever it was, from “Les Miserables” to “Wizard of Oz.” I want the main role. I couldn’t wait till the day that damn D.J. gave me the mic. It was over.

I was probably around 10, 11 when they had the station called the Box. People were ordering videos, so you had to watch 1,000 videos you don’t want to watch, but once or twice you’ll see something on there that you didn’t know too much about. That was my real introduction to being actually interested in other music other than New Orleans music.

I fell in love with New York artists, anybody from the East Coast. They was making more of their words to me. You had people like Q-TIP and BUSTA, way before the “Gimme Some More” swag — just a backpack, big old jacket on, spitting. I was interested in artists that took on a character. The reason why I don’t read comic books or watch cartoons or believe in superheroes like my other friends was because I’m getting the same thrill out of hip-hop.

I fell in love with Onyx, because I believed they woke up in the morning screaming at each other. And still my favorite artist, Missy Elliott. You know when you’re watching a sport and you’re like, this person is just too cold, too damn good and they can do whatever they want? She was that person to me.

Before there was Drake and people who were rapping and singing, Missy was doing that. That captivated me, and I was moved by that. It made me want to do it. That’s why I loved Drake when I met Drake. If you’re around me, you know for a fact that if you’ve got a little harmony, a little melody in your voice, I’m about to make you sing.

To me, Shawn Carter, Jay-Z, was the god of words. He could’ve rewritten English books. I was introduced to Jay by listening to Biggie. “Lucky Me,” from “In My Lifetime, Vol. 1,” I learned backward and forward. I put it in songs, and I actually start off every show, still, saying words from that song: “And I swear to everything when I leave this earth/it’s gon’ be on both feet, never knees in the dirt/you could try me, /but when I squeeze it hurts/fine …” And what’s crazy is we stop the music on that part and the crowd sings the rest of it with me as if I wrote that. But that’s all Jay.

When it comes to B.G., he’s very significant, very specific, because we put songs together-together. That was back when I actually put words on paper. I know exactly his writing style, his technique. It’s impossible for some of that not to rub off on you. But I don’t write anymore.

I was probably about 16, 17 — this is before internet and all that — when I heard a nugget that Jay wasn’t writing. And I didn’t want to ever see a pen or paper again in my life. Jay was my Bible.

Back then, whoever the star was, they would always take on this young protégé. I would always look to that person. When Jay did it, I would look to Bleek. If I’m listening to Puff, I would look to Mase, or I would look for Jada. It was the humility of the big dog to set up a path for the next person to be bigger. And so that’s why I made sure when I got the chance, I was going to run with it.

Nicki Minaj was always into my wording technique, the way I come up with the verse. “Why?” “But why?” “OK, but why?” She’s that kid. She was set on, “I’m the female Weezy.” Nick would change her voice like me, she would actually sound like me sometimes.

Drizzy’s just Drizzy. That “good boy, bad boy, I was on the TV show, but I wish you would play with me” type of stuff.

I was scared, actually, when I called EMINEM for a song. That is a monster. He must have the same thing I have with words. Like, we can’t get them out of our heads. Every meaning, every aspect of them. Things that rhyme, we hear it. I already know the gift and the curse that he has. And I love to hear the way he puts it together.

When I was on “The Tonight Show,” I was playing Pictionary. And my thing was Harry Potter. So I drew a pot, and they got that. I drew a man with a face, and I put a bunch of hair around him. They were like, “Wait, he’s hairy.” I’m, like, Harry Potter. We plan our words. At all times.

Related Artists
BUSTA RHYMES
LIL BABY
SLUG
E-40



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I was in seventh grade, 1978. We were all in the schoolyard and Billy Morris, who was in the eighth grade, he wasn’t like a thug or a gangster, but he knew all of them. We thought he was going to try to make us smoke cigarettes and drink Night Train or Thunderbird, that 99-cent liquor. When we got over there, he had this tape recorder and said, “Check this out.” He pushed play and a beat came on and we heard this voice say, “When you keep the pep in your step you don’t stop ’til you get on the mountaintop/And when you reach the top, you reach the peak, that’s when you’ll hear Eddie Cheba speak.” That was the first time I heard hip-hop on tape.

Billy let me hold that tape for a weekend. He saw how bad I wanted it. I listened to it from Friday night all the way up to Sunday night at 10 o’clock. My moms was like, “Boy, you better get your butt in bed. You got school in the morning!”

Summer vacation comes, and now I’m seeing hip-hop at the park parties and the block parties. All that was probably going on all this time but it wasn’t until the tape that I paid attention to it. By having that tape with me for the weekend it became part of me. Now I’m open for that vibration. This was in Queens. I didn’t know anything about the Bronx. I couldn’t even leave the block!

My brother, who is three years older than me, comes home talking about getting a turntable because his friends were all getting turntables. So long story short, we didn’t sell weed. My brother and I were broke. All I had was this huge Marvel comic book collection. So my brother says, “Yo, we ain’t got no money, but D, you got a lot of comic books. We are going to do a comic books sale so we can buy some turntables and a microphone.”

Me and my brother buy the turntables. Every time he would leave, I would go to the basement and try to figure them out. It wasn’t until I heard Grandmaster Flash that I really got interested in D.J.ing. In Queens we called them Flash tapes. These were live performances that were going on in the Bronx, Harlem and Manhattan that were coming into Queens via cassette tapes being sold like records in every hood. Flash tapes, DJ HOLLYWOOD tapes, Zulu Nation tapes were all going around Queens.

Everybody is playing that “Rapper’s Delight” song. And the only thing I really paid attention to on that song was that Superman rhyme. It was so different from all the other raps. Because I was a good student, I listened to “Rapper’s Delight” three times and learned it from start to end.

My brother brings home a record called “Superappin’” by Grandmaster Flash, the guy from the tape who had these Furious Five M.C.s. It changed my life because it came on with so much power. “It was a party night everybody was breaking/The highs were screamin’ and the bass was shakin’/And it won’t be long ’til everybody knowin’ that Flash was on the beat box!” It was so different from “Rapper’s Delight.” It resonated with my youthful rebellious nature. That was the day Darryl McDaniels became Easy D.

I think because I was into comic books I understood the alter ego thing. Melvin Glover is Melle Mel. Mohandas Dewese is Kool Moe Dee. They had these alter egos so I knew I could play into that.

The ones that made me want to get on the mic, of course it was Melle Mel and KOOL MOE DEE. But the artists that changed my life was DJ Charlie Chase, DJ Tony Tone, and the Cold Crush Four who were Grandmaster Caz, JDL, Easy A.D. and the Almighty Kay Gee. They are the greatest group in hip-hop that a lot of people don’t know about. They kept it raw on the M.C. performance thing. I changed my name to DMC because of GMC, Grandmaster Caz.

“Rapper’s Delight” and “The Breaks” were cool. But the greatest period in hip-hop is the time before recorded rap. It was a live tape of the Fantastic Five vs. the Cold Crush Four at Harlem World that changed what I thought about rapping. They was playing Billy Squier’s “Big Beat,” they were taking Spoonie Gee’s “Love Rap,” and they were making routines out of them! They were flipping everything that had been done and taking it to another level. That made me say, wow, you can be a rock star with this. The attitude they had reminded me of AC/DC or Iron Maiden mixed in with George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic and James Brown.

For me, I took real vocal inspiration from Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant and Mick Jagger. Especially Mick because Freddie was usually very melodic. He could do opera, but Mick was different, raw. I’m the king of rock. I didn’t want to be the king of rap. All I cared about was comic books. Black music was in my house, but I saw it as my mother’s and father’s music back then. It was 30-, 40- and 50-year-olds. They are listening to all this great Black music by people like Aretha and James Brown. I didn’t get it as a kid, but with ’70s rock radio there was a station in New York City called 770 WABC. Harry Harrison and Dan Ingram, they would play James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Aretha Franklin. But they also played Harry Chapin, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, the Stones and Joni Mitchell.

So the reason why I love rock more is not only the voices were stronger, louder and powerful and they looked like superheroes, the drums and the guitars were stronger and louder. It was like the Incredible Hulk to me. So the confidence that I had was like, “OK, I may not be as eloquent in words as Moe Dee and the rest of the Treacherous Three. But if I rock this mic like I’m a member of the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin? If I bring that persona to hip-hop?” Man … it worked. Chuck D said it: Run-DMC showed hip-hop could be done on rock star levels. That’s why I said, “I’m the king of rock/there is none higher!”

Bonus
DMC ON PUBLIC ENEMY

Related Artists
DJ HOLLYWOOD
LL COOL J
BUSTA RHYMES
BIG BOI


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I started D.J.ing in 1982. I went to college in ’84. I was on the microphone then. I was doing all the parties in North Louisiana, Grambling State University. But when I graduated and I came home, I started D.J.ing the high school dances. I used to bring local rappers in, but they used to come in cussing so much I couldn’t really put them on the mic because we at a high school dance. So we started making up certain dances after that. When I saw somebody do something, I’d just name it.

A friend of mine named Tyrone Jones had did a slide dance one time, we was at Grambling State University during the homecoming. So when I went back to New Orleans, I started doing the dance and then I just put my name on it. I started saying “do the Jubilee, do the Jubilee.” Then the next week, two other guys in the St. Thomas named Chris and Beanhead, they came and did the Beenie Weenie.

So now every week, somebody come with a different dance. We got different areas bringing up different dances. You got the Magnolia came with the Eddie Bow, the Calliope Projects came with the Jerk, and the St. Thomas came with the Jubilee All, the KC, the Law Law, the Eldon Delloyd, the Sissy Leroy, the Sissy Chris. So we had multiple dances that’s going on every week, and that what’s made my high school dances the livest high school dances during the summertime.

So after that one day I just start making up a rhyme to it. “Stop, pause, stand up tall/Yeah, do the Jubilee, all/Do the Jubilee, all.” And next week, “Stop, pause, pass the towel/Yeah, and do the Eddie Bow.” And before you know it, I had like 26, 27 dances. I was forced to try to get it on an album because when I recorded in the club live, a friend of mine who was another D.J. started selling the tape. He got $30!

That’s when DJ Jubilee was born. When I did “Jubilee All” and I dropped the tape, we put out 500 tapes in the stores, they all left the stores in five minutes. People started calling back, “Man, you got more?” So that took me away from the D.J.ing to the music business.

For bounce, there’s the originators: you got TT Tucker, D.J. Jimi, Everlasting Hitman, Pimp Daddy. Those was the rappers in the foundation of our music. When I changed the whole game from rapping to dancing, then you had multiple artists that came after me — Choppa, Hot Boy Ronald, Big Freedia, Katey Red.

When I started saying, “Back that thang up, back that thang up,” I didn’t know that that was going to take off like it did. “Get Ready, Ready!” was already hot when my “Back That Thang Up” came out. You know how girls started bending over and then walking up back into you?

Once I hit that chorus line — “First ya wiggle ya leg, cause ya ’bout to get rough/Won’t ya bend it on over/Now back that thang up, back that thang up” — that really influenced the whole city. Women started shaking it even more. But the best part about my stuff there? All of it was made up in the street at a block party. It was made up at a high school dance.

I signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Tommy Boy — 1998, I was hot, they flew me down to Miami, I did the Impact Convention, $100,000 signing bonus. It was supposed to be a seven-album deal, $3 million. I still got the contract. But when I came back a couple of months later, they changed their phone numbers on us. I’m still kind of like puzzled how it happened. I dropped the song in ’98. I was hot all the way through ’98.

When ’99 came around, somebody said Juvenile got a song called “Back That Thang Up.” I didn’t hear it at first, but a kid at the high school played for me. He was shooting a video at City Park in New Orleans, so I went to the video shoot. He had a little rhyme to it and that catch phrase, “back that thang up,” he did it a little different. We went to court. We tried to prove copyright infringement, but they didn’t see it that way. I lost the lawsuit. But I think I really influenced it because he knew my song was the hottest.

His blew up, took off. If you ever noticed, he says, “Cash Money Records taking over for the ’99 and the 2000.” Well, I dropped this in January ’98. But years passed by, we’re still friends today. We still do concerts today. We’re all grown. That was supposed to be my time for me to blow up, to make all my money. But I guess God didn’t plan it that way.

Related Artists
LIL WAYNE
UNCLE LUKE
DJ HOLLYWOOD


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My first memory of hip-hop was when my older brother brought home the LL COOL J “Radio” tape. I remember him coming in the house and he threw the tape on the bed and was like, “You don’t know nothing about this.” And I put the tape into the radio and I never took it out. Never took it out, you know what I’m saying? I was like 12, 13. That’s what made me start writing my own raps, because I wanted to learn LL Cool J’s songs. I loved “You’ll Rock.” I still bump that to this day. The beat was hard, the lyrical flow — LL was before his time on that.

So I started writing down his lyrics and I saw the blueprint on how to write a rhyme. I wrote my own one day and I never stopped. All the songs I liked that I wanted to learn, I would write the lyrics down. I liked the continuous flow, like Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie, Dana Dane and Slick Rick. We never liked when rappers would flow and they would pause and then they would go back.

The Bone Thugs style developed by just basically being in cyphers together. We would smoke weed either in my mother’s basement or at whoever’s house we was at, and we’d just start rhyming, working on our harmonies and everything. We knew each other and we knew we could rhyme but when the other four would say the ad-libs, it would sound like we was harmonizing. It’s nothing we did on purpose — we just started doing it and that was our style one day. We didn’t even know what we had until we would rap for people and they’d be like, “Y’all sound like the rapping Temptations or something.” Then when we got with Eazy-E, he would tell us, “This style is different. Y’all singing like singers, too.”

Before hip-hop, I was a Michael Jackson fanatic. I was a New Edition fanatic. R&B, that’s all my parents played. So I know about all the old-school R&B like the Isley Brothers. We just started mixing in some of those flows. If you listen to “1st of tha Month” and “Days of Our Livez,” we just started picking old-school songs and putting our harmonies to it.

Singers liked what we were doing. When our management got a call about Mariah Carey wanting to do a record with us, at the time, we didn’t even really understand how big Mariah Carey was. We knew of her, but we were so wrapped up in our newfound fame, we were just in our own little world. So, like, we almost didn’t even go. We was on the plane contemplating, about to get off the plane, but something just made us stay on the plane.

When we got there, she said basically she loved our style. She loved our flow, how different it was. I’m glad we didn’t get off the plane.

We also got love from Bobby Womack when he was alive. I got a chance to meet his daughters and they told me, “Yo, my father loved y’all music. He played y’all music all the time. He turned us on to y’all.” That really shocked me. I was like, Wow, the O.G. It made me feel good because I came up loving his music. It was cool to tell my parents, like, “Hey, guess who listens to Bone? Bobby Womack.” My pops was like, “What?!’” He loved that.

Bonus
KRAYZIE BONE ON KURTIS BLOW

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FABO
TRIPPIE REDD
LL COOL J
PROJECT PAT


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

When I was young, I was immersing myself in the music, but I don’t actually want to become an M.C. until “Microphone Fiend.” And this is after I fall in love with the Juice Crew — Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane became huge influences on me. I’m writing rhymes at this time. The “Microphone Fiend” video comes on “Rap City,” and that’s when I decide I really want to be a rapper, ’cause this is the coolest I’ve ever seen in my life, and I really want to be seen as this cool.

You don’t really start hearing Houston hip-hop until KTSU starts playing it. That’s the radio station for Texas Southern University. There were guys like R.P. Cola, Billy Dee, these were the guys that were actually in the clubs having freestyle battles. Around that same time as Akshen, but that’s still very under the radar. “Another Head Put to Rest,” that’s not playing on the radio. It’s too much cursing. You hear “Car Freak” and stuff like that, but it really doesn’t come together until the Geto Boys “Balls and My Word.” That’s when the idea of making music and putting it out was not as far-fetched as it seemed.

I start writing about ’88. Juice Crew, Rakim, that’s the technical level at which I’m aspiring to operate. The use of metaphors, manipulating the English language, rhyming mid-word, putting together as many similar-sounding words as possible. And I feel like I should be pretty good at it because I’m pretty good at school, right? I make really good grades in English. I know more words than most of my friends. I should be able to figure out how to incorporate some of that into rhymes. I tried it initially, it was terrible. Like would’ve had to literally sit down and get a dictionary. And people don’t really want to do that.

A lot of this realization is Pimp’s influence on me. He was like, man, this gotta jam. People gotta be able to see theyself when they see you and hear theyself when they hear you. If you want to be good on a technical level and compare your rhymes to rocket ships and cellular biology or molecular biology or whatever, that’s cool. But at the end of the day, people gotta dance to that .

When we first started putting out music, I say there might have been 50 rappers in all of Houston at the time. But when we first went to New York in ’92 to sign with Jive, the first three white people we met in New York were rappers. Like the bellman: “So what are you guys doing here? You rap? Oh man, I’m a rapper!” Pizza guy: “You’re here to sign a record deal? Put me on, I’m a rapper.” The driver the next day: “You guys rap, I guess? You’re going to the Jive building. I do a little something-something.” And all of these guys white! The weed guy was like, “You guys are rappers? I rap too.” And he was white as well.

In the earliest years of my career, I wanted to try to vocalize how hard I felt I was and how tough I felt I was. I eventually realized it was not about being the hardest, it was really about being just hard enough and being able to be enough of what was needed in that room at that time.

So if I’m in a room with a bunch of Ruthless Records , there’s a certain way I gotta move and carry myself, but eventually when I get to the mic, everybody understands who we are. Same thing would happen if I would’ve ended up in a room with Q-Tip and Busta in ’92. There’s certain assumptions that people are gonna draw about each other. And when I actually show my talent, that’s the unifying point.

I was fascinated by wordplay and that was the dominant style of music coming from the East Coast. But then I’m also from a very small town. There’s a lot of gangster going on in my town. Crack is coming into the city. And so I know that if I rap, I also have to be a reflection of that.

At one point I hear this song, Volume 10’s “Pistolgrip-Pump,” which sonically sounds nothing like us, much less anything at the time. The beat was dope. Then I hit the hook and I’m like, wait a minute, that’s me. It’s from one of my lines in “Pocket Full of Stones.” I never asked for a dime. I didn’t think that rappers charged other rappers. When I heard it, I was more like, damn, they know my on the West Coast! And then he gets on another record and is like, “‘Pistolgrip’ was a hit!/UGK, I’d like to say what’s up.” I’m like, this is crazy!

We met Biggie in ’94. We’re on promo with Jive Records, and this is literally within three to five days of Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear” going gold. So we’re there, Craig’s there, Big’s there, and everybody’s really fawning over Craig Mack. But obviously we wanted to meet Biggie.

We go over and we introduce ourselves and he’s like, “I know who y’all are. Y’all are on the ‘Menace’ soundtrack. Y’all got the ‘Pockets’ joint — I was out there with Eiht, I told him y’all got the best record on the soundtrack.”

We were very flattered and taken aback at that. And keep in mind, this is when we’re in possession of the bootleg from Biggie, but I’m trying not to allude to that. I don’t know how he might receive it.

We had weed, we offered to smoke with him. So we go out to the car to smoke and I offer him the front seat and he’s like, nah, I’m gonna sit in the back if that’s OK. And he never closes the door on the car. I’m trying to hotbox, right? I’m trying to get the doors closed, get the windows up, but he’s not going for it. And come to find out, ’cause he didn’t really know us like that, he didn’t want to sit in the front seat ’cause he didn’t want dudes he didn’t know behind him. And he needed the door open because he would need a little bit of a head start if he needed to make a quick getaway.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Hip-hop was always around me at a very young age. I had a big family that all lived together and my aunt loved LL COOL J — like, looooved. She always played his music around the house and went to every concert when he came to Philadelphia.

The neighborhood we lived in always had block parties with D.J.s in the summertime, ’84, ’85. Meredith Street — they’ve since torn them down, but we used to call it “down bottom,” 46th Street. You’re kind of in your own world when you live in the projects. Everybody knows everybody. So it’s a celebration of the summer and food and culture. But at the same time, it was not always the safest.

The music was full on Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Fresh Prince — he wasn’t Will Smith then, he was just Fresh Prince. Along with tons of soul music. My biological father is a D.J., so there was music on that side as well.

A lot of the reason I went into hip-hop was the females. What I saw in them was women who were holding their own up against the boys, but still celebrating their femininity. MC Lyte’s “Cappucino” — I can totally remember the video. What was I, 10? I thought she was so damn fly. She had this long black coat on, but then her hair was stacked and shaved in the back. I wanted to get my hair cut like hers.

I always sang and I would write poems. But it wasn’t really until ABC came out — Another Bad Creation — when I was like, I want to start rapping. I formed a little girl’s group then — DGP, Dope Girl Posse — and we would do a lot of their songs, En Vogue, Color Me Badd. We did every talent show in Philly.

But I didn’t really start getting real serious until I got to high school, and I was very much a battle rapper. I was the girl who loved to get in a cypher. I started listening more to Lil’ Kim, Biggie, and my sound switched up. Philly is definitely different. We were known for being battle rappers, but a lot of Philly style is kind of more backpack and I just didn’t gravitate towards that.

It was fast and punchy, go-for-the-jugular. Because I used to battle rap against dudes all the time, I would just go at it and hurt their egos. It was basically just talking . I always had stuff in the chamber. It’s very easy battling high school boys, ego-wise. It’s literally the truth: “You’re broke and you live with your mom.” Talk about their size, and then you’re done.

It was always important for me just to be good — not good for a girl. I looked at those cyphers as honing my skills. I never turned one down. I went to Martin Luther King High School, and I’d cut and have like two or three lunches just to battle people. In the cafeteria, by the locker, the back stairs, whatever. On the weekends, South Street, there would just be cyphers on the corner. My full name was pretty much “Eve, That Girl With the Blonde Hair That Can Rap.”

Once I stepped in the studio I realized what a song was. We used to work with this one producer, Marv, who was really good at structure. I just wanted to do 24 bars and he was like, Bro, that’s not a song — you need a hook. We paid him when we could. Maybe bring him a bag of weed or something.

My first deal was with Dr. Dre. I auditioned for his A&R at the time, Mike Lynn. My managers were like, we’re going to put this beat on and you just rap. And I did. He literally called Dre right after I was finished, like, Yo, I think we found our girl.

When I was signed to Dre, one of his producers who I did my demo with was like, Yo, you have to meet this kid DMX. This was way before I knew what Ruff Ryders was. It just so happened we were under the same umbrella of Interscope. And after Dre dropped me, Jimmy Iovine said I’d be great with Ruff Ryders.

I just wasn’t happy waiting in the wings. I started getting on Dre’s nerves. They didn’t know the direction to put me in, but I’m very happy I got dropped, because once I got with Ruff Ryders, it was my boot camp. I thought I knew how to write a song — not really. I was told to slow down my flow. I needed to be humbled, and being dropped will do that. That being said, I went on to make some of my greatest records — the song I won a Grammy for — with Dr. Dre. That was when I knew who I was, though.

I had a lot of opinions about how I thought I should sound. A lot of my ideas got shot down. The music industry was trying to put me in a box — the box inside the box inside the box. Luckily, I got to hang out with and look up to people like Missy Elliott and Trina and Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah, who became a big blueprint for how I wanted my career to go, coming from hip-hop, but also being able to transcend.

I was a huge No Doubt fan — like, huuuge. I loved Gwen Stefani and nobody understood what I was saying when I wanted to do the song with her. People looked at me like I was crazy. But we’re the same in the sense that we’re girly girls who are also tomboys — the girl with the boys, because I was that. I knew she’d want to hang out with the girls because she’s always with boys. We just clicked.

Now I love Leikeli47, Doja Cat — she’s so freaking dope. Her lyrics are amazing. Coi Leray. Latto is lyrically great. I love Megan, CARDI, Nicki. I love the fact that there’s so many women that I can actually name. There were years when I would be like: Where. Are. The Women? It’d be the one or the two. Finally, there is an actual landscape. I love it.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

This D.J. on the radio named Jimmy G, that was the first time I ever heard rap on the radio. He would put the instrumental on and be like, “One day of victory, one day of defeat/Got to learn to take the bitter with the sweet.” When you look back on it, he was rapping, before “Rapper’s Delight.”

He would play Sugarhill Gang and T La Rock and Divine Sounds and Cold Crush Brothers and Furious Five. I was a member of a record pool, so I started getting these records. I would book the artist and have them come down on PEOPLExpress and perform at my teen discos and clubs. Mantronix, Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde. Jazzy Jay, that was his first flight ever. RUN-DMC, I used to bring them down, pay them 1,200 bucks.

When I brought 2 Live Crew down — that was a California crew then — I wasn’t interested in being no record executive. Nobody did hip-hop in the South, so I decided, you know, I don’t take no for an answer, I’ll do it myself. I was interning at the record station, so when the D.J. was in the back snorting cocaine, I would be in there playing the records on the radio, and at the same time playing my commercials for free.

My unique style of D.J.ing was talking on the mic, getting the crowd hype, doing all the chants. So they were like, man, you need to come and be in the group. The first song was “Throw the D.” It was a dance that we created in the party. That was the first Miami bass song.

But to me, Original Concept “Can You Feel It?” and T La Rock “It’s Yours,” those were bass records. “It’s Yours” is the first bass record in my opinion. It had everything that a D.J. from Miami wanted in a record. It was slow, but it had the booming bass that everybody played at the party.

In the beginning nobody really latched on, it was like foreign to everybody. The guys from Orlando and Jacksonville started copying what we were doing. The “Dazzey Duks” guys. This other record label out of Fort Lauderdale did songs around the same time we were doing it, that’s where MC Shy D was. And then you had Lil Jon start doing bass, the R&B version of it. And then the guys in Atlanta started doing it, Kizzy Rock and DJ Smurf.

People don’t realize there was no hip-hop in the South. Zero. No Texas, no Georgia, no Memphis, no nothing. I would go do shows in Atlanta, and they would have New York D.J.s on their radio. And so I tell people I created hip-hop in the South. People have a tendency of trying to put me in a box of just Miami. No, I inspired everybody. Tell me who was before us?

And I inspired people to be independent, too. You had Master P with “Ice Cream Man” and I tried to sign him up and he said, no, I want to do what you doing. And I was like, I respect that. I tried to go to Oakland and sign up TOO SHORT, and he was selling out the trunk his car like me. He was like, no, I’m doing it on my own, and I respected it.

Bonus
‘BANNED IN THE U.S.A.’

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

In 2003, I wrote a book report in middle school that was about hip-hop. That’s as real as it gets, man. From a middle-school me: “Hip-hop to me is an art form, a style, a genre, an influence and a lifestyle. It’s a different type of music style that does not sound like any other type of music. It’s like a baggy, nice, shiny type of clothing.”

I’m walking the beach right now, and I’ve also got an article that I tore out of XXL magazine in 2005, about when LIL WAYNE performed at Club Speed, Dec. 19, 2004. It’s hilarious because you’re talking about 500-plus attendees. Now obviously Wayne can do stadiums. That’s my early motivation. Ain’t it crazy later I made the XXL freshmen list? These papers I’ve saved have been through fires. It’s very, very personal to me.

GUCCI MANE, Lil Wayne, you know, they set the bar. They set the bar still to this day. It was so much inspiration out here in the Bay, too, from E-40, TOO SHORT, Mistah F.A.B., Turf Talk, Keak da Sneak, listening to 106 , listening to Wild 94.9. I feel like I really seen it from a unique perspective.

You’ve got to realize, there was a time where I was the only one doing what I was doing. I was outside at a time when people were saying music was dead, and I was still pushing. It hurt my heart when Nas said hip-hop was dead, and I made it my mission to make sure hip-hop stayed alive. This was before the iPhone.

Just hearing my mom and my dad say they’re proud of me, knowing they have seen me do my thing independently, unsigned. It’s 40, Short, Master P and myself, Brandon McCartney. We did the Jive Records thing with the Pack. I’ve been doing my own thing ever since. I’ve been managing Lil B.

Soulja Boy is a real legend and an inspiration, a pioneer with the music, early on YouTube. He was really at the anime store back then, you know what I’m saying? He don’t get no credit for that. It’s a lot of hype around anime now, but he was going to the store early.

I always looked at myself as giving out swag. I say that humbly. There’s people that have the fire that I see. I appreciate Lil Yachty — he was always holding it down and then taking his career to a whole ’nother level, showing me what’s possible, doing Sprite deals. Future, Tyler, the Creator. Chief Keef — I was changing the game with the music video stuff on YouTube and then he took it the next level. Now I could be influenced off Playboi Carti, you know what I’m saying? And Young Thug took it to the next level.

I’ve still got a lot of homework to do with this hip-hop, right? I need to do my homework on De La Soul. I need to do my homework on Slum Village. I’ve got to really do my Public Enemy homework, you know? What’s the gentleman’s name — MC Serch and his group? A little bit of Beastie Boys homework. It’s so many beautiful people that’s added to this genre and to the culture.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

The beginnings of what hip-hop is was called non-syncopated rap, meaning that they had a lot of rap, but people weren’t doing it to the track. They had a jazz beat going or some kind of miscellaneous beat that didn’t drive the words. Whatever they were talking about, it had to be really, really tight and interesting, or nobody wouldn’t listen to it. So some of these cats was like the Last Poets, Rudy Ray Moore, Blowfly, Jocko Henderson, Pigmeat Markham, Oscar Brown Jr., Hank Spann. A turntable wasn’t involved.

When the turntable became involved is basically where I step in and started adding the lyrics to a record. I got my first job in ’71. Once I got the mixer with the headphones, it changed the game.

Records back in the day, there was an A section, a B section and a break. I’m the voice. And then I get my voice out right in time for the guy that starts singing. As long as I’m complementing the music, I’m in it. Not only did you get the great record, but you got the great introduction to the record as it came on, you know?

I was a singer before this all happened. I began to sing everything I said — “If I was snow, I would be cold/If I was a jug of wine, I would be old” — and that’s what made it harmonious.

I didn’t call it rapping. I was just entertaining. It was new, it was fresh. A lot of people was like, “Yo, could somebody tell this to shut up. Let the record play!” I went through the wire with this. It wasn’t all sweet. But I managed to stand my ground.

After the blackout in ’77, everybody and they mama had some equipment — microphones and turntables and stuff — and they all started to get into the game. I had the blueprint of what a person should be doing, and mostly everybody, they were sounding just like me. A lot of the guys were using my same lines to get their thing on, you know what I mean?

I’m the creator of the style. I’m the creator of the colorful words over music to make people enjoy themselves. Because the first raps was about enjoying yourself. Then it got political and then it got to your neighborhood, then it got to the stickup man and then it got to the sexy, all that came after. But at the beginning, it was basically just to have a good time.

I saw people putting out records, but what they’re doing is slightly different. But I had a big head. Like, get out the way — this is Hollywood!

I was high. I was a lunatic for a while. When you high, you don’t give a about nothing. And that’s how I got left behind. ’Cause I was fired up and then being fired up inside my head, like there’s nothing better than me. I’m not ashamed. That’s what happened and that’s how it went.

I was high for a long time. I was high in the ’80s, too. I was on cocaine at first and then I moved to the crack. I can’t blame what happened on anybody other than me. Don’t have a soul in the world that I can say, man, y’all didn’t do me right, y’all didn’t look out for me. And I know plenty of people that could have, plenty of people that should have.

I didn’t make the money that they’re making now, but at the time I was making more money than anybody. I had limousines, I had my own Cadillac. I was doing very well, but I was getting high at the same time, so I was spending my money frivolously.

Everything that I ever owned, it just went. I lost the apartment, so all the stuff that I accumulated there is gone. And I did that over and over and over.

The whole 50 years of hip-hop that they’re promoting right now, it’s not about dudes from where I’m at. It’s for dudes from the ’80s. I look around, man, there’s 7,000 legends. Where’d they come from? How? What did you do to be a legend? This little period of 50 years of hip-hop and they’re honoring it, if it goes past and I get nothing out of it, then I don’t know what to do from there.

I can’t beat myself up. I got clean toward the ’90s. All I want to do is find me a spot where they let me play. I’m trying to see right now how I can change my life from here. The whining, I ain’t never do that. Me cracking myself over the head, I’m not going to do that. I’m sorry I didn’t catch on, but I mean, it wasn’t no thing to me. I really didn’t have that period where I was so sad that it wasn’t me. Because I’m in all of them. I’m in their DNA.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

When I first became aware of “Rapper’s Delight,” it was my dad’s music. It was him playing it in his car, right next to Earth, Wind & Fire. I remember it reminding me a little bit of “Sesame Street.” It wasn’t until RUN-DMC happened that I was like, this is not my dad’s music. I think he was not into it, maybe? And that made me go, oh, you don’t like that? I love it.

Melle Mel, I love him to death. He’s probably my first favorite rapper. But he was an old man to me. Run-DMC, even though they were older than me, it didn’t have that feeling. These are teenagers yelling at me. Run-DMC made me start buying records. They pushed me to become a full-time 11-year-old advocate in South Minneapolis.

By ’88, the golden year when all the great records came out, I had a crate of records, really good ones. I knew how to mix, so I was able to make blend tapes for people at school. Also in ’88, I started rapping in talent shows, but not because I wanted to be a rapper. It was just more eyes on me. I would’ve been a breakdancer. I would’ve been a backup dancer for you.

There was an older rapper, Spawn, who wanted me to be his D.J. At one point, he was like, Hey, you still rap? Why don’t you do a song with me instead of just being the D.J.? The first song that I rapped on with him was very Das EFX-like. He did the production, very Beatnuts-influenced. And I’m rapping iggity piggity diggitys. I had not found my voice yet. I was still in that abyss of I can do iggitys, I can do a high voice like Sadat X, I know how to write straightforward like ICE CUBE. I could do my version of all these people that I loved. It’s so far removed from what I eventually became known for.

Me and Spawn would show up at battles. I was a little younger. I was a little feistier. People saw me as a target back then. I didn’t care if I won, which is the most dangerous kind of battle because I will say some that was super mean or harsh or degrading, and didn’t even care if it rhymed. So I was also creating adversaries, and that played as much of a role as reinforcing to me that I’m supposed to do this as any validation from the audience.

I worked retail at the time. And so I was as tapped in as anybody in the city could be. I was looking at Rawkus, they had some money behind it that they didn’t ever talk about. Seeing L.A. and what was happening with Freestyle Fellowship and that scene there, all amazing artists, knowing they get a lot of attention. They’re critical darlings.

I looked at all this like, y’all don’t know what real independence is. We’re here in Minneapolis where nobody’s checking for it. The only thing more independent than us is a rapper in Des Moines. Like, I would sleep on your couch in Dallas in order to show up the next day and rap for 20 minutes in the clothes that I slept in the night before. I really didn’t give a .

It gave me a freedom of nobody’s really listening, so I can take risks maybe that I wouldn’t be able to take if I was signed to Tommy Boy. I’m glad I said Tommy Boy, because that brings me to De La, who were a huge influence on the type of risks that I wanted to take.

I feel like I always kind of gravitated towards the people who were like, how do I either intentionally stand out or how do I express myself how I want to and still sound good?

Early on, when a rap crew would drop an album and all my friends would be like, oh my God, Grand Puba is so good, I would be like, what? No, Sadat X is the one. KOOL KEITH was the one in Ultramag. Everybody else was kinda like, oh, Ced Gee, he’s really rapping. What is Kool Keith talking about? I don’t care what he’s talking about — listen to him. Zev Love X, the style that he wrote with. De La, the style that they wrote with, specifically Posdnuos, but also Trugoy. I love A Tribe Called Quest. What I liked about Q-Tip’s style was that he would just figure out a way to say it that nobody’s ever said it like that before.

The emotional storytelling I ended up doing had less to do with an audience and more to do with what kind of life experience I was trying to have. I was heavily under the influence of the romanticism of people like Charles Bukowski. The drinkers and the tragedies. I wasn’t much for parties, but I liked caves. I liked dark spaces with a couple of people getting wasted, talking until the sun comes up, and then waking up the next day and not remembering what we did. I was fueled by waking up and not knowing where I was. It was a blurry couple of years, but it was very impactful because it was at the same time that my career was starting to do things.

People were validating the that I was writing, and they were saying things to me not about my rapping, not about the songs, but about the actual words. All of this is feeding into my ego, and so I leaned into it because of how good it felt. And because, you know, let’s keep it simple, whatever traumas I had as a child needed to be dealt with. This was my self-medication for it. I didn’t know yet that the easiest colors to paint with are the darker colors.

It would’ve been this way if I had been a plumber, though. I would’ve been a messy plumber.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

in these 50 years of hip hop articles

Atmosphere pretty much did the whole emo rap when it wasn’t cool

My Uncle Ronnie had the “Breakin’” soundtrack. I was, like, 11 years old, and he played me Ice-T’s “Reckless” before I’d seen the movie. Uncle Ronnie used to breakdance and he taught me a little bit, showing me some moves. From that moment I knew there was nothing else — no other kind of music that I would ever like again — aside from rap.

We used to bounce back and forth from Missouri, and shortly after that we moved to Detroit, and we were staying at my Grandma Nan’s house. I had a tape player, and I found WJLB. There was this D.J. named the Wizard. He would play from, like, 10 to 11. I would just hit record on my tape and I’d go to sleep and get up for school to see what I got: “Go See the Doctor,” KOOL MOE DEE, UTFO. I just wanted everything — give me everything that rap has: RUN-DMC, Fat Boys, LL.

Every time LL dropped something it was, like, he was the best, no one’s touching him. LL Cool J was everything to everybody. You know, I always wanted a Kangol.

My first rap, I was 12-ish, when LL Cool J, “Bad,” came out. I would be, like, just walking around my Aunt Edna’s house, thinking of rhymes and writing thoughts down. It was a complete LL bite, but it was something that I dabbled in. I would be sitting in school sometimes and a line would hit me.

And then Run-DMC would drop a new album and you’d be, like, “This is the craziest I’ve ever heard.” “Yo, this is as good as rap can get, lyrically.” And then Rakim changed the way people thought about rap.

It just kept advancing to the next level. I was there to watch its conception and its growth. Everybody was trying to one-up each other. It went from rhyming one- or two-syllable words to rhyming four and five and six. Then Kool G Rap came along and he would rhyme seven, eight, nine, 10.

But I was a sponge. I would gravitate towards the compound-syllable rhyming, like the Juice Crew. Lord Finesse, to Kool G Rap, to Big Daddy Kane, to Masta Ace, Redman, Special Ed. I don’t even think I understood why I liked it. I had a couple of friends that had to point out to me how many syllables somebody was rhyming.

And then Treach from Naughty by Nature came along and he was doing all that, too. He was cool, too — his image and everything. I wanted to be him. When the first Naughty by Nature album dropped, that whole summer, I couldn’t write a rap. “I’ll never be that good; I should just quit.” I was so depressed, but that’s all I played for that summer. Proof thought Treach was the best rapper, too. Every time he would drop an album I would just be, like, Son of a bitch.

Nas, too. I remember The Source gave “Illmatic” five mics. I already knew I liked Nas from “Live at the Barbeque” with Main Source, because his verse on that is one of the most classic verses in hip-hop of all time. But I was, like, “Five mics, though? Let me see what this is.”

And when I put it on, “And be prosperous/though we live dangerous/Cops could just arrest me/Blamin’ us/We’re held like hostages.” He was going in and outside of the rhyme scheme, internal rhymes. That album had me in a slump, too. I know the album front to back.

There was three or four years, maybe, where I kind of dipped out of listening to rap. I was so on the grind in the underground. I didn’t have money to buy any tapes. Every dollar, every dime that I had went to either studio time or to buy Hailie diapers.

Tuesday night I would go to the Ebony Showcase on Seven Mile. Wednesday night would be Alvin’s. Friday night would be Saint Andrew’s. And then Saturday would be the Hip Hop Shop.

Proof was hosting open mics at the Hip Hop Shop, and they started having battles. The first one that I got in — it was actually the first battle there — I won. And then the second battle, I won it again. I realized maybe I should try to go out of state. So I would hop in the car with friends and drive down to Cincinnati for the Scribble Jam.

Back then, you had to go off the top of the head. If you didn’t you’d get booed offstage. So I learned from watching Proof that you can freestyle, but just have a couple lines in the back of your head, a couple of punchlines you know you want to use, and then freestyle around that.

Coming up in the battle scene was the greatest thing to happen to me because I knew what lines were going to get a reaction from the crowd. That’s what I would focus on. So when I got signed with Dre, I was trying to translate that to record, to get that reaction. I would picture the listener sitting there and what lines they might react to. I just used that as a formula. Like, “How you gonna breastfeed, Mom?/You ain’t got no tits.”

When the first Onyx album dropped, Sticky Fingaz was so great at saying that kind of : “I’m thinking about taking my own life/I might as well, except they might not sell weed in hell.” And Bizarre was really great at that. If we reacted to it, then we thought other people would, too. That shaped my whole career, you know?

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

A week ago, me & my brother went to Detroit to see the Hip Hop 50 tour. It was Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, KRS-1, EPMD, Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick.

We get downtown and it's completely packed. Apparently Ed Sheerhan is in town at Ford Field that night too. So I knew it was gonna be a ton of people out. While checking into the hotel, we found out that Kid Rock is also doing a show at Little Caesar's Arena. These 3 shows were with roughly 5 blocks of each other.

We walked up to the Fox Theatre for our show. And the scene was hilarious. We saw folks with MAGA hats and t-shirts showing bald eagles holding machine guns. And then groups of young women between 12-30. And then our show was black folks between 40-60. It was even wilder when they all let out at the same time and folks had some alcohol in them. But I didn't see any trouble pop off.

Apparently, Eminem showed up at Ed's show and did "Lose Yourself."

I gue$$ I under$tand why he would $how up and perform at an Ed $heerhan $how in$tead of appearing at a $how featuring $everal arti$t$ that in$pired him.

I assume our crowd would have been hyped for him to appear. But to be fair, I'm not from Detroit. I don't know how he would have been accepted by the crowd.

The most vivid memory of hip-hop that I have is my uncle Brod, he took me to the Fresh Fest when it came to the Greensboro Coliseum. This had to be like ’85, ’86. It was RUN-DMC, the Fat Boys and Whodini, and yeah, I think my fate was sealed after seeing that. My uncle bought me a Fat Boys T-shirt. I remember Run going back and forth across the stage, just the stage presence. Whodini — God, rest in peace, Ecstasy. He came out, he had the hat on, “Freaks Come Out At Night,” all of that. I remember just feeling that energy and being like, “Yeah, this is what I want to do.”

The biggest influence on how I rhymed was probably Big Daddy Kane. I always liked how Kane was. He was kind of every man, he could do it all. He could battle, he could talk to the ladies. He could be the mack, the cool pimp guy, whatever. He was smart. He would dance. He was the total package. And so my mic technique was definitely influenced by Kane, and that school of Kool G Rap, Rakim, that’s the cloth that I’m cut from in terms of that super precise flow. Sonic-wise, my biggest inspiration was A Tribe Called Quest. I wanted to rap like Kane, but I wanted our records to sound really lush and kind of beautiful, like a Tribe album, you know what I mean? That was kind of my M.O. and still is in a lot of ways, I think.

The hip-hop that I was raised on, a lot of it was Native Tongues. The Jungle Brothers, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST, De La Soul, and even Pete Rock and CL Smooth and Heavy D. There was always an element of singing of vocals in it. To me, it just felt like a natural extension of the records that I grew up listening to. I was born in ’78, so my mother, she always played R&B: Luther, Patti, Stevie. On our first album, “The Listening,” our first single, that’s me singing the hook.

If there was an album that was important to the way I worked, I would split the difference between two albums: “De La Soul Is Dead,” and “Death Certificate” by ICE CUBE. I mean, “Death Certificate,” that was a movie on wax. It was no surprise to me that Ice Cube was able to transition into being a director and screenwriter, because he was making movies on his records back then. “Death Certificate,” I mean, I played the words off that album. Nowadays, I think sampling-wise, it would kind of be impossible to make. Well, impossible to legally make. And “De La Soul Is Dead” for reasons that, I mean, are kind of obvious, I can’t say enough about just how much I love that album, how much it influenced me.

When we were coming out, this was ’01, ’02, peak Soulquarians era. So this is the Roots, it’s Slum Village, it’s Common, it’s Black Star. It’s what Rawkus was doing at that time. I was very adamant on, “Listen dude, we’re not competing against other artists in North Carolina or other artists in our city. We’re competing against ‘Fantastic, Vol. 2,’ we’re competing against ‘Like Water for Chocolate.’ We’re competing against ‘Black on Both Sides.’ If we ain’t got nothing that’s coming with this level of smoke, then we just need to leave this alone, because that’s what we’re up against.”

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NONAME
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Q-TIP


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

In the seventh grade, I met John Utsler, Shaggy’s older brother, and an original member of I.C.P. He showed me “Roxanne, Roxanne,” and all the battling they were doing. He put me up on Eazy-E. How was a seventh grader copping these vinyl records and where was he finding them at? There was no internet. It’s almost supernatural. Maybe he was listening to the Wizard on WJLB at night or something.

We would watch “Yo! MTV Raps” when it only came on for an hour. And we would also watch Channel 62, which is a local channel, and they had a show called “The New Dance Show” and they would spin local rappers’ videos. Really cheap-made local rapper videos, but they were our heroes: Awesome Dré, A.W.O.L., Detroit’s Most Wanted, Smiley, Prince Vince and the Hip Hop Force, Merciless Ameer, Kaos & Mystro, DJ Duncan Hines.

Awesome Dré’s “You Can’t Hold Me Back” album and “Straight Outta Compton,” they just lived in our CD player. It took our love of pro wrestling away, which had been our goal. But we couldn’t deny it no more, man. We wanted to do hip-hop. As far as flow, my three main guys were ICE CUBE, Awesome Dré and Esham. Now Eazy-E, I love Eazy-E’s voice, but Ice Cube on “Dope Man” is just a beast. He’s coming from the gut so hard.

Because people have called us horrorcore artists, I wanted to know about horror in hip-hop. My own personal investigation leads me to Houston, Texas, Prince Johnny C. That first GETO BOYS record was all normal except for this one song called “Assassins”: “My father was a priest, cold blooded he’s dead/Hypocrite, I caught him basin’, so I shot him in the head/Poured on the holy water, ‘Bless the dead’ is what I said/Then heard the demon screaming as his body bled.” Nobody was talking like that. What I do and what Esham did comes from Prince Johnny C’s original idea.

I used to have cassette cases full of tapes of local rappers. If I’d seen anything that was actually pressed up, I had to have it. So I walk into a store and there’s this guy Esham and he’s got an album out and two EPs. He’s rapping about the scariest I’ve ever heard. He’s rapping about the devil, 666, crucifix. It was insane. And he sounds like the devil, his voice.He became our biggest influence. The sky would turn red when we’d play his CDs.

We looked at Detroit, we saw Kid Rock riding in a tractor in his video. He had Too Short producing tracks on there. He was touring with Ice Cube. He was rapping about being from 32 Mile Road, which is way the out. It was unique, it was different. We’re like, wow, this kid’s way out, redneck-style, and he’s rapping. And then we’re looking at Esham coming out onstage in a coffin, rapping about the devil.

So we were like, this is what Detroit does — theatrics. Plus we’re huge wrestling fans. We put face paint on after our first EP. The way Kiss does it in rock, in rap who’s doing that, you know? It felt natural. It wasn’t awkward. And we’ve been doing it ever since.

Right from the rip, we did everything ourselves. We pressed our CDs up, we advertised ourselves. And we hired Esham and Kid Rock, the two biggest rappers in Detroit, to be on our first CD. We had Michigan on lock. And Toledo and parts of Ohio. I’m talking 3,000 people at a show. We couldn’t do in Pittsburgh if we went there, though.

I remember in ’95, Onyx and Das EFX were going on tour. We got on that tour somehow. We got booed off every night, sometimes violently. It was probably 400 people at every show that we went to. We got to Michigan, 2,200 people packed, sold out. Onyx came to us and was like … We went out last. It was three shows we did like that — Detroit, Flint and Toledo.

That was our first tour.

After ’95 we toured nonstop, but our experiences with touring with other rap groups are very minimal. For multiple reasons, but the Faygo is a main one. If they have their equipment up there, it’s gonna be all wet. Like, we’ve played with Snoop Dogg, but he’s had to go on first, which sucked, because people leave. But he ain’t gonna go on after we destroyed the stage with the Faygo.

In ’94, we got asked to be part of this big rap show in Toledo. It was Outkast, Coolio, a bunch more. We were so honored to be on a lineup like that. So we do the show and afterward the Outkast guys surround us and they’re like, you got your soda all over our . So we had to pay ’em money for cleaning and everything. People were mad at us and we weren’t trying to get nobody mad at us. We just wanted to do our thing.

You know, there’s a lot of reasons why we’re in this place we’re in. It’s a benefit because the Juggalos are the and very supportive. But people look at Juggalos like they’re not people. They say, the only ones that like your are the Juggalos. What are Juggalos? They’re people!

I would love the opportunity to get out on one of these hip-hop tours and perform for an audience that ain’t ours so people might say, man, they’re actually pretty good. One time we offered ICE CUBE $100,000 to spit a verse and he passed, and then years later he did it for free, out of respect. Ain’t that crazy?

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EMINEM
ICE CUBE
TRIPPIE REDD
KOOL KEITH



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I knew a lot of slick-talking dudes that would rhyme all the time. Everybody had a little rap somewhere. I remember Teena Marie, Blondie — Muhammad Ali was rapping. It was just the cool thing to do.

But it wasn’t until songs like “Buffalo Gals,” “More Bounce to the Ounce,” “8th Wonder,” “La Di Da Di” — these are the songs that started to really get me turned on to rap. Blowfly had a song called “Rapp Dirty,” and when we were in fifth grade my friend and I would wait till his mama left and we would just play “Rapp Dirty” and Prince songs like “Head.” The adults would try to make you go to bed when it was time to listen to those records.

I loved KRS-One. He had a lot of different styles, a lot of different techniques. And he had one of the coldest names ever when you broke it down: Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone. He was an in-your-face rapper who came with style and intelligence. “Criminal Minded,” “The Blueprint” — masterpieces. He’s just one of the best that ever blessed the mic.

My first group, the Stereo Crew, had a song with Epic Records that didn’t hit. I don’t know if we sold five of them. We got dropped after that single. There were local groups we looked up to that were way bigger: Uncle Jamm’s Army, L.A. Dream Team, the Wreckin’ Cru, King Tee, Ice-T, of course. Toddy Tee and Mix Master Spade, Joe Cooley, Rodney-O. They were all starting to make noise.

Me, Sir Jinx and K-Dee, or Kid Disaster, we was going around joining rap contests and battles. We could never get into the talent shows because they didn’t want rap music back then. It was a hobby. There was a little money from playing shows, but nothing to think that you could not have a regular job.

I went to a trade school called Phoenix Institute of Technology, in Phoenix, Ariz., and got a certificate in architectural drafting. I already had a hit record at the time — N.W.A had “Dope Man” out. Dre kept saying, “You sure you want to go to school?”

I got entrenched into the hip-hop community in Phoenix at the time. Artists would come through and perform at a place called the Celebrity Theater — Fat Boys, Doug E. Fresh, EPMD. They knew I had a hit record out, so they would let me kick it backstage.

I was going back and forth every other weekend because Southwest had a great deal — $50 for a one-way ticket. When I graduated, in September ’88, we was in the middle of making Eazy’s “Eazy-Duz-It” album.

This was dirty, underground, hardcore rap. Explicit lyrics. We all thought we would have records in the Rudy Ray Moore section, next to the Richard Pryor records. Who would play this? Who would make this mainstream? We were being told that we were fools for spending our money to make records that couldn’t get played on the radio. It was just a ridiculous notion. But Eazy didn’t care — he felt like if a hundred people played it, that was good enough.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(quick aside: several of these picks are features, and this is apparently a G Herbo song, so there's that)


DMX’s album when he had the fully red cover, with the blood everywhere — I had it on cassette. When I saw the picture, I got scared. I was a little kid. What’s the one where he was back and forth with different voices? “Damien!” I heard that and I said, “Is this the devil?”

To be honest with you, I used to be realistic with myself when I was young: “I already know I’m gonna die and go to jail, so who cares?” And then when I started doing music, it just worked really fast and it kind of changed all our lives.

We watched Chief Keef come up. I feel like the whole world watched Keef come up. We were all young, and it was crazy to see someone from our city become so big so quickly.

Once the music started picking up and people started paying attention, the spotlight was on Chicago. I feel like it made me take it seriously. It gave me some motivation — like, OK, maybe I don’t have to die, maybe I don’t have to go to jail.

Drake reached out — that happened super early. He reacted to “Kill ____” with Herb. I was probably only rapping for nine months, and then Drake started hitting me up and invited me to his show. I was a big LIL WAYNE fan, Gucci Mane fan, a big Drake fan.

When you just doing you, you never really think about how big it is getting or who’s copying it. I’ll explain the Chicago drill sound that the U.K. and New York is doing: It’s this thing that we used to do in Chicago called footworking — the footworking beats was heavy percussion, like with the ticks.

This producer from Chicago named DJ L, he used to make every beat sound like a footwork beat. And I used to scream at him like, “Dude, I don’t wanna rap on all footworking beats! Can you make different beats?” And he just couldn’t. He was our in-house producer, so we just used to be stuck rapping on these footworking type of beats. And the whole world just started doing it. It’s a Chicago thing.

I never really think about it like that, but every now and then, I think, we just started this in the closet. Social media definitely helped the drill movement, but when I look back at it, the we was doing was so crazy. We didn’t do a lot of thinking.

I think most Chicago artists didn’t reach their peak. Most of them passed away. It’s like crabs in the barrel. We Chicago people got trust issues — I always think somebody trying to get over on us. I don’t think we really understand the business that well. Then you feel vulnerable, like you don’t know enough. Atlanta or L.A. always have the older people that’s well seasoned on the business.

I always thought about the bigger picture, where I’m trying to go, you know what I’m saying? Since I started listening to Jay-Z, I was always like, what would Jay-Z do? That’s how I based my career.

Bonus
LIL BIBBY ON JUICE WRLD
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TRIPPIE REDD


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(another rare aside: in most cases I get why a certain song was picked, and I gotta imagine the artists had something/everything to do with them, AND I get this song acts as a clean break between teen and adult Earl, AANNDD I don't know why this bugs me...but I feel like his story in rap history is a few years before OR after this song...oh well!)


My best friend when I was like 4 or 5 years old, literally in a hip-hop movie-style fashion, came over to my house with a Rob Base tape. The only thing that makes that unique is that it happened in 2001 and not in 1988. It must have been his parents’.

By the way, a lot of people’s favorite flows from their faves right now is basic party-rocking flows from the ’80s. The ’80s is back. Like BabyTron — Detroit got the ’80s really right here in our face right now.

Before I went to Samoa, I was listening to Lupe, Hov, De La, Common, P, Dilla. Dilla as a rapper, I’m not gonna do the whole annoying thing right now, but that was a huge thing. Like, I spent a lot of time as a 12-year-old really locking in flow-wise. I’m always gonna fly the flag for the Cool Kids. I feel like Cool Kids and De La, if you squint, it’s a similar space. Now that De La is back on streaming, bro, I’ve been on it heavy. Rappers still can’t rap like that. Like, it’s too free, but structured. It has that impossibleness to it.

By the time of my first tape, I didn’t even have enough time to synthesize all of my influences. You know how Peter Parker first gets bit by the spider and his web is all over the place, he’s gotta get the suit? It was that. I’m finally at the point where I can even hold all of this at once, or be dexterous enough to move within all of it.

But when I was like 15, on my first tape, I was listening to EMINEM and Doom. Which is where everyone checks in with me at — everyone’s like, OK, Doom-Eminem guy. Everyone is mad because I don’t say, like, “hazardous” when I rap anymore. is really excited by just one-for-one-ing four-syllable words. It’s a good party rap trick. But that’s easy, you know what I mean?

A thing that has kept me healthy is never being xenophobic about the Brits. I’ve been listening to British rappers the whole time. I think you dust yourself if you don’t. They are really, really, really, really, really good at rapping. They got the freedom of like some dancehall, bro. A lot of where it will be hanging off the cliff’s edge of a beat. That’s what I love about them though — you can go to a new place if you let yourself go over there. It’s like jazz standards, bro. If you don’t have a valid U.K. flow, then you’re gonna get dusted.

Growing up, I feel like we were the first generation that was familiar with everything but, like, maybe don’t want to listen to it all day. But we’re finally at this point that I used to joke about like five years ago, where little kids don’t know Tupac and that’s not embarrassing. It’s supported.

Every generation of 19-, 20-year-olds is gonna come along and be like, what you guys just did, I don’t care about it. Maybe that’s like a natural kind of thing that happens as you stand up as a human being. But learning how to listen to Nas, learning how to listen to these things that even though you want to listen to LIL WAYNE all day, your older brother, your uncles are like, this is it right here — that’s important.

And I’m still down for that. From my own experience with committing these passages of song to my memory, I know the utility of being a historian so you can draw lines from that to the new thing and not be lost. And then most importantly not become jaded and not have a in-house fighting thing going on that’s yielded some pretty nasty .

I was part of that first generation that came on the internet and was like, this . And then old heads were like, what is y’all little talking about? And then having that butting-heads thing unnecessarily, because we gotta work together, you feel me? It’s like being in a house. If the adults only interacted with the adults and the children only interacted with the children, it doesn’t work.

You gotta be around kids. This is what I’m saying about the utility of the multigenerational aspect of this thing. The elders know what happened so they can inform the younger ones on, oh, if you like this, then you should check out this, this and this, so you can see the iterations that came before and you can do something different. And then the young people are here to teach the old people this new dance move.

If there’s one thing that comes through this article, I hope it’s this. I want to clarify for people that’s inspired by what I do. I feel like because of my disposition, the thing that I see some kids take away is like a mood and a vocal timbre. And it’s like, I went to the Samoa boys school, my whole was all up. Whatever weirdness everyone watched me go through was legitimately genuine for me. That is not a stylistic choice. I wish that I didn’t sound like that.

I hope that what they take away from me is be good at rapping. That’s the thing that I care about. I really don’t with being a tortured artist. Being tortured is not tight. Rapping hella good is tight. Pigeonholing me means you can just feign knowledge by being like, oh, he makes sad music. Bro, if you listen to my music, 70 percent of my music is about being better than you. I am a very competitive rapper.

I feel like I had the world put in my hands and I was like, what the is this right here? And so I don’t want you to copy that part. I’m saying if you ever get the world in your hands, be free.

Bonus
EARL SWEATSHIRT ON HIP-HOP TIMING
Related Artists
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LIL B
KOOL KEITH
CAM'RON



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I like that he talks about multi-generational, and he lives by it too with all the work he does with Alc, but damn the song featured on here came out eleven years ago. He's an old head by the old hip-hop standard.

The shit he said about UK rappers is 100% true. I used to front on the accent but dudes really bring a new approach that is worldly and valid.

It's funny one of the main points he wanted to make was about the way he sounds though. For real, his delivery makes me think he borderline slow or medicated to the Nth degree, even though he says some profound shit. If that really came from going to school in Samoa I guess we'll never know but that shit was jokes

I have mixed feelings on Uk rap because all those dudes have the same flow to me. I’m sure that isn’t the case but I find it repetitive and meh.. but I do like their production.

I can’t stop thinking about South Side when that rapper tried to fake a UK flow. He was able to copy that shit perfectly.. lol

I'd like to hear this with my British ears lol

I'm not really a big fan of his music, mostly because of his delivery, but I loved what he had to say here. I'm still hoping that one day his music clicks for me.

When I was 15, I was trying to get my boy Johnny to come to police brutality rallies. I was like, man, you can rap and it’s gonna be a lot of people there. And he would be like, I’m only gonna do it if you rap, too.

Often what I was doing was just stealing Schoolly D stuff because nobody knew it. In school, pounding on the table and rapping, I was also doing theater. Somebody came up with the idea like, let’s do our own version of “West Side Story,” but we’re at East Oakland, so let’s call it “East Side Story” and let’s make it all rap. So that was my first writing.

I spoke at a rally at U.C. Berkeley, and this dude Pizo the Beat Fixer who was TOO SHORT’s D.J. for a while comes up to me and says, “Hey man, do you rap, ’cause that political could hit right now.” I was like, yeah, matter of fact, I do. He put out an album that was me, Spice 1 and a dude named Mocedes who was known at the time because he was on Tony! Toni! Toné! song where he says, “Mocedes, the mellow.” Later on, he got known as Mopreme, Tupac’s stepbrother.

Here’s the thing with every local artist, even to this day — we’re all taught that we aren’t . I remember I was in junior high when Too Short got to open up on the Fresh Fest. And people were talking about, oh, how they let him on, blah, blah, blah, this and that. It wasn’t until MC Hammer and Digital Underground where people started being like, oh, you know, this is something local but other people like it. You have this little town mentality. And so when we had the Coup, it took until we could show that people other places liked us to where people claim you. Because everybody wants to be connected to something important.

I mean, there was definitely a sense of teamwork happening, people sharing contacts, people wanting shows to happen. I do have to say this for the 20-year-olds that are reading, you’re not like, reposting each other’s things. You show up at each other’s thing. You’re in each other’s videos. E-40’s uncle was distributing most everybody’s stuff. At one point, my manager was Chaz Hayes, and he was managing us, Spice 1, E-40, Master P and some of the members of Tony! Toni! Toné!

“Soul Beat” on TV was the way that you also heard about stuff. They had stuff like ICE CUBE when he was just in C.I.A., dancing by the pool. So the Coup and E-40 and the Click were performing at Soul Beat Day, and backstage E-40 and Studio Ton was like, “Hey, we want to do something with that lyric of yours ‘practice looking hard.’” So that’s when we started doing stuff together. We were doing a lot of car shows, lowrider shows up and down California. I still have my trophies from doing those lowrider shows.

I remember Wild Pitch said to us, we got this idea. They were like, you don’t really fit into a genre, and we think one way to get past that is to put you on a college tour. And we’re like, we’re not making no college music. Meanwhile that’s who’s buying the records, so we made a terrible mistake.

But they gave us $14,000. So we went on a 50-day tour in a minivan where we got out in each city, we put up our own posters, put up our own stickers, asked people where the record stores were and went to the record store, played them our record, made ’em listen to it.

When we got to D.C., the label was like, we’re not getting any headway with BET. We had saved up our per diem, you know, we each had $5 a day. We knocked on the door, we told Joe Clair to pick wherever he wants to go to eat. We took him to eat and hung out with him and showed him the video. And then a week later, I think it was Memorial Day, they played it crazy. Right then we were in Cleveland and people started being like, I just saw you on TV.

Bonus
IS HIP-HOP LYING ABOUT ITS AGE?


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SCARFACE


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

An unforgettable moment as a child was when I saw Missy Elliott take off her head in the “One Minute Man” video, and that just made me like, go crazy for it. That’s all I wanted. It’s like, I don’t want to hear Barney anymore, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want to hear Disney movies music anymore. I just automatically got into hip-hop.

My female cousins that were older than me, they always listened to Lil’ Kim, Foxy, all the girls that was out at the moment. I always remember, my mom used to be like, “Don’t be playing that too much around the kids.” Then I got into Trina’s type of music. Trina makes like, you know, a nasty, freak nasty type of music. Lil’ Kim does freak nasty too, but I feel like they have different types of style. The route for me was more of a TRINA route. It’s crazy because I’m a New Yorker, but I was always into that Trina and the Khia and the Jacki-O type of vibe.

As a teen, it just made me be like, yeah, “I wanna be like them.” And that’s how I really am, actually. I started doing music when I was 23, but I was listening to these girls at 15, 16, 17, 18. So the personality that their music gave me stuck to me.

At the time, I just stopped stripping, so I was very much still in that whole stripper world. I wanted the music to be about me. My first song, “Washpoppin’,” it’s like, “I need all my money makers bring that cash out/I need all my D-boys to bring that cash out.” It was get money type of music. And then I also was making music for the gangsters because I felt like I was just such a gangster-ass little bitch.

My manager, he used to have long conversations with me like, how do you feel? I used to be like, oh, you know, I feel overwhelmed, sometimes I feel really tired. And then he would ask me weird questions like, so how do your boyfriend make you feel? How do you feel about love? How do you feel about your past relationships? And then I would have a conversation with him about my past relationships and my traumas. And then he’ll be like, oh, OK, so put that on your music. And that’s when I started to talk more about other things than just the things that I was doing in my past, like gang , street and stripper .

Bonus
CARDI B ON SHMONEY


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EVE
STYLES P



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

In Spanish Harlem, where my grandmother lived, my older cousins were playing cassette tapes: the Cold Crush Brothers, Funky 4 + 1, Sha-Rock, Treacherous Three, Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow. I remember one of my cousins used to date his brother, and that was a big deal.

The Sequence was definitely an influence to hear — Angie B, Blondy and Cheryl, how they all attack, like very differently from one another, but were laid back with it. That laid-back way became a part of the way that I stepped to a microphone. And of course, Salt-N-Pepa, they definitely were a guiding force for me. I learned all of the words to their records as I began to practice for who it is that I was going to become.

RUN-DMC, Melle Mel — the message of “The Message” really helped me. I was already writing stories, because my mother insisted I write essays for everything. So to be able to hear about this place that I had never been. I had never been to the Bronx. I was just Brooklyn and Manhattan. As far as I knew, 138th Street was the last stop on the train.

I never considered myself a rapper. I was an M.C., and an M.C., to me, is very different from a rapper. Like an M.C. is, you know, Nas, versus someone who is not an M.C., but had a rap record, and that would be Hammer. He wasn’t in there to show his skills off as an M.C., he was in there to make a hit song. Just because you rap doesn’t make you a rapper. But that’s just me.

I happen to like a lot of what the female M.C.s are doing now, and I listen to everything — I’m a D.J. I’m not just an ’80s, ’90s D.J. I like “Plan B” by Megan Thee Stallion. I like Megan’s register. I’m a fan of Remy Ma. The way that she rhymes, she makes you feel it, just like Lil’ Kim. Just like Foxy. Foxy, Lil’ Kim and myself, we’re all from Brooklyn.

I like this new one by Coi Leray, where she uses that “Message” sample. I like Latto when she used Mariah’s sample. It just feels like a return to something heavy and loaded, and I like when I can feel the depth in someone’s voice.

I’m a fan of Rapsody. I love what she talks about. Just the awareness and acknowledgment of love and womanhood and Blackness. Tierra Whack. Nobody’s messing with that freestyle, she’s just bananas with it. And of course, CARDI and Nicki. Baby Tate. It’s like so many M.C.s on the scene. Lady London. Oh my goodness, she brings it. You’re talking about college-educated, and not afraid to flip some words on you that you got to go look up.

No one rolled over and started rapping by themselves. Everybody was inspired by somebody. Whether they want to come clean about that or not is a different situation.

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ROXANNE SHANTÉ
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STYLES P
EVE


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I had a couple of big homies that was real grown. I was still in my single-digit years, and they had these Five-Percent Nation brothers in my neighborhood. They were the ones circulating a lot of the tapes — Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee and the COLD CRUSH BROTHERS battles. And as “Rapper’s Delight” started playing on the radio, they had an underground station called WHBI, I think 105.9, that used to come on at 2 o’clock in the morning until like 5.

The Supreme Team used to spin on there. The Awesome Two, Special K and Teddy Ted was spinning on there. And they had Zulu Nation radio on the same station, so sometimes Red Alert, Afrika Islam and Jazzy Jay. I would make these pause tapes and then go to school and front like I went to the battles with my big cousins and sell them for $5.

I was up that late because I found out about this station from the son of a Panamanian lady that used to babysit me when my mother was working nights. The Panamanian lady, who I love to this day, her son exposed me to graffiti. He would have this black book that he would draw the pieces he was going to spray-paint on subways. I would sit there and just be entertained, looking at a live-and-in-person movie. These were my first experiences witnessing hip-hop firsthand.

When they had the block parties in the neighborhood, that’s when I was able to really get to see the D.J.ing and the dudes on the microphone. Everybody would be outside until shots blew on the block. But it never ended unless somebody got shot or police came.

My whole lyricism, my showmanship, I definitely attribute a lot of that to Grandmaster Caz, even though I love the whole Cold Crush. I emulated a lot just in terms of my charisma and wanting to be the leader of the crew. I loved the Sugarhill Gang, but when I found out later on that Caz wrote all of Big Bank Hank’s rhymes, that affected my appreciation.

There was also the component of my Jamaican upbringing. In Brooklyn there was this melting pot of every Caribbean community in existence. It wasn’t just about hip-hop. You had Haitians, Trinidadians, Guyanese, Jamaicans, Bajans, Panamanians. This was a significant influence on my showmanship, everything I was doing from the way I dressed to the energy that was in my shows, their flow patterns and the way they spit on dancehall records, the heavy bass line beats. I encompassed all of that into my imagination but in a hip-hop way.

I moved to Uniondale, Long Island, in 1983 when I was 12. We were all finding mischief way too soon according to our parents’ standards. They saw us going down these wrong paths. Coming from where we came from, you kind of looked at it like, “Damn, man. Long Island soft. I don’t want to go out there and be around all this grass and flower beds, around some white kids that don’t know hip-hop culture.” But that common denominator is what allowed the Leaders of the New School to connect. Because the hood was still in the suburbs.

We officially started the group around ’86, but I didn’t have the name Busta Rhymes yet. My name was Chill-O-Ski. The way we got with Chuck D and them was at a talent show that was happening in Hempstead. There were 20 to 30 groups in the lineup, and we waited all the way until the very end. Chuck D invited us out to Spectrum City Studios in Hempstead, along with some other groups.

There was a board that had all these different group names on it like Son of Bazerk, Funky Frank and the Street Force, Young Black Teenagers and Leaders of the New School. And we had to listen to them try to split our group up and put us in one that they felt we fit most with. We were like, “We didn’t come up here to be broken up.” And they respected that.

We told them that we wanted the name Leaders of the New School, and the white kid that actually ended up becoming a member of Young Black Teenagers, he wanted the same name. So we ended up having to do a battle. And they said y’all want the name that bad then y’all need to make a song called “____ the Old School.” We didn’t want to do that because we was never raised to disrespect anything before us. But it was really just a test to see how bad we wanted it. That “____ the Old School” will never surface online.

What was cool and interesting about that time was that being smart and being positive outweighed everything else. You didn’t have too many gangster rappers. There was a large Five-Percent Nation presence. It was Poor Righteous Teachers, it was Rakim, it was Lakim Shabazz, it was King Sun, it was Just-Ice. Zulu Nation was present. There were a lot of uplifting Black power movements that were happening. If you wasn’t smart, you were looked at as a real bozo.

We had Queen Latifah, MC LYTE, Salt-N-Pepa. We always had braggadocious . We had “I’m Bad,” real machismo, and girls saying that they were sexy, but you wasn’t really hearing about how dudes were out here selling drugs, shooting. I’m not saying that any of that is wrong. Everything in hip-hop has its place. But I think too much of one thing in anything in life is not a good thing.

When Leaders of the New School was poppin’ and things started to get active for us, that created some internal conflict. The consumer started to gravitate towards who their favorite M.C. was in the group. In that transition, I was really on my grind crazy because I was the youngest in the group, but the first one to have a child.

As far as “Scenario,” I knew my life changed after that. Q-Tip was always like my big brother and one of my closest friends. It was quite obvious when that record came out I was set up to steal the show. When I came on the mic with my “dungeon dragon” , it was definitely a showstopping moment.

At that time, the grand finale dude was the one who ended the song. “Scenario,” I was last. “Flava in Ya Ear,” I was last. “A Buncha ____” on “Blue Funk,” Heavy D’s album, I was last. “Come on Down” on Big Daddy Kane’s “Prince of Darkness” album. When you stealing the show, you were last.

“Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” was a turning point for my life, the first time people heard me spit on a song calmly. It’s safe to say it’s one of the greatest records ever made in the history of the culture. I ain’t saying that because it was me. I’m saying that because it’s the general consensus across the board to this day.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My mom would listen to oldies, like, Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z, Ja Rule, that soulful sound. And my dad listened to more like street underground from back in that era. People like Rich the Factor, Jadakiss, the Jacka and Ampichino, Fred the Godson. And then my uncle would listen to like more of the newer stuff, like WAYNE and Drake and Thug. On my own time, when it came to YouTube, I would go listen to like rock, so like Kiss and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I used to play Saints Row and they had a track on the game and it made me a fan.

My brother passed away when I was young, so that kind of gave me that drive to start wanting to make music. And I would sit at my grandma’s house and just rap on the stairs and be there for like two, three hours, just freestyling. We would have little things at school where we would have to write, so I would show my pen skills. I would make my school projects cool. Like, oh, I’m gonna write a letter to Drake. I literally did that too. I wrote a rap to Drake. I was in like seventh grade.

I started like experimenting with Auto-Tune and getting to my own sound. Auto-Tune and stuff like that, it got me into SoundCloud. That was like the beginning of like that super underground phase, Ugly God and Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert, I started making music around the same time as them. But I didn’t blow up until the XXXTentacion and JUICE WRLD era. I liked X and Lil Peep. If you go to my SoundCloud, it was really X, Lil Peep and then Uzi, too.

Lil Peep was on that sad boy . That was hard. I love that. Just that feeling of, you know, depression and sadness and pain. That’s kind of where I was at the time, I felt like their movement is fire. Like they’re doing exactly what I envision myself doing.

I also listen to a lot of rock, though. I love Chino from Deftones. He’s passionately in character with his vocals. It’s like you gotta make certain movements and certain faces to hit certain notes. Sometimes he’ll just like go from like a melody to breathing and it sounds the same, like the melody and the breathing is all in one. It just sounds hard to me.

I’m not quite a rapper. I’m the odd man out. People mistake me for a rapper and then it’ll leave me in that box. So the way I could stay out of that box is by creating music that keeps me out of it.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(aside: YES YES YES YES YES THIS SONG IS 50'S TRUE ARTISTIC TEFLON VEST)



I fell in love with hip-hop, but it was only playing for one hour out the week on the radio. My grandmother used to go to church and take a tape recorder and record everything the minister said, and she would play Sunday service to herself again on like, Wednesday. She had all of these Maxell cassette tapes that once you record, you break the little tab off. I had to go get toilet paper and put it in the square and record over what she already had for the church. It was only on for one hour — I had to record it then.

This is back when KRS was out, he made such an impression on my career early on, ’cause creatively, that aggression that was there. I didn’t follow a complete blueprint of what he’d done, and at one point he got so much smarter than the audience that it wasn’t entertaining because it was like learning some . It was teaching. That’s where he lost me a little bit. But when he came in the beginning, he had the competitive energy — that was what hip-hop was to me the entire time.

He said, “Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on taking it/Bronx keeps creating it and Queens keeps on faking it.” And I’m from Queens! I liked it so much. But I didn’t know how I felt about it because of what it said.

If you look at that, then look at what I done at the desperation point where Columbia didn’t understand who I was as an artist. I was approaching the release date and I had to do something. I know I don’t have the momentum or anything. It’s going to not work, and it not working isn’t an option. So “How to Rob” — that’s my version of that energy.

Biggie and Tupac, following that, artists were afraid to say each other’s names. So Nas was saying “20 G bets I’m winning ’em, threats I’m sending ’em/Lex with TV sets the minimum.” It was him describing Jay-Z. “In My Lifetime.” Subliminally talking about each other without actually mentioning each other’s name.

My personality difference from the other artists, I’ve been bumped around more than them the entire journey. On my journey early on, it was rough. Then as the music business was doing it to me too, I kind of didn’t know how to not respond like the pit bull that you have outside in the yard.

Early on, Dre was like, I know what this is, this is N.W.A, it’s just one member. What Dre was telling me was that I don’t have to reach to get the audience to come with me. They’ll come to me. But I was like, I need this other thing. I had worked out and I got myself into a good space physically. I needed the female audience to feel like they could fix me.

When I listened to great albums, they’ve had emotional moments. With Biggie, it’s “____ You Tonight” featuring R. Kelly. It would create a tone shift on a rapper’s album more like rapping as the feature on someone else’s R&B song. Like Dre specifically, that record, “21 Questions,” he was like, I don’t know why you want it. I hear it. It’s good, but you don’t need it.

The hardest person you could have a melody on a record was Nate Dogg. Nate Dogg will you up! Having Nate was the coolest way to make a record like that still feel really hard, and for you not to question it.

I was creatively in pocket on the first record. But I became a star during the second album. The second album is when I found this new value for myself. I started feeling like a bad bitch.

I’ll tell you something that Michael Jackson taught me. Because he was talking to Chris Tucker, and he was a big fan of the actual music. And he was like, you know what, he has good melodies. Like, the way I would say things in the choruses and stuff like that. And that’s what is allowing it to connect internationally, where English is people’s second language. They only can follow the melody.

I think in general, the culture loves things that are damaged, because it makes the audience feel better about themselves, looking at somebody like, they’re more up than I am. It allows parts of the audience to go on a safari. To be close enough to the animals and not actually be in danger.

Bonus
50 CENT ON BABY OIL


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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

In terms of song structure, I was really inspired by Kanye West, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Mos Def — that type of rap where there can be messaging and maybe some political themes, but the song is pretty standard in terms of hooks and bridges. A lot of sung choruses, that kind of a thing. I tend to like writing hooks that are catchy. I really like catchy-sounding production with thoughtful lyricism. That’s what I tend to gravitate to.

I have this very vivid memory of my mom playing “Late Registration” in her Nissan Pathfinder when I was a kid, and just being in the back seat, listening.

And then when I wanted my songs to be a little more deconstructed, Jay Electronica and EARL SWEATSHIRT. “Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge),” that tape from Jay, I’ve never heard a rap album sound like that, or someone attempt to rap to a movie score. That was very eye-opening to me, in terms of what the genre could do. Same with MF Doom, “Madvillainy.” I had never heard anything like that. “Oh, rap could do this?”

At the time, I wasn’t really a hip-hop head. When I was a kid, I was probably listening to Michael Jackson and Avril Lavigne. I was listening to a lot of Bow Wow, actually. Like, a lot. Teenybopper hip-hop. “Doggy Bag,” 2001 — wow. He definitely had a moment. That was my childhood, as far as rap was concerned. It was not exciting.

A lot of the stuff that I was into was based on what I could listen to. My mom wasn’t really allowing me to listen to too much. She was like, “You can listen to this Michael Jackson and one Kanye album.” And whatever’s playing on the radio. It was that vibe. I would go to my friend’s house and they would be listening to WAYNE mixtapes.

I’m just now starting to become a real music fan, where I can listen to a lot more genres and styles. Stylistically, in terms of pockets and playing around with language, my generation doesn’t really do that that much, just across the board. And that’s the type of hip-hop that I think I like the most. I’ve been going back to Slick Rick and Big Pun, Big L, stuff that’s either punchline driven or people are just hitting very crazy pockets. As far as new rappers, probably Boldy James, billy woods, Silkmoney. You know Babyface Ray? I liked his last tape.

I’m kind of late being a musician. I don’t know why I make the type of music that I make sometimes. Because it’s truly not really popular. I feel like everyone is trying to stay away from the type of stuff that I do because they want money. They want to sustain themselves. Not even trying to be self-deprecating, but I really don’t hear folks making kind of weird poetic like this.

Although hip-hop wasn’t my entry point, being in organizing spaces — Black radical spaces where folks are thinking about leftist politics and ideologies — I was able to find rappers and hip-hop artists that actually do make that type of music. I guess it does lead back into hip-hop, which I didn’t realize. Aspects of it were in the Black radical tradition. I wish that aspect of it was a bit more to the mainstream, but it is what it is.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(aside: they should've framed this around "Ninja Rap" for freshness' sake)


I’m the first global hip-hop artist in the world. I don’t care who you put before me or after me, I’m the first. I put rap music in front of people’s ears who never considered or even heard of it. I hit Saudi Arabia, bro. I’ve played Iran. I’ve played in front of the Taliban and Hezbollah, and they’d sing “Ice Ice Baby.” They don’t hold the American thing against you. They look at you like, “This is Vanilla Ice.” And they treat you like royalty.

You have to understand that I grew up with poetry. When I was in the seventh grade trying to get the chicks, instead of writing love notes to these little girls, I was writing love poems. And it worked really well. I had no idea that that poetry was going to lead to my career. But the passion never left. It just kept escalating.

My mom was really good at it, too. She had these one-liners. I’m a big one-liner guy: “Drop that zero, get with the hero.” “If there’s a problem, yo, I’ll solve it.” I could run for president, bro. “Let’s make America the ’90s again.”

I got involved in “Beat Street” and “Electric Boogaloo,” the “Breakin’” movies. I was a breakdancer. I would make 40 bucks a day at the mall, spinning on my head with some cardboard and a giant jambox. Chase the girls around, eat some pizza, have some change left over.

I went to high school in Dallas, and I would spend all my summers in Miami. The whole Miami booty shake thing that everybody remembers from the late ’80s really didn’t exist yet. There was no models, Kardashians, Versaces, not even 2 LIVE CREW. Nobody here in Miami influenced me whatsoever.

Hip-hop was way bigger in Dallas than it was Miami in the ’80s. I thought all white people were listening to the same music across the country, and nobody was. I was the only one. I had an older brother — he was listening to Aerosmith, Foghat, Mötley Crüe. I hated that. It didn’t make me want to breakdance. Rap just fit me better than O.J.’s glove. It really did. Scott La Rock, KRS-One, Mantronix.

I grew up with D.O.C. — Fila Fresh Crew was his first rap act that nobody even knows about, and that was in Dallas. He had a big hit back in the day, “Whirlwind Pyramid.” Everybody knows he wrote all the lyrics for everybody on “The Chronic.” KNON Radio, a pirate station, that was big. Dr. Rock, Big Al. Just straight from their attic. It was so freakin’ hip-hop and so culturized.

We had a place called City Lights, where I went with my brother’s fake ID. I entered into the talent contest because I’m a battle rapper, I freestyle. I feel like I’m the best. I don’t give a damn who you are — EMINEM, ICE CUBE, Ice-T.

We would also go to a place called Handy Dan’s, in the back of a hardware store where we would have keg parties. You could park behind it and the cops couldn’t find you. We would have these rap battles against other schools. I had to show up and blow up, you know?

Back then we didn’t have any kind of FruityLoops or Pro Tools or computers at all. There wasn’t even a smartphone. It cost money to go into a studio. I have a lot of self-discipline, and a lot of competitive drive from motocross, because I’ve been racing since I was 8. I went out and made my money on the motocross track, 1,500 bucks a week. I found a guy in Houston who made ecstasy pills for $2 apiece in his bathtub, which was legal back then, by the way, and I sold them for 20 bucks. Instead of blowing it on my car, now I’m blowing it on the studio, hoping this works out.

I blew it up, man. I went on the Stop the Violence tour with Ice-T, Stetsasonic, EPMD, Sir Mix-a-Lot. They were rap gods at the time. I was the opening act for the opening act for the opening act for the opening act for the opener. I was there so frickin’ early, the other acts were still in their hotel.

I had a 10-minute set, me and my breakdancing crew. I had a few songs — “Ice Ice Baby,” “Play That Funky Music,” a song that was never released called “My Car Goes Boom.” I never got so much love in my whole life. I guess word gets out that there’s this white kid that’s just crushin’ it out there, so people start coming earlier to the shows. It got so much attention it went to the headliner act, Ice-T. I saw him sitting there on a road case watching me. He was the first one to tell the other acts, “You’ve got to come see this white boy. He’s dancing his ass off.” And the next night there was Chuck D sitting on the road case with Ice-T.

Chuck D actually discovered me. My first record deal had come from Ichiban Records out of Atlanta. I was on there with Curtis Mayfield. The album was called “Hooked,” which is the same songs as “To the Extreme,” just remixed. Then Chuck D called Def Jam. We had it all lined up. I was on my way to New York, ready to sign, all dreams about to come true. And I get a phone call from my manager, and he says, “Don’t sign with Def Jam.”

He came in and he explained to me this guy named Charles Koppelman from EMI Records wants to meet me. It’s the craziest thing that could happen to any musician. I did “Ice Ice Baby” and then three years go by with the blink of an eye. It took on a life of its own.

You can’t pick your audience; they pick you, bro. And I got picked. Whether you like it or you hate it, you’re not going to stop it. They used me as a product on the shelf. All kinds of funny, laughable things like “In Living Color,” “Saturday Night Live,” “Arsenio Hall Show.” It was just a big wave of entertainment. And if you didn’t recognize it or use it, then your ratings were low. Vanilla Ice was the ratings, and that was it. The most controversial artist on the planet.

The adversity that I’ve had to face is probably more than any rapper in the history of the world. I’ve always been offended by anybody calling me a “white rapper.” You’re racist if you say that. Music shouldn’t have a color. Do you call Jimi Hendrix the Black rocker? My song was No. 1 before anybody knew what color I was. I was influenced by hip-hop. You can’t name any genre or any kind of person or ethnic background that is not influenced by it.

Don’t forget, a lot of these big rappers today were influenced by Vanilla Ice, OK? Nipsey Hussle admits it. You’ve got Kobe Bryant out there winning a talent contest when he was in high school dancing to “Ice Ice Baby,” doing the exact dance moves I did. The influence and the impact is undeniable. It’s possibly the biggest impact to ever hit music in music’s history next to Elvis or the Beatles.

Bonus
VANILLA ICE ON MC HAMMER


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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(I guess as I go along I'm feeling more inclined to add an aside: while it totally makes sense to represent Gucci with this song, if ever there was a chance for the NYT to flex the bonafides of their music writers it was with a truly awesome deep cut here)



I remember buying my first $5 cassette tape, 2 LIVE CREW, from the flea market in Alabama. I was like 6 or 7. I didn’t even know what the music was about, that cover was just so raunchy to me. My mama found the tape and played it on the porch in front of her friends to embarrass me — like, “Look what Radric’s listening to.” But I only bought it for the cover.

I moved to Atlanta when I was 9. My brother was listening to the gritty underground Atlanta stuff, the gritty Memphis stuff, New Orleans, so that’s what I gravitated towards — Kingpin Skinny Pimp, Triple Six Mafia, the Hot Boys and Master P.

By the time I started trying to finance my own first tape, maybe ’99 or 2000, those were the key people I could relate to — B.G., Project Pat. Like, OK, this dude just got out of jail, and everybody in the hood listens to that. I’m going through the same things at the same time.

I didn’t feel like PROJECT PAT was the best rapper, but he made me feel him. I’m like, can’t be Fabolous or Lil Wayne, but I can do this. I was late in the game, but I didn’t have to be scared to try. I was going to spring break in Daytona, and it was the whole summer of Project Pat and Big Tymers. I started doing the stuff they were rapping about — like, I’m going to be the CD that I’m listening to.

That’s really how this started. It wasn’t even a love of hip-hop; I’m a hustler. I’m like, damn, I really don’t want to sell dope all the time. It’s too risky. If Jermaine Dupri can put out Kris Kross, Birdman ain’t really a good rapper and I got a little money — I can get in this.

I was always thinking, none of this matters if I go to the club and I ain’t got no movement. I’d seen rappers try to get their music out, but they looked lame and no one took them seriously. I was like, “How can I get the whole apartments on Bouldercrest to come with me?” I knew I was popular, I was already going to the club, and I leveraged that. It really was calculated.

My first album came out in 2005. I think 50 Cent dropped his in 2003. He was just super hot. The same stuff he was talking about, I was really having those beefs. It ain’t even nothing to glorify, but that’s what was going on for me, for real. That was my soundtrack, and it really emboldened me to talk with urgency about the stuff I’m doing.

That was at a time when I was heavily in the streets, and I was heavily paranoid about what I had did. I was riding back and forth to Alabama trapping and I had two CDs — Lil Jon’s CD, “Kings of Crunk,” and “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.” That was my inspiration: “I just have to get past this stage.” I moved fully back to Atlanta in 2004, and maybe two weeks later, I made “Black Tee.”

Gucci in ’06, I just was whoever I was 24/7, a lot of times to my detriment. But that’s who I was as a 26-year-old guy trying to be an artist, one foot in and one foot out. My peak came later because I was locked up. But the business was in a better place when I got out, and I benefited from that.

People would never think that a rapper in his 40s would be as in demand. But I’m making way more money than I thought. I never could travel until I was 37, 38 years old. I’m glad I don’t have to do a show in the hood all the time, like I was doing. I know the chitlin circuit. I’m so glad I got over a lot of hurdles, where now I can do a show internationally and get the type of money I felt like I deserved.

Being in Iceland was definitely one of those moments. I had a concert at a festival. The sun didn’t even go down the whole day. That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen — and it was fun. I never would have thought that it would be something I’d like. I used to tell people, “I don’t want to go nowhere but East Atlanta and right back to the studio.” But damn, it was way better than sitting in that cell.

Bonus
GUCCI MANE’S FAVORITE MIXTAPE


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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My older brother, who is eight years my senior, had brought some records home, and it was something that I had never heard. We were in Shadeville, dirt road Florida. We weren’t in the Bronx. He tells me, “This is called hip-hop. There’s a D.J. and there’s a rapper, an M.C.” He was like, “We’re going to do hip-hop.” I was maybe 8, 9. It was this group called Whistle, “Just Buggin’.” OK. Boom. And then my job was to start studying.

I would write LL Cool J’s rhymes, I would write KRS-One’s rhymes, I would write Big Daddy Kane’s rhymes on notebook paper. I didn’t have none of these terms for the technical things at that time, but I did it based on the breathing. “OK, this is where he’s taking a breath.” So I’d start another line.

I also listened to other music besides just New York. TOO SHORT was a huge influence on me. I used to try to remember all them 80,000-bar verses he had.

I got kicked out of high school for rapping, actually, at a Black History Month assembly. They said it incited a riot.

I was known as the little rapping dude, and my teacher in ninth grade, Ms. Green, was the only Black lady I had seen in the school system with a natural ’fro. She stopped me in the hallway one day and she goes, “Do you know that in all the history of this school, in this racist institution, y’all ain’t never even had a Black history assembly?”

She was like, “I’m going to give you an opportunity: You can take your talent and do something with it. If you write a rap for Black history, I’mma let you perform at the first Black history assembly this school has ever seen.” And I was like, “Uhhh, I get to rock? Bet.”

She took me to the library — I remember because I skipped lunch — and she pulled out these three books. The first page I open up, I see Huey P. Newton. And I’m like, “Who is this?” Because it look like my cousin Carlo, right?

I ended up writing a song titled “Black As I Can Get.” What they seemed to have a big problem with was, “I ain’t no Uncle Tom/To hell with Uncle Sam.” When I said that, they cut the mic off, turned the lights on and everything. Next thing you know it was a melee.

Bonus
JAY-Z JOINS THE REVOLUTION


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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

It was like the X-Men School of Superheroes at the Dungeon, you know? All of us — Outkast, GOODIE MOB, Organized Noize — the whole crew down there just sharpening up our lyrical skills, getting ready for the world.

It was me and Dre going back and forth. We’d just rap, trade our bars. That’s how we got our deal, actually. Big Gipp was playing the “Scenario,” Tribe Called Quest remix. He had the Isuzu Trooper and Rico Wade worked at a beauty supply store. Me and Dre was up there and then he played the instrumental and we just rapped for the longest time. And Rico was like, “OK, y’all going to the Dungeon.”

We didn’t know how to count bars or nothing. When we got to the Dungeon, one day we learned formatting. With the Organized Noize masters, they just taught us how to do it. Me, Dre and Cee-Lo were like 16 and 17, and everybody else was pushing 20.

Everybody was there: Cool Breeze, Backbone, Witchdoctor. Then later on you had Future. Everything was organic and it was like a school of brothers. And we all came up together. We didn’t go to school together, but we were in school together.

A group called Parental Advisory was there before us — KP the Great, Mello and Reese. They had a song called “Manifest” and it was a jam, a dark, real gritty song. It was underground. They were the first ones and we came after them.

When we did “Player’s Ball,” we got $100,000 each from our publishing deal at Christmas ’cause it went No. 1. When you come from nothing, $100,000 is like $1,000,000, you know what I mean? We were millionaires before we were 21.

And then what we did was, of course, we bought a car. But we took the rest of the money and we bought equipment, an MPC60 drum machine. A lot of people don’t know that we produced a lot of our records, from “ATLiens” on up to “Idlewild.” Songs like “Ms. Jackson,” “Bombs Over Baghdad,” “Aquemini” — we did those. From watching Organized Noize, it was like, OK, if we’re going to be M.C.s, how cool would it be to paint the soundscape and write the message?

I’m known for being half of the ’Kast and one whole of me. The globe knows us, whether it’s film and television or at my kids’ recitals or football games. The brand is prestigious. They had an Outkast bobblehead night at the Braves stadium. We didn’t have to perform a song, but the whole city came out to get these bobbleheads. It was beautiful, man.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(another aside: I know Brew and I e-dapped over this sentiment in another GD thread sometime in the last two years or so, but I still can't believe both how alone I felt ranting about the awfulness of this music when it was relevant or how giddily nostalgic it makes me feel now)



We came up off Michael Jackson, my mama listening to James Brown, my grandpa was really into Curtis Mayfield, my uncle listening to Run-DMC, New Edition. We were singers — I came up in the era where you were still going out there trying to sing to the girl to catch her, you know?

My very first memory of hip-hop was sitting down with my brother, rewinding BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY trying to learn “1st of tha Month”: “Wake up, wake up, wake up.” That was when it really hit me, like, this is what I want to do.

I’m from Bankhead, so I seen Kilo, the dope boy in the neighborhood who had made it, in his money-green Cadillac all the time. And I came in the rap game up under Raheem the Dream. These was our local heroes. They mean everything. That was our inspiration, but the world didn’t know them like that.

I was freestyling, winning the local talent show every week. And I started singing this song called “If You’re Down on Your Luck Say (Ow),” and everybody started singing it.

In the apartments, it was me and Young Dro. We ended up sparring against each other all the time, freestyling. This guy takes us down to Raheem the Dream. The rest is history.

When we left Raheem, I went to Shawty Lo. I’m in high school, and I was playing the tenor drums at the time. He was taking care of us. I moved right in and we started recording. He wasn’t a rapper at this time, mind you. Never asked me for rent, never asked me for anything. He did these basketball tournaments where all the neighborhoods would come play each other. That’s what brought a lot of Atlanta together.

When Jeezy and GUCCI was going at it — that was when everybody in Atlanta was just, like, boom. I remember being in the club when “Stay Strapped” was out — like, “We need a song.” Killer Mike, T.I., all of them had those songs bunking. That was the moment. The old 112 was just closing down and Visions was the hottest club in Atlanta.

Lo used to always be pushing us. When Dem Franchize Boyz jumped off, I developed my style right there. I was like, they’re trying to rhyme like this, so I’m going to do something totally different. I started yelling and screaming on everything. I was, like, ain’t nobody doing this.

Right to this day, put “Tatted Up” on — you can put it up against any Grammy that’s ever been won. Just the end of the song — “Barbaraaaaaa!” People would be like, “Who is Barbara!?” That’s what I heard in the track, bro.

I’ve always been dancing. When the other guys made “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It,” I was, like, “No, this is our movement.” I felt like I should’ve been given some type of credit. You can hear me on “Betcha Can’t Do It Like Me” — I felt offended.

I seen them on “Rap City” or something, and they asked who came up with the dance. And this guy goes, “Me.” I leaned back in my chair and was like, “Yo, turn the beat on.” And I got right in the booth. The snap era was intense, the competition.

With “Laffy Taffy” we went straight to MTV — BET wasn’t playing the song. We didn’t understand what crossing over was. We didn’t know that this was another level — like, “You’re No. 1.” I think we wanted to prove for a while that we wasn’t pop.

Anytime you see something that you don’t understand or that’s different, you’re going to look at it with that side-eye, you know? Nas said “hip-hop is dead,” I seen Ghostface Killah imitating the leg thing. But I’m just trying not to eat ketchup sandwiches anymore, dude.

I think when BUSTA RHYMES kicked it with us and jumped on the album, we started getting a little respect. And then Twista jumped on the record. People was like, “OK, well, these guys must have something.” These are two different characters from two different places that bought into the movement.

Future, Young Thug, all these cats showed me love. Drake, when he put that “snappin’ like you Fabo” in “Nice for What,” bro, my grandmother was like, “Drake said your name!” I’m one of the only artists to have a No. 1 single and have my name called in another No. 1 single.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My homeboy had to remind me last night, he said, “Gipp, do you realize that you’ve been involved in every era of music from Atlanta?” I said, “Wow.”

This lady named Jean Carne was a soul singer who moved to my neighborhood with her son Joseph — she had this song called “Closer Than Close.” The same year, a guy named Ray Murray moved into our neighborhood.

Once we got together, Ms. Carne bought her son our first studio. And I remember the first time he called us to say, “Yo, my mom bought me a studio,” because that was the same day LL COOL J dropped “Jack the Ripper.” It’s so cemented in my memory. We played that record over and over and over.

Ms. Carne started taking me around — that was my introduction to the music business. She is a cousin of Peabo Bryson. At her house, I got to meet Stevie Wonder, I got to meet New Edition — I got to meet the industry before I got into the industry. Her daughter had a birthday party and we went with the Jackson 5. Atlanta was filled with so many superstars, just because of the civil rights movement: Larry Blackmon was riding around, Curtis Mayfield was riding around, Kool & the Gang was riding around.

Ray started teaching me how to rap. The first records he gave me were the Last Poets, KRS-One, just to give me substance, you know? But I created myself through two artists: Chuck D of Public Enemy and Ice-T. I learned more from Chuck D than in school. Ice-T represented that player lifestyle — that caught a young dude real early. “Power,” I remember looking at the album cover like, “Yo! You’re my guy.”

I was working at a Red Lobster on Campbellton Road as a dishwasher, and one day I was listening to Public Enemy. This guy beside me was from New York. He said, “Hey, Gipp, you like that group?” I said, “I don’t like this group, I love this group.” He said, “Would you like to meet them?” I’m tripping because we in Red Lobster; we washing dishes. “Well, my name’s Mike. Professor Griff is my little brother. They’re coming to town and I’ll take you to meet them.”

He took me down to Fulton County Stadium, and I remember this night not for the concert, but because of the way that Chuck D came to the concert: They were headlining and Chuck D pulled up in a cab. That was something that stuck with me for the rest of my career.

N.W.A changed the whole temperature. It kind of stopped music for a minute. It really put the aggression into rap that wasn’t there before. And then came Geto Boys. When they say, “Who was the greatest in the South?” Scarface, period. As a kid, SCARFACE was our Ice Cube in the South.

Every day there was new music coming out. It was so exciting. Everywhere you go someone would be, like, “You heard this?” And it was such a change from being a kid in Atlanta, because Atlanta was so soul — there wasn’t nothing bigger than the Commodores, O’Jays, Gladys Knight, Curtis Mayfield.

Goodie Mob, we gave you the heart and soul of where we was from. We gave you everything that brought us up, everything we was made from, what our mothers taught us, how we were raised.

We didn’t come from the projects. I’ve always been around affluent Black people, religious Black people — that’s all I’ve ever seen. Drug dealers and gangsters had never been prevalent in the city because nothing could be bigger than the King. That’s the reason why you had Goodie Mob speaking the way we spoke. Even at a young age, we rapped like grown men. We still gave you “Dirty South,” we still took you into the projects, into the streets. We did all of that. We just did it from a place of always knowing we had something better.

It’s also because we were signed by Babyface and L.A. Reid. We were never on a rap label and all the things our counterparts were getting away with, we couldn’t get away with. I remember when Babyface was like, “A song ain’t a song until you have a hook and a bridge.” And that’s all he ever said to us.

I was very much influenced by wrestling. I got to see artists like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, the Road Warriors all up close. The costumes — I knew what it did to people when they saw it. That’s the reason we started doing that in the Dungeon Family. We knew that if people didn’t understand us, maybe they would remember what we looked like.

Who would’ve knew Outkast and Goodie Mob could’ve been this? I don’t think anybody has a André 3000 in their crew but us. I don’t think anybody got a CeeLo Green in their crew but us. How could you beat somebody like us? All you’ve gotta do is say, “CeeLo, do some Gnarls Barkley,” and it’s over.

Every time the South creates a new style, they find something not to like about it. But if you think about it, we have not stopped since us. When you look at Future — that’s family, from the Dungeon — Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon, Ludacris, T.I., Jeezy, GUCCI MANE. They didn’t like the Migos at first!

As long as Atlanta has a strip club culture, we will always be ahead of everybody. Somebody could take a Young Thug record right out the studio at Patchwerk, go right into Magic City Monday, get the prettiest stripper to dance to it, and it’s a hit record! It’s just something that doesn’t stop working.

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PHONTE


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Summer of 1976: A young kid who had just come back from North Carolina into the streets of Staten Island. There was a block party being thrown by a local D.J., I think DJ Quincy. The D.J. had jacked power from the street lamps, plugged up his system and was playing music. And even though I was a kid that shouldn’t have been there — it was past bedtime — I was there. The music, the turntablism of him spinning the record back and forth, the guy on the mic reciting lyrics, DJ Punch. Immediately, I fell in love. I had to be 7 years old.

I remember the lyric the guy said: “Dip, dip, dive/so socialized/you clean out your ears and you open your eyes.” When you just look at those words right there, it really makes a lot of sense.

It was a life-changing year for me. I stayed in New York that summer, and then we went back down South. I had to come back to New York in 1977 and was stuck here ever since.

My cousin, the GZA, who lived on Staten Island at that time, had cousins in Queens and in the Bronx. Soundview Projects in the Bronx was one of the founding projects of hip-hop. Being a few years older than me, GZA would take me up to the Bronx and that’s where I would hear M.C.s. We could say our style is traced back to the Bronx because it was Soundview Projects that really put the most inspiration on us. And of course, Jamaica, Queens.

At 11, you was almost an adult, especially in poverty situations. I’m talking about going from Park Hill, Staten Island, to the Wilson stop in Bushwick on the L train, and I did that every morning. That was just New York life.

GZA was already an M.C. I would just recite whatever he said, copy it. At the age of 9, I wrote my own first lyric. I would sit in school and just write lyrics all day. That was the kind of brain I had.

Before the Sugarhill Gang had a record on the radio, all we had was tapes. COLD CRUSH versus the Fantastic Freaks, Cold Crush versus the Force M.C.s, Busy Bee versus Kool Moe Dee. Those tapes, those Harlem World tapes, those uptown Bronx tapes circulating through the neighborhoods, those were our teachers.

But when I heard them on the radio, I was convinced that one day my voice was going to be on the radio. Me, O.D.B. and the GZA, we just pursued it. We would travel throughout New York, any opportunity that we could to show that we had talent.

We had bad contracts. The first contract, I’m glad I didn’t sign it. GZA and Ol’ Dirty signed it — we was probably 15, 16 years old, and it didn’t work. My first contract of course was with Tommy Boy at 19 years old, and that didn’t work either. I felt abandoned by the label. I felt that the best way to do it was to do it ourselves.

I formed my own company first, Wu-Tang Productions, and started selling records out of the trunk. Then when Loud got wind of us and offered us a deal, I went, “Nah. I can’t tie every member of this crew down to one location. This crew is big and we have to spread our wings. We have to take our talent and spread it through the industry.” I felt it was going to be impossible for all this energy to come out of one faucet. “Nah, I need more spigots.”

I thought that hip-hop was losing its roots.

And I knew that me, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty, Method Man, Ghost, we were purists. My plan was to infiltrate the industry. The purity of the culture was taking a left turn already in the ’90s, and I felt that we should enter the arena but spread it out like 36 chambers. We want our chambers to be everywhere.

You think about before us in the ’60s and ’70s, you got Elijah Muhammad making different temples around the country. Or Marcus Garvey giving us the idea that we as Black men and women have to stand up and be noble and plant our flags, calculate our lives. Those things were in the back of my head as an entrepreneur and as an artist.

Prior to us entering the industry, we always felt that Eric B. & Rakim, KRS-One, Run-DMC, Big Daddy Kane, LL Cool J — there was a moment in hip-hop, between like 1985 and 1988, that was just powerful, influential and pure still. And then ’89, ’90, ’91, it started getting diluted.

So then when we came in, we felt we was bringing it back pure, and our contemporaries, as well: Biggie Smalls, Nas, Mobb Deep, Busta Rhymes, Outkast. Our early shows, it was Outkast and Wu-Tang, popping up in Chicago. Ice Cube was probably the headliner, and we were the opening act. And a few of the underground peers who didn’t fully hit the chart surface: Brand Nubian, of course, De La Soul, Duck Down.

Hip-hop is a sport. Now Wu-Tang, of course, being nine M.C.s and egotistic, even though those were our peers, we felt we were the best. We felt nobody could beat Wu-Tang. That’s the Wu-Tang spirit.

When we hit No. 1 on the charts in the summer of ’97, beating the country artists and rock artists, it was like, “Wow, we did it.” And the cool thing about it was like it was without being pop. It wasn’t like we had a Top 40 record. It was just the culture itself, the path we walked.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Jeezy and 50 CENT — I remember my older sister had both CDs. I was born in 1994. I’m young, but I was hanging outside, so I was hanging around older guys. I’d already seen how they was living, how they was moving. The older guys was glorifying them. As I’m listening and I’m learning, it kind of shaped my life to this day, honestly.

You wanted the tank top, you wanted the money, you wanted to have that street feeling, like wherever you go, you’re the man. That’s what I got from Jeezy and 50 Cent.

I remember being 10, 11, I used to go on YouTube at my grandma’s house all day. Sometimes they had the lyrics, sometimes they didn’t. The songs that didn’t, I’d write the lyrics down myself. I’d listen to the first bar, figure it out and write it down.

It was local Atlanta artists — these were teen club songs. There wasn’t young rappers all around the world like there is now. Skooly with the Rich Kidz, “hundred thousand dollars in a rubber band.” Different little crews — the MDC boys had a song called “Splash Gang”; Yung Booke, “Sack Right, We Straight” went crazy; Yung Woo, “She Everything I Need.” We had them little MP3 players that you clicked.

Boosie’s always been a favorite, too. More than anything, he was from across the tracks. We were from across the tracks. He had them real neighborhood stories.

Music’s always been my inspiration, getting in my vibe, get my head going. But I didn’t ever think it could do nothing for me. That’s why I never did it.

I got out of prison on July 1, 2016. I went to the studio that day, put the headphones on and tried something. But I didn’t really make nothing. I remember telling one of my friends, “I don’t feel it yet. I’m gonna wait until I run me a bankroll up, and then I’m gonna come back.”

From always reading the lyrics growing up, I knew you needed a verse and then a hook and another verse. I sat in the studio with Young Thug, Migos, Peewee Longway, KC Da Beatmonster. I had a couple little buddies with those little in-the-closet studios.

Most of it was from watching — I’m a visual learner. That’s why I never write nothing down. To this day, I’ve never really seen the writing process, where they’re really writing raps. The punch-in process is freestyling, but not really freestyling. One line at a time, sometimes two lines at a time, sometimes three.

That first time I posted a song on my page and it went viral, I kinda liked that feeling. I never released the song, because it wasn’t actually a whole song. Me and Marlo, “Set Up Shop,” was the first song I recorded that came out. The next full song I recorded was “Option.” People loved it, but it was kind of cheesy to me. When “My Dawg” came out, I was like, “This is the one.”

The first time I got booked was at Club Bankhead, $750. Then I booked myself on Mondays at Crucial, the littest in Atlanta. We’d come in 50 deep, buying bottles. It was a wave. They were booking me for less than it cost me to come in there. But it was just the fact that we were getting paid to come.

Then I was booked Thursday to Sunday, performing at little clubs, the chitlin circuit. Every weekend, I’ve got a concert. I’d go to these new places and the song would come on and they’d go word for word. That’s how I knew every song was a hit.

I got a song like, “This month I want seven/I’ve been going up/next month I want 10.” That was for a show, I was getting $7,000. That journey, it’s been there in my songs. I went from seven to 10 to 50 to 60, then 150 then 200 then 250 then 400 then a million. And it ain’t going to stop until I stop.

I’m not saying it to brag, I was actually proud of it each time. Like $7,000 — I was astonished. “I get $7,000 to rap!?” I couldn’t have been more proud. You know what I had to do to make $7,000? And they’d give it to me to go in the club and have fun? Life is a dream, almost.

GUCCI MANE has definitely been one of several mascots for Atlanta. He put it on his back. Me and Gucci met before I started rapping, from the streets. Thug’s like my brother, we grew up together, versus Gucci Mane, who was like an idol. Guwap was like unc.

Ralo was one who gave me a sense, too, that I could do it. Because I know he’s a street dude. Even though Young Thug was a street dude, he’s been a rapper the whole time, so I never looked at him like he was doing what I could. That was his God-given talent and gift.

I look at all the people, even to this day, that are still in the game after 20, 30 years. I take bits and pieces from everybody, but the people I study the most are people who lasted for a long time. Swizz Beatz is one of my close mentors. I enrolled in his business class at Harvard. And I also study the people who didn’t last, who went out quick. I try to see who all has been at my level and then lost it — how they lost it, what they did wrong. I study that.

I appreciate Drake more than words can explain. But when he first called me for a Drake feature, I didn’t understand music the way that I do now. I think that’s why I did so good. I wasn’t like, “Oh my God, it’s Drake.” I didn’t know the real worth of it. I didn’t know what he was about to do for me. But that’s how I was able to get on there and just be free. Now it’s even harder for me to do a Drake record, because I know what I’m up against.

I used to be on some, “I ain’t no rapper, I’m a street .” Now I’m not a rapper, I’m a businessman. Rapping is still a business. As good a rapper as I need to be, I need to be a better businessman.

Hip-hop has opened every door for me — the people I meet to the way I set a trust up for my kids, every single thing for me in my life. Getting my record clean, setting a foundation for my family, not having to look over my shoulder.

I was just in prison in 2016. Now it’s 2023 and I’m almost on the top of the world. I’m sitting in an office now and I’ve got 300 pieces of mail. I’ve been an adult and not gotten a single piece of mail. Nobody had my address, all the bills were in somebody else’s name. Now I’ve been gone a week, I come home and I’ve got 300 pieces of mail.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Seeing hip-hop on MTV or BET, that was a different type of hip-hop. It was all East Coast predominant. Even on the radio in Houston, I remember hearing West Coast music and wondering like, why? The East Coast, a lot of what they said, I didn’t know what they were talking about, ’cause, you know, the translation is a little bit different in the slang. We understood the West Coast a little bit more ’cause it was like a migration of people from the South that moved to the West Coast, and a lot of their music was funk- or blues-based, similar to how a lot of Southern music and hip-hop was blues-based.

But when we heard the Texas music, that’s when we heard people speaking our language to us. The GETO BOYS and the Screwed Up Click, it was all kind of the same era for me. Rap-A-Lot was seen as the super mainstream, they represented us on a worldwide scale, where the Screwed Up Click was more of an underground thing. We took pride in both of them, but for different reasons.

I remember being like 15, this would’ve been ’97, riding in one of my friends’ car, going to school, him rifling through just different mixtapes and then putting a Screw tape on, that’s how we would listen to it.

A lot of that era was very territorial. The Screw tapes and Screwed Up Click was a Southside thing, but it was almost like blasphemy if you were on the Northside listening to the Screw tapes. I was an undercover Screw head, it only would be a few of us really listening to the Screw tapes like that. There was a few people that I went to school with that moved from the Southside to the Northside, so they would have the new Screw tapes, “Hey, this is what I got when I went to my grandma house this weekend.” If you had that Screw tape, you would be the man.

When I started working, I would be like stocking shelves, overnight type stuff, no customers in the store. So you turn on the “attention shopper” monitor, put a rubber band around it and have a radio playing a Screw tape all through the store.

Listening to Screw tapes, it’d be a particular artist freestyling that really clicked with you. I really liked Lil’ Keke, Fat Pat, Big Pokey. You’d be like, “Which is the one where Lil’ Keke is rapping on the MC LYTE beat? Let me find that one.”

They weren’t confined by the vocabulary you’re taught in the book. They created their own vocabulary. Keke specifically is a wordsmith who would just create his own words, his own slang. I mean, honestly, any slang that we know today that’s Houston-related or Texas-related, Keke’s the one who said it first about 95 percent of the time.

When it comes to Fat Pat, he had a swag to him with him being a big boy but also real player. A lot of the music he made was about girls liking him, so it was that whole player swag. That’s who you would idolize or look to be. Fat Pat’s the first person I ever heard talk about having diamonds in his teeth.

Big Pokey was laid back, he had a softer tone to his voice, but it also was like very deep and aggressive at the same time. So him being nicknamed the hardest pit in the litter, it really fit him because it was almost like a growl of a dog when you heard him rap.

My favorite Screw tapes, there’s a few of them. “Leanin’ on a Switch” is probably my favorite one. “Who’s Next Wit Plex” is another. Still to this day, when I’m riding around, I’ll put ’em on.

When the Swishahouse came about and started to be a Northside thing, then it was like, oh we can do it too. Of the Swishahouse tapes, a lot of my favorites are the Slim Thug freestyles. “Northside 9,” “Northside 10,” where I remember Slim Thug and J-Dawg just going off. Also in the Swishahouse, they would do this thing where it would be four or five people and they would say one or two lines and then it’d go to the next person, like a pass the mic kind of thing, but you wouldn’t spit a whole verse. Unfortunately, I never got to be a part of that. But those are some of the most iconic Swishahouse freestyles.

I made regular-speed music and it being slowed down was something you would dream of — making a song and it got to be so popular or big that a D.J., whether it be DJ Screw, Michael Watts, DJ Bone, any of these other D.J.s would slow it down and you’d hear it on a mixtape.

Michael Watts opening the door, allowing me to rap with the Swishahouse, was something where I was able to showcase my talent in a different way. I did two freestyles for Watts, and one of the ones we did was a intro for his radio show. And I remember hearing that on the radio like, man, we on the radio with a freestyle! Like, that’s crazy. So many people are trying to make it that traditional path that you gonna be waiting forever. But if you go one of these other ways and do something different, then you’ll be first in line.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Middle school was a really important time, that’s when I realized that I was into hip-hop, specifically. All the mainstream artists, to be honest, that are GOAT-ed now. A lot of Drake, Nicki, Kendrick.

My dad rapped — he’s pretty private, so I wasn’t like, sitting there listening to his mixtapes. I would say he’s more like a freestyle type of rapper. It’s not like that was his whole life, but thinking back, that’s probably where it could have sparked for me, personally.

When drill started happening, I remember listening to a lot of Pop Smoke and Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow. I just enjoyed the overall feelings that the music gives, that summertime vibe. In my earphones, that’s what I was playing. Just listening to their beat selections and their choice of topics, I feel like that inspired me a lot.

I’m still growing and learning as an artist. I wouldn’t even say like, we’re fully here. Like we’ve arrived at my sound. It’s always changing and evolving. But I feel like in a couple years people will refer to this as my “Like..?” era.

My approach is really a reflection of my personality. That’s just how I am in real life. And I feel like I’ve always been influencing people, even before everything popped off, whether it was at school or whatever the case. But now it’s on a bigger scale, so it’s way better now. It’s musically, but also when it comes to how people wear their hair or how they wanna wear their makeup, how they wear their nails. Even with the lingo, certain things they say in songs, beat selection, cadence, personality. There’s so much to take inspo from.

But, you know, I feel like we’re all constantly influencing each other. I do the same thing in my own way. Like, I’ve taken inspo from so many different pieces of the world that I can only be flattered by it, you know what I’m saying? Like whenever I find myself almost feeling a certain way — like, Oh, why this person sound just like me or why they trying to look like me? — I have to remember like, that’s the whole point. That’s just how art works.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I think my earliest memories were hearing the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, and then the Soul Sonic Force, “Planet Rock.” I remember Kurtis Blow had a record called “Way Out West” — “Way out West from way back East/Coming from the place you’d expect the least/There came a stranger dressed in black/from a Harlem town a long way back/Had a Stetson hat with a band of gold.” I still remember it ’til this day. That’s the impact Kurtis Blow had on hip-hop.

I started going up to New York in my early teenage years, and started hearing and seeing the real elements of hip-hop, listening to WBLS on the radio. My cousin from uptown would send tapes to me, so I would always have the new hip-hop first.

In Houston, there was a hip-hop show called “Kidz Jamm” that came on 90.9. FM. There was also a local D.J. by the name of Darryl Scott. That’s how we really got turned on to hip-hop. The first local artist I heard was Captain Jack. He was a D.J., and he made a record called “Jack It Up.”

I was a D.J. first. My main influence was Jam Master Jay, the ultimate of all D.J.s. Then came the D.J. that could rap: Grandmaster Dee from Whodini, right? I could rap, too, so I knew if I ever had to battle Grandmaster Dee I was going to douse his ass. That’s what I prepared my whole D.J. career on: battling Grandmaster Dee.

I liked to cut Eric B. & Rakim’s “Eric B. Is President” and the Beastie Boys’ “Hold It Now, Hit It.” I was more the backspin, cut and spin D.J. — I got into learning how to transform later. But as time went on I started moving more towards writing rhymes and producing.

The early Geto Boys made a song called “Car Freak,” and I thought they were famous, you know? But I didn’t know the realities of the music business until I got with Jukebox, Ready Red, Bushwick Bill and Willie D. Prince Johnny C had left the group, and when Jukebox left, it was just me, Will and Bill. That’s when we made “Grip It! On That Other Level.” Me and Willie did all the writing, we wrote for Bill.

I always tell people that I’m a hip-hop hybrid of Ice Cube, Chuck D and Big Daddy Kane. I wanted to be able to tell a story like CUBE. I wanted to be very lyrical like Kane. And I wanted to have an in-your-face delivery like Chuck. As much respect as I have for Nas and Jay-Z, if it hadn’t been for that previous level of intensity in rhyming, I wouldn’t be me.

I’m just thankful that LL Cool J talked to my mom on the telephone during the New Music Seminar. This was when I first started rapping, a few months before “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” This was the first time the Geto Boys got the chance to perform in New York, had to be around ’90. I don’t know what my mom and LL talked about, but I was on a pay phone with my mom and I was just so glad. And the Geto Boys got booed!

I think there were some artists booing us. Some of the other group members think it was probably A Tribe Called Quest. Nah, I’m just messing with you, because me and Q-TIP are cool as hell. That’s where we met, out in New York. And we toured together, too.

Q-Tip and I have formed a really dope friendship. He’ll just call and say, “Man, I’m just calling to tell you I love you, bro …” Well, I love you, too, Tip. That’s a very different matchup.

Being somebody that was born with this manic depressive mind-set and just a sick disorder mentally, I found an outlet through my music. You saw me succeed. You saw me fail. I know that hip-hop saved me. But at the same time it took away from me being a good father, a good husband, a good son, a good uncle. The music stole me from everything that I should have been, but it still made me everything that I could have been, if that makes sense.

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BUN B
Q-TIP


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

We used to breakdance — put down our little cardboard, you know, the early days of RUN-DMC blasting out the big speakers: “Peter Piper picked peppers.” I remember just being a kid walking to the park and hearing it on the bass speakers. Like, it sounds foreign, something I’d never heard before in my life.

Just looking at how they were dressed — leather gooses and Adidas and suede Pumas — you really identify with that because that’s what you saw dudes in the neighborhoods wearing. Before that, entertainers, you expect to see them in suits — a little more like costumes.

My first album that I ever had was a Christmas gift, and it was “Follow the Leader.” I remember running home from school to the closest spot we could get to — it was, like, my boy’s crib — because they said the new Rakim video was coming out. The “Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em” video, dude sitting on the Rolls-Royce, it was like a damn movie.

Rakim presented hip-hop in a way where I felt like I could participate. It wasn’t in your face with the showmanship. He was more cool and laid back. You could just tell he was rhyming with his inside voice, displaying intelligence. I felt like I could become an M.C.

I wasn’t thinking about making songs. Back in the day, it was more like the cypher, battling, who got the best rhymes. At that age, you don’t even have beats to make songs.

I went to school with Busta’s younger brother. I had a reputation around the town for rhyming. So when BUSTA was starting to develop his own label, when he was first starting Flipmode, he had reached out.

Being around Busta, I learned how hard it is to be successful in the entertainment business. He’s literally like a cyborg. He doesn’t sleep. Like, he works every day, in the studio every single night, you know? I was, like, man, at what point do you celebrate being rich and famous? Success isn’t a destination, it’s a constant voyage.

The internet changed everything. People are sharing music and you can’t keep things suppressed like you probably could at one point. You know, it only takes one person you like to post something that they like, and then bang, you know?

The transition when it became more about the internet really benefited me, because around that time I couldn’t get a deal with a major label after my Flipmode situation. Like, OK, cool, we don’t need the middleman anymore. We could just upload our music and just let the fans decide what they rocking with.

Not only me — it’s helped a bunch of us become heroes. My guy Bronson, Ka, Westside and Griselda, Hommy, Currensy — I’d say I was instrumental in most of their start-ups. It’s just mutual respect. LIL B, you know what I’m saying? That’s definitely somebody I linked up with that probably people wouldn’t have expected me to be a big fan of. I like that he’s fearless.

Young Thug, too. When Thug came on the scene I was, like, Man, this dude’s a genius. This is like James Brown 3000! I don’t know what he’s saying, I just know that sounds funky.

You know, living in New York City most of my life, I’ve never heard MF Doom on the radio once. And he’s a legend. You could see the disconnect. Doom was doing this before all of us, this independent grind.

To a certain degree, I would say Long Island artists are slighted. Rakim, EPMD, De La Soul, MF Doom, myself — it’s a lot of heat coming out of Long Island, you know what I’m saying? And Prodigy is from Long Island. I feel like saying it’s unsung would be untrue. But we definitely have a steeper hill to climb than maybe if we were from Brooklyn or Queens.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(aside: forever on the Rushmore of beat bass drops)


I started watching, paying attention when I was 8, 9 years old. I’ll be here forever telling you a bunch of names, but people that I loved was KRS-One. Kool G Rap, Slick Rick, 3rd Bass, EPMD, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST, N.W.A, Gang Starr, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature. I remember going to the Gap trying to get polka dot shirts because Kwamé had a polka dot shirt.

To me it was neck and neck between the conscious and the street rap, then all of a sudden the gangster just took over. Maybe because what was going on outside of rap with the drugs and crime. Maybe that elevated gangster music more than regular music.

My aunt lives in Inglewood, so I used to go to California in the summers and hear the radio and they wasn’t playing what we was playing. And then I went to Navarro College in Corsicana, Texas, in ’94. And I remember getting to school and it was like a culture shock almost, ’cause it was no New York music being played. All they played was BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY. Also these guys that I wasn’t aware of that had a big influence on the South, UGK. I loved it. With UGK, I think BUN B can rap with anybody, any state. I think Pimp C was more a lifestyle thing. Bun and Pimp, they mesh beautifully.

When I came home from Christmas break that year, “Shook Ones” was out and I was like, yeah, New York! I went back to school with “Shook Ones” on a cassette tape and I kept playing that every day. That had me in the New York mentality and I end up pistol-whipping somebody and getting kicked out of school.

So with me being from New York, I learned a balance. I don’t want to act like I’m not a lyricist, but then at the same time it may be too much for people. I probably have more male listeners, but I always keep in the back in my mind, I want some girls coming to my show, too. This one of my top three rappers, but I’ve never heard any girl be like, yo, throw that Kool G Rap on.

I remember when I was on the verge of getting a deal. I was at this girl house and Jay-Z was just coming out. He didn’t have an album yet. His first few singles was out. I’m like, yo, Nas is nice, man. She like, nah, I like Jay-Z. She said, Cam, I don’t want to carry a dictionary to the club with me when I go out.

That Nas and Jay-Z argument, it wasn’t just with the girl. I seen it starting to happen in different conversations and I was like, Jay is kind of the new standard. Before we had phones, when I didn’t have a deal, I used to keep 100 different loose-leaf papers in my pocket. I was like, whenever Jay-Z come out with something, I gotta come out with something because I seen where it was going and how people started adapting to him.

There wasn’t anybody that we said we need to be like them or rap like them. What I did see was that movements were always accepted. Whether it was the Native Tongues, the Hit Squad, or whether it was Cash Money or No Limit, or Roc-A-Fella or Murder Inc. I was like, I could create a team to where if you don’t like Cam, you may like Juelz. If you don’t like Juelz or Cam, you may like Jim Jones. ’Cause we used to be on my block arguing about who was the best in No Limit and people used to be like, oh, y’all don’t even know about Mr. Serv-On. And I would pay attention to these arguments and I’d be like, yo, everybody likes No Limit, but they have their favorites. So as long as you like No Limit, it don’t even really matter, ’cause you like the brand.

I remember Master P arguing with a D.J. in New York. I won’t say the name. And they was trying to say, yo man, if you come to New York, we could give you this, this and this, ’cause Master P never had been in New York. And Master P, I remember him telling the D.J., look man, I don’t need New York. I don’t need y’all. I’m good. And I was like, yo, is really eating outside of New York. So I already knew it’s an audience for that, so I always kept that in my mind.

Years later, Pimp C called me one day and he said, “Hey man, I’m about to dis the whole East Coast except for y’all. Them up there be fronting. I believe y’all raps, man. I was at ‘106 & Park,’ I seen Juelz. He had a Maserati, that thing was cute. Everybody else, they ain’t getting no money like us down here. But I think y’all are.’”

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EARL SWEATSHIRT


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Nipsey Russell was a comedian who had the ability to make words rhyme anytime, about anything. My first time being exposed to him was on “Hollywood Squares” or something, and he went on from the moment he started to the moment he left the show. I said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

I remember trying it for the entire day, from the moment I got off the bed to when I brushed my teeth, when I’m in the kitchen doing dishes, and by the end of the day, I felt like I had it down pat. I guess that was the origin of Roxanne Shanté.

I grew up in Queensbridge public housing — the largest housing project in the world — going to park jams, when neighborhood D.J.s would bring out their equipment and their speakers. I remember the very first time ever going to listen and hearing, “Bertha’s going to be there!” So, I’m thinking she’s this woman that brings this party. Later on, I found out that Bertha was actually a speaker.

Once you went to a park jam in Queensbridge, it was something that was in you. It’s like being young and leaving a karate movie and all of a sudden you want to kick, you want to chop, you want to try it. You felt like, I got to be able to do this.

The acoustics in the hallway in the projects have a little echo to it. For some reason the beat sounds really good when you bang on the wall in the projects, or if you bang on a stair railing, or even in the elevator. We would just rhyme, which is what I nicknamed the Nipsey Russell syndrome, because sometimes you can’t cut it off.

When hip-hop started, I was 3. I didn’t get a chance to be exposed to M.C.s from the Bronx. For me, everything was Queens. We didn’t travel to the Bronx like that. I think every borough has its own unique origin of hip-hop.

I came in as a battle rapper. By the time I was 15 years old, they wouldn’t allow me to even enter into M.C. contests anymore. “Is this the little girl with the braces? No, she can’t enter.” It actually became a source of income from my household. We would find flyers. “Oh yes, let me go get that money.” There weren’t any other women that were like me because I was willing to battle male, female, whoever came along.

That’s why my first record happened to be a battle record and an answer record to “Roxanne Roxanne” by UTFO. Everyone was playing it throughout the projects, and I love the beat because it’s one of those easy beats that you can do on the wall: boom, boom, boom-boom.

For “Roxanne’s Revenge,” I actually wasn’t trying to make a record. I was going to do laundry and hip-hop producer Marley Marl, who happened to live right above the laundromat, said, “Hey, listen, I need you to come to my house. I heard that you can rhyme. It’s not going to take you long.”

I said, “You’re right, it’s not going to take too long. So, let me go put my clothes in the laundry.” When I went up to his house, he played the instrumental of “Roxanne Roxanne,” and I just did a freestyle, you know, using my Nipsey Russell syndrome. I finished it, and I went back downstairs and did laundry. I never wanted to make records or pursue a hip-hop career. I never wanted to do any of that.

There was over 86 response records that were made just for Roxanne Shanté, and we will never have that again. One of the surefire ways in order to be heard at the time, especially during and after the Roxanne Wars, was to make a record about Roxanne Shanté, because she will answer it. She’ll battle anybody.

I was supposed to get a pair of western Sergio Valente jeans, because Marley Marl worked at the factory. Growing up in the projects, you would do anything for a pair of jeans. That seemed like a fair exchange, but I never got the Sergios. I need to say that: I got a hell of a career, but I never got the jeans.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(aside: the 4th generation OKP in me still can't help but be miffed they didn't pick "Can I" with The Roots for a truly mystical story anchor)


My earliest memory is LL COOL J and some of the New York rappers. And of course, N.W.A and ICE CUBE. But Scarface and the Geto Boys, man. Face is the one. I could visualize what he was saying. I hadn’t heard nobody tell a story about living down South. On one line Face was talking about how he was selling dope in the apartments, and that’s the stuff I was seeing in Memphis.

I grew up on DJ Squeeky — Squeeky used to have the club rocking. I listened to 8Ball & MJG. And anything Cash Money. Those are our guys, we was messing with them before they made it big. Paul and Juicy was on them before they even blew up.

When I made my first tape, I had a robbery charge pending. They were trying to give me 30 years, so I wasn’t thinking about no future in rap. But my brother and I could always make a word rhyme. I grew up around a lot of pimps on the street. I would ask them about their little pimp sayings. I would hear them saying it and I would flip it and turn it around in my raps. The pimps were my major influence.

Back in the days, New York didn’t accept rappers who weren’t from there. So I knew I made it when Funkmaster Flex dropped a bomb on my song. I was in New York one time and this is when “Sippin’ on Some Syrup” was rolling. Three 6 Mafia had sold something like two million copies of the whole album. So Flex dropped a bomb on “Sippin’ on Some Syrup,” right? And then he turned around and played “Chickenhead” and dropped a bomb on that one. I couldn’t believe it.

Then I did a show back in 2010 in New York, and the whole ASAP Rocky crew was there. I couldn’t believe it. And I was the headliner and the whole show was sold out. And when Cardi B made that “Bickenhead” song, man, that was a blessing. We love all the different artists that came after us — they keep us alive.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

My location was around Vyse Avenue, 174th Street, 171st Street, 173rd Street, right over the bridge from the Bronx River. I started hearing music in the parks just before the summer of the blackout, 1977. It was more funky, it hadn’t crossed over to the hip-hop era.

DJ HOLLYWOOD is older, he was doing the club thing, Club 371. They were considered more like a disco type of D.J.s at that particular time. We didn’t wear the things that our predecessors wore. We wore sneakers, things that was very comfortable for us. We also had the atmosphere, the B-boy, breaking. In ’78, ’79, a lot of parties started happening, places started opening up to hip-hop. The Dixie Club on Freeman Street, Lovebug Starski started playing at the Burger King.

I started writing rhymes around ’77 when I was in the Hoe Avenue Boys & Girls Club. The Furious Three, the Furious Four, the Furious Five — they were really, really good on the mic. They were the M.C. group that pushed you to want to push yourself. Then it was the L Brothers with Master Rob and Kevie Kev. They were really out there too, playing the Dover and a lot of community centers.

The first group I was with was the AsSalaam Brothers. After we broke up, Donald D and myself went to try out for the Funk Machine. He made it, I didn’t. Then I joined the Cold Crush.

As hip-hop progressed and everybody got really good, we used to have meetings at the Police Athletic League with this guy named Blood. All the groups who were established at the time, it was Flash and the Furious Five, the Funky Four Plus One More, Cold Crush Brothers, AJ and Busy Bee. And the Mercedes Ladies was there as well. And we had meetings because we wanted to establish that if one group was playing in a particular borough, the other groups would play outside the five boroughs. That was something that no one talked about.

Flash, Disco Bee, they had a sound system. They used to record tapes. Then you had AJ and Busy Bee, they used to record. L Brothers had tapes. But their sound systems and their tapes were not crispy clear, because people used to stand in front of their system with a radio and record it. So one of my friends from fourth grade, his name is Elvis, he was actually the first tape master in the world of hip-hop as we know it. We let him plug directly into our system.

Once he plugged into our system, that was the end of that — Cold Crush tapes went triple platinum all over the world.

The tapes used to be distributed in this way: If you had a brother that was in the Army or Navy, in Japan or Germany, they used to mail the tape there. So our tapes got distribution all over the world. And they were clear as well, so it was like you were actually at the party.

Also back in the early days, there was this car service called OJ. You can rent an OJ for $40, put it on hold for an entire day. In the OJ they always had the hottest cassette tape. And so there was Cold Crush tapes in there.

One of our biggest tapes was when we battled the Fantastic Five for hip-hop supremacy in 1981 at Harlem World. That tape kind of changed the complexity of the culture, meaning that the rhyming style that was done by the other M.C.s, we changed that ’cause it was becoming kind of boring. So we brought a different kind of rhyme style to the table, along with the showmanship and stage performances.

When “Rapper’s Delight” came out, we were already past that style and that kind of flow. And they weren’t really part of the hip-hop community, so no one really took them seriously, the record wasn’t being celebrated. We actually did not wanna make records at all. We didn’t understand the value of them because we had something to us that was very valuable at that particular time — our stage show and our tapes.

Later on, Russell Simmons approached us when RUN-DMC was just getting kind of hot. He said, “My brothers are getting bigheaded. I want them to battle y’all so y’all can show them exactly what it’s all about.” Later on we found out that he had gave them a cassette tape and told them that this is the group that you have to be better than. So they study our tapes and our style. So when you see Run-DMC, you see a part of us and our flow and our hard rhyming style.

In 1984 when “Sucker M.C.s” was the hottest record in the country, we had a show in Chicopee, Mass., at a roller skating rink, Run-DMC and the Cold Crush Brothers. We did our show and we do what we do. We rocked it. But they were the hottest, they were the bigger ticket. But it was very humbling and honorable, they came into our dressing room and said, “Listen, we want to be like y’all. Y’all are the standard which we want to get to.”

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DMC
KOOL MOE DEE
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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I call myself the greatest game-spitter of all time. A game-spitter is somebody that spit that slang, the street , all angles. I might touch down on a pimp. I might touch down on being over the stove, twisting the pot counterclockwise, serving the dope wet. I might talk about when a guy about to get jacked, or about to pull a lick, or when he’s going to get his head tore off, you know? It was whole ’nother angle of the game that the Bay Area was on back then.

I was the first rapper talking about zippers — calling ounces “zippers,” that’s 28 grams. I was the first one calling them “units.” I was the first rapper screaming “choppers” — it came from Chicago, from Al Capone. I could document all that. Everybody’s saying “slaps” — I brought that to the rap game. It came from me, Earl Stevens, E-40, hands down.

So many things didn’t come out of my brain; it came from the streets. When rappers are from the urban community, they talk about their surroundings and what they done picked up here and there — in the pen, wherever they at. That’s me.

In Oakland in the ’80s, the local D-boy would have enough gouda to shoot Too Short some money — it could’ve been $500, it could’ve been a thou-wow — to make a song just about them. Calvin T and Magic Mike, from Richmond, Calif., they were doing the same thing. These are local songs circulating through dubbed tapes. They were a big influence on me.

And Ice-T. He was speaking a language that most of us was living. People don’t give him enough credit. We have a mutual love and respect for each other because game recognize game. He seen my whole hustle in the underground, selling tapes out the trunk of a car.

I was a rapper that invested in myself. We was doing this when Moby Dick was a goldfish. A&Rs didn’t get what we was talking about. A lot of times it would go over their head like a flying saucer, you know what I’m saying? That’s just the same as out there with 8Ball & MJG, Master P. Everybody was doing it independently. When we did independent music we did it by force, not by choice. I signed my distribution deal with Jive Records in 1994. The whole Bay Area followed my blueprint after that.

When I came out with “Ghetto Report Card,” I was 37, 38 years old. My whole career was just revived. It was amazing. I was part of the crunk movement and the hyphy movement at the same time. “U and Dat,” “Snap Yo Fingers” and so on. We had the South and the West Coast.

Imagine if there was streaming back then when we had “Tell Me When to Go,” “Bitch,” “Choices.” We would be diamond on each one of those records. I put new life into the West Coast in 2006. And that’s no ifs, ands or buts. Can’t nobody say I didn’t, with the help of Lil Jon. And it’s never stopped since then.

That’s my role — they call me the Ambassador of the Bay. And I don’t know nobody else there that represents it like me.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

(aside: could just be me but I truly can't believe they chose this song - even LL's comments offer nothing, so I can't help but wonder what I'm missing here)


It really started with the tapes that were floating around the city. The COLD CRUSH and the Fantastic Romantic 5 and the Force M.C.s and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four, and then Five M.C.s. And then later on it was Fearless Four and the Treacherous Three. And Zulu Nation.

I lived between Long Island and Queens, but I actually got exposed more on Long Island because next door to me was a whole house full of foster kids, and they were from the five boroughs, but mainly the Bronx and Uptown. They were bringing tapes, some better quality than others, so I was hearing everything way earlier. I was hearing it as it was unfolding.

One day I was in the hallway in junior high, I had already been rhyming for quite a while, and this kid was singing part of a Jimmy Spicer song: “This D.J., he gets down, mixing records while they go ’round.” The light was coming through the hall and it was just me and him, he didn’t know I was there. I just remember the way he looked when he was singing that. And the way it sounded — it just clicked for me. I said, That’s what I want to do for real. I actually want to step into that dimension. It was like a dream.

From there I just started joining a lot of groups. Some rejected me. At the end of the day, I just worked really, really hard. I went everywhere. I was all over the city. I was all over Queens. I started going uptown to Harlem. At about maybe 15, 16, right before I actually ended up recording, I started hanging out with a guy named Silver Fox. Silver Fox was like a tutor for me when it came to the craft of writing rhymes and cadences and lyrics and all that. He also mentored Kool G Rap in a different way. Fox was real skillful, and he was a very prolific songwriter.

Lyrically, I was inspired by Melle Mel, Spoonie Gee, the Treacherous Three, the Fearless Four — DLB, Tito, Mighty Mike C, Peso. Those were the guys that really were into wordplay. A lot of their wordplay still holds up very well. They all had unbelievable style, and I was able to learn a lot from them. It’s kind of like I would imagine a guitar player sitting down and listening to how people roll them licks and hit them chords, and then after a while you just kind of develop your own thing.

One thing led to another. I was just sending tapes out and finally, obviously, my tape got in the hands of Rick Rubin in his dorm and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys. By the time I got to “I Need a Beat,” I was ready to rhyme on any stage, in any arena, with anybody.

I did run into a little bit of arrogance here and there, which is why I’ve always tried my best not to treat anybody the way some of these guys treated me. It was a very small community, though. No industry. In other words, there were no managers. Russell Simmons ended up managing people, but he was still learning his way. There was no network of people. It was just a few believers here and there. I’m a generation 1.5 artist — myself, Run-DMC, Beastie Boys. Meaning that we tapped into the culture, evolved with the culture, but then we are the ones who went out and actually turned it into a full-blown, worldwide global industry.

Bonus
LL COOL J MEETS PAUL SIMON


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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I’ve been into the whole James Brown, Bootsy Collins, George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic thing since fourth or fifth grade. There were a lot of songs before “Rapper’s Delight” that had a little hip-hop vibe, but just didn’t have that name. It wasn’t called rapping. And you don’t even realize it until you go back and grow up a little more and listen back to songs of your childhood. James Brown is talking and, you know, telling you the breakdown’s coming — give me the horns. It’s just there.

I don’t even know if that was related to the New York streets in the ’70s or whatever, but I do know that words and rhythms were said over disco and funk records. But you know, once “Rapper’s Delight” hit, I think the DNA of hip-hop was planted in me. I would never not like that kind of music ever again.

I’m like, 13, pushing on 14. My father has a really nice stereo system set up in the living room. I’m talking like ’79, and if you’re what they called an audiophile, which he was, you really wanted to have your speaker set up for you to sit in a certain area and get a great musical experience. I got a little window between 3:30, 4, when I get home, and 5:30, 6, when he gets home from work. So those two hours, I could play it and just play it loud. “Rapper’s Delight” was the favorite, and there was another song that came out around that time, Parliament-Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” “Rapper’s Delight” is approaching like, 15 minutes on the 12-inch and “Knee Deep” is about the same. I would just play those two records back to back — you play them twice each and an hour’s gone by, you know?

Before there was any definitive identity in music-making for myself, it was purely based on anything George Clinton did. Any relation to Parliament-Funkadelic was the inspiration for how the music should go, how the drum pattern should go, how the bass line should go, how the breakdown should go. I always look at James Brown like, you know, the New York guys already got to that. They’re getting all the best samples and you’re too late on that train right there. But not a lot of people had gotten into the Parliament-Funkadelic and just recycled the funk.

The first rappers that had a profound effect on me were Spoonie Gee and Melle Mel. Spoonie Gee was just silky smooth with it — he was a player, one of the first players, if not the first, on the microphone — and he told stories of his day, just interacting with people and the ladies. He was just my favorite. These songs are coming out about these parties and kicking it and bragging — the early days, Sugar Hill Records. Then all of a sudden, here comes a guy who’s like, I’ve met this lady and I took her to my spot and I her. And it’s like, he’s my guy.

And Melle Mel, “The Message,” it was just an amazing insight on New York life. I was already rapping when “The Message” came out, but there was no substance to what I was doing. It motivated me to start writing songs about my city. And that changed everything.

In my tapes, I’m using all the latest slang words. I’m naming popular people in the neighborhood. I’m talking about current events, whatever is, like, really ours. We talking 1982, ’83. “Rap is hot, but we got our kid right here. Too Short, he’s ours.” The entire east side of Oakland knew about us because we sold tapes in the streets. When we went into the streets and first started selling tapes, we only sold tapes to drug dealers. We had like a paper route of drug-selling spots.

I had all these little books that I would write rhymes in and my mom found them. I don’t know what she read. She never approached me and said anything. She just wrote this long letter saying, “I didn’t raise you like this. I hope you don’t believe in this stuff. Why are you doing this?” It was enough to make a brother want to cry.

You think James Brown’s mama would have been like, boy, stop gyrating and dancing? Or Little Richard’s mama? I don’t know. It’s the next generation. And my generation right now does not understand the look and the vibe that 16-year-old rappers are on. But you look at the video and it’s 300 million hits. Somebody gets it.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

The first time I remember being exposed to what we’re calling hip-hop now is Lovebug Starski on the mic at the Renaissance in New York, 138th and 7th Avenue. It was something I felt in my inner being. There was something going on inside me that said, I wanted to be a part of what that was.

Being a child of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, that whole revolutionary thought process was part of my DNA. I was pretty let down that the draft was done by the time I was 12, because I so looked forward to the day that I could be like Muhammad Ali. I was looking forward to not enlisting. So when I saw hip-hop, I had the same feeling: I’ll have a platform. That was my primary thought: I get the chance to do my Malcolm X thing on a mic one day. Hip-hop gave me the first inkling of that being possible.

Melle Mel was the first person that made me think that it was possible to take the lyrical content to where I wanted to take it. But Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder gave me the inkling that you could actually put lyrics together and make an impact beyond just the music. “Songs in the Key of Life” was the most double-entendre, witty thought process, just in terms of the poetry in the title alone. And Maurice White — forget about it. When I heard the record “Fantasy” — “You will find/Other kind/That has been in search for you” — that was absolute peak metaphor for me. The fact that they were doing that kind of poetry on top of music was my actual genuine, genuine, genuine, genuine inspiration. I would say a calling, quite frankly.

I could not believe that Earth, Wind & Fire felt similar about me that I did about them. We were doing a cruise a couple years back, and they were rushing through the galleys to try to get to my show. When Verdine White broke down the difference in my cadence from the average M.C.? I was floating.

At one point, we were being belittled and looked down upon: That’s that bibbity-bop hip-hop stuff. But when Public Enemy and Chuck D got to be the center of attention, I was proud to say I was a rapper. “I do what they do.” Public Enemy took us beyond where most people thought we could take it. I make a little analogy that hip-hop has given Black America the chance to experience what white privilege feels like.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I was a popular dancer in high school and I saw rap from the B-boy stance when rap was being plugged up into the streetlights. When I was going to school, the COLD CRUSH BROTHERS were going to school with me. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that I started rapping, which turned into Ultramagnetic MCs.

I met Ced Gee when we were going to high school together and we formed the group. We listened to the Treacherous Three, who would use a lot of big words in their raps. They were using words nobody was using. We looked at the Treacherous Three like, This is the point of hip-hop. I want to rhyme like this. I don’t want to do the “Yes, yes y’all, ya don’t stop the body rock!” They put pen to paper. Now rap was about vocabulary. It was no longer baby rhymes.

T La Rock was one of the most high-tech rappers at that time with the technical words. I was hanging with Greg Nice. We had a chance to see everybody from the super old-school acts all the way up to Spoonie Gee, RUN-DMC and Whodini. They were all out with records before we even had a deal.

At the time there was a craze happening where everyone was using TV-show themes. So we waited for that craze to go by and that’s when rap started going heavy with the samples. It became MC Shan, Eric B. & Rakim and then Ultra. So when “Ego Trippin’” came out, that was like the third record that shocked everybody like, Wow, this is different!

We pressed up 500 copies of “Ego Trippin’.” We hit Red Alert off, and I delivered the records straight to Marley Marl’s house. I remember Big Daddy Kane was in the kitchen. That’s where Marley had his mic set up.

Marley was really open to it. He spun it on WBLS. And then I gave Chuck Chillout a copy in person. I remember me and Funkmaster Flex used to talk in his car about different rappers.

To be honest, a lot of rappers were jealous of Ultramagnetic MCs, but when “Ego Trippin’” came out, there was nothing you could do because every car had it playing up and down the block. You would hear it in every project. All you would hear is “MC’s Ultra! MC’s Ultra!” everywhere you went. I would go through the projects and people would scream and we didn’t even have a video out. I wasn’t popular on TV. I don’t know how people had a vision of knowing a person without even seeing them on social media, on Instagram. Back then it was more about the flyers and posters and people seeing you on a show with Boogie Down Productions.

If you listen to the second verse of “Ego Trippin’,” I was just making the words fit on a beat. I wasn’t trying to rhyme: “Through the scientific matter I probe for evidence/Leading melodies obtaining slight positive beams/Of the average formulation, apply mechanically.” And people didn’t even know what I was doing because the first verse of the record was more straight rap. The beat was so hot and the chorus was so dramatic that you didn’t even realize the second verse didn’t rhyme.

At that time, I liked Lakim Shabazz. I liked Latee’s “This Cut’s Got Flavor” and stuff like that. But once we were out, I tried not to follow rap in a lyrical way because I thought that if I listened to everybody’s rhymes a lot, I wouldn’t have my own originality. I used to buy funk records like Con Funk Shun because I was a dancer. I bought Undisputed Truth and Cameo. My main inspiration was Slave. That’s why Ultra’s music was like that. I didn’t grow up on jazz. I didn’t know about Ron Carter or Ronnie Laws.

When I started the Dr. Octagon project, I had so much material piled up that I had to break it up into different characters. People thought I was just being weird, but I was being a businessman. A lot of artists were stuck as just one person. They had to do a record deal with that same style again. But I had a lot of ideas. I think that’s why Parliament-Funkadelic opened my mind up. They had Brides of Funkenstein, they had Sir Nose, Funkadelic and Parliament. George Clinton broke his group up into so many different parts. So that’s what I felt like: a one-person Parliament-Funkadelic.

During that time, I tended to like the peculiar people. I liked the artists that had flows, like Fiend and Mac from No Limit. But a lot of the rappers couldn’t adapt to different sounds. That made me feel like, OK, I’m going to create a Dr. Octagon. I’m going to create a Dr. Dooom. I’m going to create a Black Elvis. But all of those characters are part of me.

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~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

He was having a rough period music wise for a while there but he's gotten his mojo back the past few years

really beautiful piece

Since Caramanica and the rest don't ever interject in the blurbs I'm sure it'd be a massive task to edit into a podcast, especially imagining the myriad qualities of audio setups involved, I have to presume there was a lot more going on in the making of this than 5-10 minute monologues...

But it would've been so awesome to have some kind of two-ish hour compilation of all these conversations with audio samples spliced in. I'll cross my fingers there's something in the pipeline anyway. Even without it, it quickly seemed like such a quintessentially OKP project that it felt like the only thing to do even if this thread would've been 200+ replies deep by now just three or four years ago.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

n/m

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"i do more for both our communities than you'll ever know." - Heinz
"But rest assured, in my luxurious house built on the backs of people darker than me, I am sipping fine scotch and scoffing at how stupid you are." - bshelly