Spoonie Gee isn’t talked about enough in terms of the greatest rappers ever. The popular dialogue will sometimes include Caz, Mel or Moe Dee as the token old schooler, but I still put Spoonie in my personal top ten to this day. Just taking a look at some of his achievements should really set the scene the uninitiated:
1. He manages to capture the listeners attention for 5:45 while rapping almost non-stop over nothing but congas and a some sparse drums on ‘Love Rap.’
2. He’s the one rapper in history who never complained about Tuff City Records, which isn’t surprising considering he’d just jumped over from Sugar Hill.
3. Scored some prime Teddy Riley and Marley Marl beats in 1987 – before they were in-demand super-producers.
4. The only guy I can think of who ever beefed with Schoolly-D, thus inspiring the amazing ‘Housin’ The Joint‘ in response.
5. Ditched his crew – the Treacherous 3 – because he apparently ‘couldn’t find them’ when offered a record deal so decided to go solo on that ass and become the first rap dolo artist to ever sign a contract.
6. Was slick enough to walk away from a Sugar Hill Records deal with both of his legs intact in exchange for writing Duke Bootee’s verse on ‘Message II.’
7. Recorded arguable the first Rap Noir song with ‘Street Girl‘ in 1985.
8. Dropped the first Fast Rap song ever with Treach 3 on ‘The New Rap Language,’ which is also technically the first rap posse cut since he wasn’t in the group at that point.
9. Was ‘Monster Jam‘ with The Sequence the first rap male/female duet? Sure, why not.
10. Spoonie spawned a professional impersonator in Miami who fooled a few people on YouTube and most likely earned himself some beer money in the process.
Sadly the Spoon Man wasn’t particularly talkative the time I attempted to interview him, but I guess you can’t win ’em all.
Scans courtesy of the Adler Hip Hop Archive.
Not seen those scans before. Good shit. Street Girl is his most underrated song for real.
Spoonie is the class of ’79 rapper who best adapted to all Rap’s constant evolutions of production up to 1987, imho. Dropped killer/good singles for 9 years straight throughout all those changes.
“the new rap language” is one of the greatest old school joints, no doubt … too bad t3 and spoonie gee didn’t record an album of fast rap stuff back then…
btw, “new rap language” is linked to “street girl”…
@TM: Moe Dee took a similar path but got distracted by LL and that overly clean Byran ‘Chuck’ New production that took the edge off some of Teddy Riley’s beats.
@kool max power: A 1980 Spoonie and Treach 3 LP would have been mind-blowing. Cheers, fixed the link.
New Rap Language/Love Rap gotta be the G.O.A.T double-sided rap 12″ (and maybe the ultimate rap record, period.). The fact that neither song appeared on an album gives it the edge over Eric B Is President/My Melody for me.
@TM: Strongly agree.
who else about to power up the equipment LoL
The 12″ we speaking on
It’s your rock-fantasy 3
It’s like that/sucker mcs
Eu freeze
Go to vinyl
Nice piece R.
Professional impersonators now ? WT actual F ?
Spoonie was my first favorite rapper years before Rakim or even Run -DMC.
“ Take it off” is perhaps the funkiest record ever made along with “ The Godfather “ a couple years after that.
Spoonie has one of the illest voices and flows ever.
I would love to get him on a song one day. That would be on my bucket list.
Listen to “ Take it off” and hear Spoonie obliterate a Fly ass Go-Go Beat!!!!!!
The joint is so Funky!!!!!