A Tribute To Hostyle from Screwball

Another tragic chapter in the story of Queens super group Screwball this week, as news spread that Hostyle has passed away. Fondly remembered for his energetic delivery and stream-of-consciousness flow, the ‘One Eyed Maniac’ made his mark on a number of guest shots in the 00’s, and most recently returned in 2015 with a song titled ‘Who Am I’. Salutes to another lost Queensbridge trooper.

I wish I knew more about the man himself, but all I can offer at this point is a little history about the group from Kyron, Blaq Poet and the Hydra Records crew:

Kyron: You know Ty Nitty from the Infamous Mobb? Screwball [Louis Chandler] is his big brother. Screwball is named after my boy who got killed…Poet came up with the idea to name the group after him.

Mike Heron: Poet had done a record for Tuff City – he was in PHD with Hot Day. I used to try to get at the A&R dude from Tuff City…then I’d met this dude from the Bridge who knew Poet. Poet had the idea [for Screwball]. When I heard the other guys, I was like ‘Hell yeah’ – especially Hostyle, he was amazing. The other two guys – Solo and KL – they were in a group called Kamakazee, that Marley Marl had.

Kyron: What happened was I had gave my CD to Marley Marl, right? And Marley had called me up like, ‘Yo, let’s get busy. Let’s go do some joints.’ That’s when he had his deal with Warner Bros. So I stepped in, and that just happened to be the same summer that KL moved to Queensbridge. He’s originally from Far Rockaway, Queens. He was living in Jamaica, Queens at the time and then he moved from Jamaica to live with Poet and Poet’s mom in Queensbridge. I gave my CD to Marley a couple of weeks earlier, and then by the time Marley had called me, me and KL had started doin’ the Kamakazee thing.

We were actually getting ready to sign a deal with Hank Shocklee from the Bomb Squad. Me and KL was in the studio with Hank Shocklee nearly every day, so Marley had called us up, and Hank Shocklee was getting’ ready to get his situation over at MCA. But it was taking a long time – Marley had called us and said that the Warner Bros. situation was ready now. Us being young, we kept it real though. We let Hank Shocklee’s people be involved with the situation with Marley. They came back with was, ‘Marley’s ready to go right now, he’s talkin’ like he’s got a good situation for you guys and we don’t wanna hold you back from any opportunities.’ Warner Bros. terminated the whole urban music department with that Delores Tucker shit. They had no urban music – and we got caught up in that shit. ‘Bridge ’95’ was on the Kamakazee album too. We introduced Hostyle on the b-side of that. ‘Snakes’ was originally for that album too. When they terminated the urban department we were left with a whole album.

After building up a buzz independently with the Screwball crew, Jerry and Mike secured a deal with Tommy Boy in 1998. ‘FAYBAN’ and ‘H-O-S-T-L-E’ (the first video) were making some noise, but then at some point they recorded a little something known as ‘Who Shot Rudy?’…

Mike Heron: Kyron was locked-up for some bullshit – I think he was smoking weed or something, and he had a warrant. He was locked-up when he wrote it, and when he came home he was telling me about the idea, and I made a beat for it that same night. He just had the rhyme, so me and Hostyle wrote the chorus. He had got locked-up and he was pissed-off because Giuliani was on some damn-near Nazi shit, arresting people for any little bullshit. This publicist for Tommy Boy gave it to Elliott Wilson, Elliott gave it to someone at the [New York] Post, and that person was writing a story about groups that were against Giuliani’s new crackdown on black youth. They wrote it up, and they [Screwball] were all over the news. Tommy Boy initially distanced themselves from the group, and when they realised that people thought it was cool that these guys were anti-Giuliani, they jumped on the bandwagon. But too little, too late. They should have put out the album that following week – they waited three months after everything went away.

Blaq Poet: Coulda dropped that shit and went platinum if they woulda dropped it at the right time, when we had all that free publicity off the ‘Who Shot Rudy?’ shit. We was all on the news, in the newspapers and all of that, but they don’t roll with it ‘cos they were scared of Time-Warner, and Rudy Guilliani at the time had ties with Time-Warner, who were the distributor for Tommy Boy, so they slowed down with dropping that.

When the album finally dropped in 2000, relations between some of the crew became strained…

Jerry Famolari: When we were on Tommy Boy, there were situations that created an uneasiness within the group. Tommy Boy was basically trying to divide and conquer. We had a Screwball package and our thing was we’re gonna do Screwball as the group, then there would be Poet‘s solo album, Hostyle’s solo album, Kamakazee – which was KL and Kyron – and then there would be Kyron’s solo album and KL’s solo album. We were looking to get the most out of the group.

The first guy we started working on was Hostyle. So we had about four records and we were trying to get additional money so we went and started showing Hostyle’s demo. Tommy Boy had the first look, so we played them ‘H-O-S-T-Y-L-E’ and they went crazy for that record, so they wanted to make it the single for the Screwball album. There was another record that we didn’t put on there because of that, so we took that off and it started creating a little uneasiness within the group. Every group has a front-runner, but it was tough because we put him up front for our first video. Tommy Boy saw what we saw in Hostyle. Kyron got arrested, and things were falling apart so they were really trying to get Hostyle behind our back.

Hydra would later release a second Screwball album and a Hostyle solo LP, but much of these were put together from old sessions.

Jerry Famolari: There was a lot of songs that would not have ever come out. I just took pieces from different things and cuts, whatever I could do to make the album as strong as possible. We had so much money already invested and so much stuff sitting there, I’m like ‘Before I sit on it and have to put out a song here, a song there – I might as well just get rid of it’. There was no marketing behind it because there was no group. I convinced the guys to come in and do certain things, but it was tough. That album was like pulling teeth.

The crew reformed around 2007/2008, with Ty Nitty and Scape Scrilla joining to record ‘Welcome Back Screwball‘. Sadly, KL died that same year.

Kyron: We was talkin’ to Hostyle, but he’s on paper with another situation so it was kinda hard for us to get Hostyle over there. Hopefully he’s outta his obligations for the next go ‘round so we can work with him then. Time heals all wounds. We had to take some time out to understand where people comin’ from and things people do that may be wrong. We lost KL. We lost Screwball…life is too short to hold grudges like that.

Download: A Tribute To Hostyle

Track listing:

01. H-O-S-T-Y-L-E – Screwball
02. You Know The Name – Hostyle
03. Beat ‘Em In The Head – Hostyle
04. Urban Warfare – Screwball
05. Nitroglycerin – Hostyle
06. Live From New York – Hostyle feat. Quik aka Joell Ortiz
07. Return Of The Hu-Haa – Hostyle
08. Bridge 2008 – Iman THUG feat. Hostyle and Killa Sha
09. Ring Kings – Hostyle feat. RA The Rugged Man
10. Street Life – Screwball
11. Thinkin’ Bout Cash – The Beatnuts feat. Hostyle and Blaq Poet
12. Somethings Gotta Give – Screwball
13. Born Again – Infamous Mobb feat. Hostyle
14. Street Conflict – Cormega feat. Hostyle & K.L.
15. Don’t Get Beside Yourself – Non Phixion feat. Hostyle
16. Victory and Defeat – Soul Assassins feat. Hostyle