There are several things that can be expected when reading an interview with an established rapper or producer. Other than the obligatory wholesale abuse of the phrase, “you know what I’m sayin?’, approximately one in every three question and answer sessions will feature some kind of outlandish claim involving either innovations they haven’t been given credit for, or unique techniques that have been shamelessly plundered by their peers. Here are some of my favorites:
1. Although anything involving Kool Keith is best taken with a grain of salt, it was hard not to chuckle when he and Tim Dog listed the various trends they set off in rap in an issue of ego trip, including wearing Versace sunglasses, Tim’s sideburns, cutting your head bald, porno rap and wearing straw hats with feathers in them.
2. During a RapPages profile of J Sw!ft (Pharcyde, The Wascals), his production partner Lamarr mentioned that after J told Pete Rock that he used the Fender Rhodes on Bizarre Ride…, ‘then that sound popped out of nowhere on everybody’s records’.
3. DJ Muggs claimed in an interview with ThaFormula.com that, ‘Black Sunday gave birth to horror core Hip-Hop. It gave birth to the Gravediggaz. We invented a whole style of rap. Who came out at that time? The Flatlinerz too. That’s all off of the Black Sunday imagery.” In the same piece, he also insisted that RZA and Mobb Deep followed in his footsteps as far as their raw, gritty production sound.
4. K-Solo declared in a Hip-Hop Connection feature that during his time at Death Row, he influenced Snoop to lose his braids and grow an afro similar to the one Solo was sporting at the time, as well as inspiring Dre to name his next label Aftermath after he used the term in the song ‘Wolf Tickets’.
5. Cage seemed to be convinced that he held a copyright on the concept of ‘crazy white boy’ rap, taking exception to Eminem’s ‘insane’ lyrical antics and waging a personal vendetta against his ‘biting’. You may both want to have a word with RA The Rugged Man, by the way.
6. Prodigy prepared a huge list of the things he has pioneered in the infamous blog he wrote (in all CAPS) prior to his recent incarceration, all of which was gold. Highlights of his long list of first’s include, “RAPPING WORDS THAT DONT ALWAYS RHYME”, “HOW I FOLD MY BANDANA” and “WEB SITES, I HAD INFAMOUSSTORES.COM AND WAS WRITING BLOGS BACK IN 99 LONG BEFORE IT BECAME POPULAR IN HIP HOP TO HAVE A WEB SITE”. Rap dudes, Bow down to your new leader.
Originally published in HHCDigital #002.
What have you read in an interview that made you think, ‘You’re kidding, right?’, ‘C’mon, son!’ or ‘Fuckputtahere’?
haha.sure ya right.
(i like the new ‘i could spit n show skillz if i wanted to’ phrase)
Dope post. Never heard most of those quotes. But I gotta be honest, none of them are really sound all that far fetched. Except the prodigy quotes…He did master rapping words that don’t rhyme though.
Cage talked a bit of shit when I spoke with him last year for DX, nothing quite as obnoxious as when he went off at Em tho.
A lot of these nuthugger-types are absurd with the ego shit talk. It’s fucking laughable.
prodigy started rhyming like eazy e for some fucked up reason, i remember him saying thats all he listend to in his car, thank god he cant dont got a car no more.
Prodigy may have adopted the not-always-rhyming flow but c’mon son, don’t go above your age group. T-La Rock was notorious for that. Ultramagnetic MC’s were after him… and even if P was too young to catch their examples, Sadat X reinvented the technique. That’s his style all day!
Those DJ Muggs quotes are funny as well. Gravediggaz was another classic Prince Paul “concept album”. Muggs may have missed the point of what they were doing at the time. And I aint see nothing horror-cored about Black Sunday to begin with. Sure, the videos off that LP were darker but the music didn’t spell death. The first LP was harder to me.
I’ve always wondered about the extent of Cypress influence on RZA production. Seems possible, but RZA is a wizard in his own right, so not like he needed to bite or anything.
To Kid Captain Coolout, I agree with you 100%. Kool Keith from Ultra also was the first for sure to use an alias in rap. All that aka shit he started!! He went from Dr. Sperm(1988) to Rhythm X (1990), to Poppa Large and the list goes on and on and on!!!!
I think it’s funny that anyone would want to claim they invented “Horrorcore”.
I once read an article with Ja Rule saying that if he wasnt on Jay Z’s ‘Can I getta’ song, that the Hard Knock Life album may not have gone platinum.
Prodigy invented the INTERNET, stop hatin
I saw an interview on BET with Tavis Smiley who was interviewing Eric B, who said he and Rakim were riding around in Bentley’s and had the Truck Jewels before anyone in Rap was doing it. He kept telling Tavis to give him credit for starting that, hilarious!
Didn’t the RZA invent Serato?
“I got my own label now, I got a new R&B artist, a white alternative group and a new rapper comin’. I’m starting my own clothing company and my champagne brand. It’s a movement, it’s poppin’, it’s gonna be big”. YOU WORK AT 7/11!
@Big Gist. “Prodigy invented the Internet”. Funniest shit I’ve read since Prodigys quotes! Lmao!
I knew Cage(“Kiege”,I think that’s how he used to spell it)personally. Dude did songs like “Crazy Man Ahead” back in 1991-1992. His tapes were passed around underground dust-head types. Then when EM came out a few years later, his narrative sounded eerily familiar to me.
@BK Thoroughbred:
“I grew up in the projects, packed gats, and ducked jakes. I’m a bad motherfucker who fucks bitches and pitches crills. This is how it is around my way”
…95% of the gangsta rap scene’s “narratives” are/were “eerily familiar” to one another. So, I’m not sure what your point was. Surely, Cage is not the first white dude to do drugs and have depraved thoughts.
And, regardless, the drug culture element of Em’s music is drastically overstated anyway, IMO. It was just novel in mainstream hip hop at the time, so it got noticed. But, it didn’t exactly dominate his content.
My point was that Cage’s story in 1991-92: Fantasizing about killing his Baby’s mom; A super damaged/disrespectful relationship with his Mother; Heavy Hallucinogeic drug use;being institutionalized (which I know for a fact that he actually was);and all the other depraved shit he used to rap about was uncannily similar to the shit I heard EM rap about a full six years later.
That was ALL pretty much what Cage rapped about and I never heard anyone do that before him. His shit had some notoriety in NYC underground circuits and his tapes probably made it’s way across the country. So I could see how he would think that someone bit his life.
So Maybe your right,It could be a White Boy thing. Maybe how we have the same hood stories from coast to coast. White dudes are going through a very similar story that mirror another.
Jadakiss saying “the whole state of Philly got put on” because they took his flow, which partially helped start his issue w/ Beanie.
In addition to the fact that Philly isn’t a state, that was a case of a nigga giving himself entirely too much credit.
-D!
“I think it’s funny that anyone would want to claim they invented ‘Horrorcore’.”
Big Gipp from the goodie mob stated over and over that he was the first artist to wear gold/platinum teeth…
Kanye was the first rapper to diss Taylor Swift.
I cant recall where but I remember reading somewhere that Schoolly D in the extra credits of King of New York DVD invented snowboarding by using cardboard to slide down hills or some ish – I loled hard at that
“Rap dudes, Bow down to your new leader.” No doubt, he’s about the same height as Napoleon.
i thought it was funny when krs-one dissed nelly for claiming he created face bandaids, also kool keith claims to have created horrorcore and space rap (although we all know mc shan created space styles) with the lyrics “biting my space style, biting my horrorcore, all I saw was little kool keiths at my door”
lol @ muggsy bol, “the finest italian restaurant, me and my wife, we love this place… I called Carol Lewis, she can’t use any of you guys, my advice, keep your fucking day jobs at 7/11.”
@Walks
No, RZA invented “The Whirlwind Replicator” used on “Stroke of Death”
You know, if you’re not from the East Coast, the word “Horrorcore” is really difficult to pronounce. That’s one big reason why that genre doesn’t get much recognition other than GD’z first album. Try to say that word three times.
HARRAHCOWAH? Fuckouttahere.
EMINEM BIT CAGE TOTALLY!!! THAN COMMERCIALIZED THE STYLE.AND I’M NOT A CAGE FAN EITHER BUT GIVE CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE.
Eminem bit a lot of diff artists styles too(masta ace,Thirstin Howl,chino,pac,and Kane.)I think he’s one of the biggest hyprocrites in the game.He came out dissing pop rapper such as Mase,Puff Daddy,etc….AND NOW HE DOES SONGS WITH LIL WAYNE,DRAKE and COUNTLESS OTHER CORNBALLS WHO MAKE MASE SEEM EXTREMLEY LYRICAL(and thats sad!).
DOPE SUBJECT THOUGH ROBBIE!!! Prodigy fell off rrrreally hard the last 10 or so yrs.
Ja Rule as much as I hate his ass I will say this…His fucking wack singing he did that Eminem,50,The Game and even underground rappers dissed so, THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS DO LOUSY SINGING ON THEIR HOOKS TOO.
I wish JA hadnt created that.Slim Shady and 50 REALLY BIT THAT,his biggest critics.
Is there such thing as a bigger hyprocrite than a rapper?????There as bad as cops and Poltitians.
kool keith invented everything.
(besides the internet)
Davito,
Aight, I hear you. I’m familiar with the Cage tapes too; I’m from NYC, etc. So let’s try to look at this situation free from confirmation bias for a second.
A twenty-something white dude has a tumultuous relationship with the mother of his child and sometimes fantasizes about hurting her. This same white dude experiments with drugs not commonly endorsed by the prevailing hip hop community. He expresses these drug-induced fantasies in the music he makes.
Now… race is very important here, but not for the reasons you might be inclined to think. The proposition that two discrete dudes fit this profile is not at all odd; you’d have to grant that. Now, if this music in question was rock – that is, if two rock musicians shared this similar story and made music with vaguely similar content, there’s no way we’d be accusing one from biting or adapting the other’s life story. What prompts this conclusion is really an interesting form of cognitive dissonance. You are viewing Em and Cage as members of a small group – white rappers, or more specifically known white rappers in the 90’s – as opposed to viewing them as two members of a much larger group – drug using dudes who have beef with their baby mamas. Therefore, you find the similarities really suspicious because it strikes you as fishy that these two guys from a small group have such similar narratives, but you are ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of dudes across the country who fit that bill, except of those who do who make music, most don’t make rap.
Cliff’s Notes: If Em and Cage were Axl Rose and Joe Eliot (that was the name of the Def Leppard guy, right?), we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
/Sociology professors and students, take note!
Kool Keith might have invented the style Ja Rule made popular with Holla Holla on the Ultramagnetic track 1,2 1,2
As far as Philly jacking Jada’s flow, I don’t know about all that, but I know that there is an old LOX freestyle where Styles P says “we can have a knife fight, nigga what your life like, mine is real, everything signed and sealed.” So I think its pretty safe to say that the LOX “influenced” Beanie Sigel.