"Who am I?" My story starts out in West Philadelphia, the same region and neighborhood that also birthed artists like Jazzy Jeff, The Fresh Prince, Da Youngstas, Schooly D, Steady B, Cool C, 3XDope…I guess I started getting into Hip-Hop probably around 1985 or 86. Just like every kid growing up around the way. Being into Hip-Hop was just another natural activity, like some days we would ride our bikes, some days we would be in the park playing basketball, some days we might be rhyming, or some days we might be doing some graffiti tagging walls.
So around 1986, I was in the 10th grade, I started attending Overbrook High School, the same High School that the Fresh Prince went to and some of the other artists that I just mentioned. I can just remember vividly being in my last period Chemistry class and like seeing the Fresh Prince drive up with this big black Suburban. This is 1986, and he would just like pop the trunk, let the speakers be seen and heard, and you could just hear like vivid Hip-Hop. Also, this was the same time that groups like Public Enemy started jumping. And Jazzy Jeff had a certain rapport with Flavor Flav, so in the summertime of 87’ I remember seeing Flavor Flav in my neighborhood just like talking to us about what it was like to be a part of Public Enemy and all that sort of thing.
So for me to be like 15 and witness these things…Hip-Hop, it wasn’t like this tremendous phenomena, it was ordinary at a certain point. I just assumed that at some point I would always just be involved in it. So, I started writing rhymes like around 1986. Seeing all these artists that were obviously older than me was fascinating. It just became something that I felt I was good at because out of all my friends around the way…like a lot of my friends started getting locked up, some are deceased from selling drugs and all that.
For a while I got into all that too, but I always took my education a little bit more seriously than some of the dudes I ran around with. Especially like my history class and my English class and things of that nature. So I just really got into creative writing, I got good teachers at that time who saw something in me and encouraged me to be a creative writer. I just carried that tradition on through high school and through college. So it was a natural progression. I went from rhyming on the street corners and alleyways around the way, to going to a University.
I went to Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. I studied political science and international relations, which I have a degree in. That allowed me to sharpen the existing talent even more. Now, I can take a lot of things that I learned about politically and socially and even develop rhymes about them. I even took a theatrical course that kinda helped me with my stage performance. So all of these years were very formulative in me just developing.Around my junior year in college, a good friend of mine told me that he had some experience in hangin’ around The Juice Crew, that was real popular in 88’. Back then, I was like a real big Juice Crew fan.
To this day, I think that’s one of my favorite eras, cause I was a big Big Daddy Kane fan. So he told me there was this thing in New York going on called the Lyricist Lounge. And if I wanted to, I could come to Brooklyn where he lived, and just go to the Lyricist Lounge and start performing. He felt that I had a talent that the world needed to hear. I stayed in Brooklyn for like two years straight doing various open mics. There was a lot of stuff going on that Bobitto was doing at the time with the Nuyorican Poet’s Café. I did as many open mics as I could just to get my name out there and create the buzz that I wanted to. Cause while I was in college, I noticed that all the MCs that I was really feeling like that, they started out as street legends first.
Before I even got a clear depiction of what they looked like, or all that other glossy stuff that now these labels want people to provide, it was just pure talent. The first time I heard Redman, which was like 1991, before the rest of the world heard him, a friend of mine was in a park somewhere in New Jersey and got a chance to tape one of his performances. I knew before everyone else that this kid was nasty…When this kid comes out, he’s gonna really be something. So, this is the process that I gotta go through. I’m not gonna try to just come out and blow up all at once. But, if I develop something and create a street buzz, and a street legendary status for myself, the rest of the world will perhaps recognize it.
The way that I landed my first major deal was through a friend of mine who also went to Lincoln University named Damon Johnson. When we were leaving school, he asked for a copy of my demo, and said that he was on his way out to California to work on videos for Doctor Dre. So I gave him the demo and I was like whatever, I didn’t hear from him for like a couple of months or so, then out of the clear blue I just got a call from Doctor Dre. He was like, “Yo, you know, me and some of the homies we heard the tape and we wanna bring you out here dog.”
Words by The Last Emperor...transcribed by Moses Miller