Three decades ago today, Chi Ali released his first and only album The Fabulous Chi-Ali. Chi-Ali first appeared on De La Soul’s single “Say No Go” and on Black Sheep’s debut album, A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing featured on “Pass the 40”. Chi Ali at the time was a core member of Native Tongues, a New York City-based hip-hop collective, and also had connections with the Legion family, along with Showbiz and A.G.
In 1992, Chi-Ali released his first solo single, “Age Ain’t Nothing But a #”, which was a moderate hit and reached #6 in the US Hot Rap Singles chart. The song was popular on urban radio stations, and the music video received good rotation on Yo! MTV Raps and Rap City. The album in which the song was featured was released shortly thereafter, which yielded two other singles; “Roadrunner” and “Funky Lemonade,” which were both remixed and re-recorded.
In the late 1990s, Chi-Ali appeared on Dres’s solo album, Sure Shot Redemption, and began featuring with other artists. His most recent collabo was with Jadakiss on a song entitled “G-Check”.
On January 14, 2000, Chi-Ali shot and killed a man during an argument in The Bronx. He was later arrested in 2001 for the death of his girlfriend’s brother, Sean Raymond, after spending a year evading police and even appeared on an episode of America’s Most Wanted. Chi-Ali hid in numerous East Coast cities until he was apprehended on March 5, 2001, in New York City and was subsequently convicted of the killing and served a 12-year bid at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
On this day in Hip-Hop history, Death Row Records in conglomeration with Interscope Records released the soundtrack to the popular film, Above the Rim. Winning the 1995 Source Award for Soundtrack of the Year, this album featured so many hits that it could have stood alone from the movie as a compilation album.
Acting as executive producers of the project, Suge Knight and Dr. Dre curated one of the most popular movie soundtracks of all time. This album featured work from artists 2Pac, Warren G, SWV, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, The Lady of Rage, and more. Due to the popularity of the artists and the success of the movie, the soundtrack sold 2,000,000 copies in the year of its release and peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart. Although it fell short on the mainstream chart, the album was able to grab hold of that #1 spot on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. Here are some videos from the famed soundtrack to help jog your memory of its greatness.
On this day in Hip-Hop history, super producer and generational sound shaper DJ Premier was born in 1966. As a producer, DJ Premier has worked with Big L, Big Daddy Kane, Bun B, Common, D’Angelo, Dr. Dre, The Game, Joey Bada$$, KRS-One, Ludacris, Mos Def, Nas, Snoop Dogg, The Notorious B.I.G, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Immortal Technique and Busta Rhymes. As a founding member of Gang Starr, Premier along with emcee Guru helped get the New York boom-bap movement get national acclaim and rise to be the standard of Hip Hop throughout the 90s.
Known for his smooth soul samples and steady drums, DJ Premier either worked with or influenced a majority of the more prominent and most respected names in Hip Hop. As Gang Starr, DJ Premier and Guru put out six studio albums; No More Mr. Nice Guy, Step in Arena, Daily Operation, Hard to Earn, Moment of Truth, and The Ownerz. Although the group never got any official critical acclaim or win any music awards, their influence can be heard almost anywhere Hip Hop is found.
DJ Premier is responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed tracks throughout Hip-Hop history. In honor of his born day, below are some of his most popular songs that helped to define his career as a beatmaker.
Gang Starr – Mass Appeal
Notorious B.I.G. – Kick in the Door
Nas – Nas Is Like
Big L – Platinum Plus
KRS- One – MC’s Act Like They Don’t Know
From everyone at The Source Magazine, Happy Born Day DJ Premier. Thank you for all that you’ve done for this culture that we all love.
31 years ago, Eazy muthaf**kin’ E made his debut on the White House lawn.
While other rappers of the time were totally against President George Bush and his staunch law and order policies, Eazy-E, along with his manager Jerry Heller, spent $1250 a plate to attend the Republicans Inner Circle dinner.
This private, members-only dinner may have cost Eazy a whopping $2500 for two plates, but that type of publicity couldn’t be bought. Speculation has it that Eazy and Jerry’s attendance at the White House during the Bush administration kept the FBI off of N.W.A’s backs after the controversy over their “Fuck The Police” single.
During the time when Hip-Hop was being passed off as a fad that wouldn’t last beyond “Rapper’s Delight”, a vivid reenactment of the introduction of this artistic culture to the world was made. Wild Style is arguably the very first movie and definitely one of the very few that shows the true essence of what Hip Hop is about. On this date in 1983, film director and cultural artist Charlie Ahearn premiered the flick in Times Square, breaking records by selling out at all screenings for the three weeks it played.
Ahearn, a member of the artist collective group Collaborative Projects, was originally exposed to Hip Hop in the late 70s through graffiti when he went to film the youth in the projects in Manhattan’s Lower East Side that studied martial arts. He was soon approached by Fred “Fab 5 Freddy” Braithwaite about making a movie encompassing all elements of Hip-Hop (emceeing, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti). Fab 5 Freddy brought legendary graff artist Lee Quinones to meet Ahearn to further discuss the approach of filming graffiti and introducing it as a legitimate art form. Ahearn found out that Lee was the same graf king whose work he admired while filming in LES. With Ahearn as producer and director, the three began embarking on a journey to gather the individuals who would be the faces of this landmark film.
Developing its name from an abstract letter design made popular in the graffiti world by graff king Tracy 168, Wild Style featured some of the most prolific pioneers from all aspects of Hip-Hop. The Cold Crush Brothers, Rock Steady Crew, and Grandmaster Flash were just a few of Hip-Hop’s trailblazers that made their debut on the silver screen in Wild Style. The Furious Five could not appear alongside Flash and had to be cut from the film because of prior obligations to another more mainstream motion picture depicting the development of Hip Hop that came out later called Beat Street. This is why Afrika Bambaataa, the New York City Breakers, The Treacherous Three, or female pioneer MC Sha Rock were not seen in the film. Other notable legends included Busy Bee Starski, graf legends Dondi, Zephyr, and Revolt, who all designed the Wild Style logo, and the Fantastic Freaks.
Lee Quinones played the main character “Zoro”, the anonymous graf phenom that is introduced to the art world by his pal and fellow graffiti writer “Faze” who is played by Fab 5 Freddy. Faze introduces Zoro to Virginia, a journalist portrayed by cultural icon Patti Astor, who later shows Zoro to art’s world stage of galleries and museums. The story is an accurate historical account of how Hip-Hop, in general, was introduced to mainstream America and later, the rest of the world. It also showed the poverty and despair that existed in the South Bronx out of which the culture of Hip Hop emerged.
Over 30 years later, Wild Style is still an icon of American pop culture. The players that participated and performed in the movie have made themselves legends in their own right, however, most will recognize their appearance in the film as the catapult of their career. The movie has been sampled on various classic Hip Hop albums including ATCQ’s Midnight Marauders, Common’s Ressurection, and the Five Mic classic, Nas’ Illmatic. Wild Style was voted as one of the top ten rock n’ roll movies of all time by the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame and VH1’s Hip Hop Honors acknowledged the film’s influence in Hip Hop with a tribute in 2007.
On this date in 1959, William Jonathan Drayton, better known to the world as Flavor Flav, was born in NYC. Flav is the former hypeman of the iconic, Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame Hip-Hop group Public Enemy.
Growing up on Freeport, Long Island is where A young Flavor developed his love for music, teaching himself to play the piano, drums, and guitar on his own. It was also in Long Island where a young adult Flav met Chuck Ridenhour, who later became known as Chuck D, the frontman of Public Enemy. The two linked at Adelphi University on the Island, where the two attended college and learned about each other’s love for Hip Hop.
As one of the founding members of PE, Flav was there in 1984 when the song “Public Enemy #1” was recorded; the first known track by the group. In 1986, the crew signed with Rick Rubin on Def Jam, however, Rubin did not initially want to sign Flav because he didn’t understand his role in the group.
Ever since PE’s debut album Yo! Bum Rush The Show, Flav was the hype jester to the ultra-serious, politically charged group which now included Chuck D, Terminator X, and a security force known as the S1Ws. Songs such as “Fight The Power”, “911 Is A Joke”, and “I Can’t Do Nothin’ For Ya Man” featured the comedic darts of Flav, which brought a balance to PE.
Drugs and domestic issues hindered Flav for a short while during his career, however, he bounced back into the public eye as a reality show pioneer, with shows like Surreal Life and The Flavor Of Love breaking ground in reality TV. Earlier this year, Chuck D announced that Flavor Flav was indefinitely fired from the group for his response to PE publicly endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Presidential race.
Big ups to Flav on his born day and TheSource.com wishes the Flavor Man many more!
Sending a 21 gun soldier salute Rest In Peace one of Hip Hop’s favorite crooners
There were many who tried, but nobody put R&B into Hip Hop the way it was supposed to sound better than the late, great Nate Dogg of the legendary Dogg Pound. The Source Magazine would like to send him a posthumous shout in recognition of his contributions to the game.
Besides his obvious links to Snoop Dogg and the original Death Row Family, Nathaniel Hale, born on this date in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1969, Nate appeared alongside several iconic artists in the game including 2Pac, 50 Cent, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z. The world lost a talented singer, actor and musician when Nate succumbed to multiple strokes on March 15, 2011. He was 41 years old.
Condolences go out to Warren G, Dr. Dre, Snoop and the entire 213 on the day an entire community lost a Hip Hop legend.
On this day in Hip-Hop History, the late Tupac Shakur released his third studio LP, Me Against the World. This album came at one of the most pivotal times in ‘Pac’s life and career. Recorded shortly after his near-fatal assassination attempt in New York and released while he was in prison, this album marked a change in 2Pac as an artist and a man.
This album was nothing like the music that gave him his “thug life” gangster image and street credentials. The subject matter and tone of this project were a lot more serious and introspective than anything he had previously released. Much less high energy than the tracks from his previous album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z…, this album showed genuine reflection on his life and career path as an artist along with shining light on some of his personal struggles with paranoia and self-loathing.
The realism of this album brought a ridiculous amount of commercial success. Debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, the album has been certified double platinum selling over 3.5 million copies in the United States alone. Along with being #1 in the US, the album also ranked #23 in Germany and #20 in Sweden. In the year after its release, the album received the Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap Album. The project was Tupac’s most positively reviewed album and has been called the magnum opus of his career.
The singles from the project “Dear Mama,” “So Many Tears” and “Temptations” all made appearances on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Dear Mama” peaked at #9, “So Many Tears” hit #44 and “Temptations” claimed the#68 spot.
On this date in 1989, Corona, Queens rap and street legend Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo released their very first album on the quintessential, yet now-defunct Hip-Hop label Cold Chillin’ Records.
As esteemed members of the world-famous, Queens-based Juice Crew, G. Rap and Polo dropped this project as one of the first full-length albums from the crew, only to succeed Big Daddy Kane’s Long Live The Kane and Biz Markie’s Goin’ Off albums. the Marley Marl-produced album is one of NYC’s crime rhyme holy grails, with tracks like “Road To The Riches” as a theme song for late 80s hustlers, but the majority of the album showcased G. Rap’s uncanny rapping ability. Tracks like “Men At Work”, “Poison” and their premiere track “It’s A Demo” were proof three decades ago that G’s style would be pioneering in the rap game, to say the least.
Salute to G. Rap, Polo, Marley, Fly Ty, and the rest of the Juice Crew and Cold Chillin’ staff for this important piece of Hip Hop history!
On this date 29 years ago, Gusto and the gang shows us what gangsta Hip-Hop is all about.
In 1993, Chris Rock, Allen Payne and Charlie Murphy gave their own take of how things go down behind the scenes with gangsta rappers vs. real-life gangsters in the comedy flick CB4. Directed by and starring Rock, CB4 was a parody that pokes fun at “the world’s most dangerous group” N.W.A. and features several Hip Hop notables including Ice-T, Ice Cube, Flavor Flav and the late Eazy-E.
Murphy, who played the role of “Gusto”, is a certified “G’ who is “three generations deep in gangsterdom.” Rock, who plays up and coming rapper Albert Brown from “LoCash” California, jack Gusto’s gangster look, background and persona, becoming MC Gusto after the “gangsta” Gusto went to prison. The group that Rock’s character formed, who were called CB4, which stood for gangsta Gusto’s prison location ‘Cell Block 4″, took the rap world by storm until reality hit; Gusto gets out of jail.
Salute to Rock, Charlie Murphy (RIP), Allen Payne and even Daddy-O of Stetsasonic, who was the rapper for CB4’s hits “Straight Outta LoCash” and “Sweat From My Balls.” CB4 is definitely a comedic learning tool and will forever be a piece of Hip-Hop history!
