“Christmas in Hollis” almost didn’t happen. According to Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, when Bill Adler, Def Jam Recordings’ first publicist, presented him, Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, and Joseph “Run” Simmons with the opportunity to participate in the 1987 charity album, A Very Special Christmas, they were skeptical. The project featured some of the most influential […]
Fine Young Cannibals’ Roland Gift is leaning all the way to the left, so much so that he could be lying down. It’s unclear, as he’s on a video call from his native U.K. and his background is so blurred, he looks like he’s floating horizontally above his sofa. This is not how I expected […]
It was the summer of 1992, and Ladybug Mecca, Butterfly, and Doodlebug—collectively known as Digable Planets—were recording their debut album, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), commuting back and forth between Brooklyn and a studio in Jersey. They didn’t know it at the time, but the album’s lead single, “Rebirth of Slick (Cool […]
The members of Bay Area hip-hop group Souls of Mischief—Tajai, Phesto, A-Plus and Opio—were still in high school when they started recording with fellow Hieroglyphics crewmate Del the Funky Homosapien. They were so young, in fact, they needed their parents’ permission to participate in an overnight recording session for “Burnt,” the B-side to Del’s “Mistadobalina.” […]
It was 1991. The Pharcyde—Bootie Brown, Imani, Fatlip, and Slimkid3—were spending most of their time in Inglewood, California, at South Central Unit (SCU) studios recording demos, writing lyrics, and smoking copious amounts of weed. Around 5:00 p.m., when traffic was peaking in Los Angeles, the four of them would step outside and watch the girls […]
B-Real drops a bombshell mere minutes into our interview. Cypress Hill’s 1993 juggernaut, “Insane in the Brain,” was initially written as a diss track aimed at “Treat ‘Em Right” rapper Chubb Rock. Suddenly, after more than 30 years of hearing the Grammy-nominated song in heavy rotation, it was no longer perceived as just a weed […]
Before he was Coolio, Artis Leon Ivey Jr. was just a kid growing up in Compton and South Central Los Angeles, at a time when middle class hope gave way to something very different. “Compton was actually a well-to-do area until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan ushered in the crack era,” said Coolio’s longtime personal […]