 |
Lunar tunes
|
If time travel were ever to exist, the heart of a devoted hip hop fan would probably take him to early-’90s New York City, the equivalent of turn-of-the-century Paris for painters or San Francisco’s Summer of Love for the youth of the ’60s—a time and place where dozens of original artists came out within a year or two of each other and set the tone for decades to come. Biggie, Wu-Tang, A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr and of course Black Moon—a three-man group consisting of DJ/producer Evil Dee, MC 5ft and MC/frontman Buckshot (known at the time as Buckshot Shorty)—all epitomized that era. “We just did our thing,” explains Buckshot over the phone, “we did us. We were never concerned with other people’s image and what they were doing at the time. We didn’t do it for the approval of people. Anybody could’ve booed, I’d still be doing my thing.” When the single “Who Got the Props?” came out in New York, it instantly became a hit in the underground scene of the Tri-State area. The record, just like Wu-Tang’s “Protect Ya Neck” that came out the same year, was something of a UFO on the West Coast gangsta rap-dominated airwaves, and it brought attention back to New York, the cradle of hip hop. The buzz surrounding the single was so strong that it quickly led to work on the album, which became Enta da Stage. “Now, we knew that whatever music we put out would eventually get to the public. Whatever we do, the people gonna hear this, man. And they’re gonna be judgmental. At the same time, that fear turned into innovation and creation. We had a lot of responsibility because we were in a group that didn’t necessarily fit in with what was going on at the time. We had our own identity. It was all about sweet lyrics and sweet rhymes coming out of a core dedication, which was about walking around with a backpack every day because we kept our rhymes up in there, and representing the person that would see himself as a loner. That’s what Black Moon was about.” WITH SMIF N WESSUN AND DJ EVIL |
