On this day 4 years ago, New York rapper and co-founder of Pro Era – Capital Steez committed suicide at the age of 19 when he jumped off a building’s rooftop in the late hours of the night. Hip Hop and its newly-formed “Beast-coast” movement suffered a significant loss of one of its most-promising talents by the hands of mental-illness and a severe social issue – especially amongst our youth.
As a 19 year-old now myself, I think I’ve recently been able to identify and relate with the ideas in Steez’s music that I couldn’t exactly connect with before: the character of a misunderstood introvert pushed into an environment that forces them to interact, the motif of a person with profound thoughts and feelings they can’t translate into exact words yet, the theme of a person finding solace in the culture of their city, and the belief that “the world is mine” yet everyone else around me has it better than me despite my efforts. All of these elements in Capital Steez’s music formed an underlying narrative of an artist tackling their own identity, their own culture, and facing personal tribulations like lust, envy, greed, and hate – something that resonates with most people.
Finding yourself (particularly at this age of our lives) is a process of critically analyzing, understanding and re-interpreting your past, your influences and whatever else has shaped you. Some things you find while on this process are hard to come to terms with; maybe it’s because certain discoveries challenge our perceptions, and pressure us to make (uncomfortable) changes to deconstruct our identity and rebuild it. I’ve been through it all this past year though, and it was always a struggle to confront my closest circle of friends and family about these ideas and feelings within me; so I can only assume it must’ve been even harder for Capital Steez, and any other artist really, to express his feelings to not just his closest circle of friends or family, but to his fans and whoever hears his music too.
RIP STEELO (all-caps when you spell the man’s name).
Amerikkkan Korruption still holds one of my favourite intro tracks of all time
By the late ’80s the start of the ’90s, the Native Tongues collective from New York were leading a type of “cubist-movement” within the genre of Hip Hop; challenging the commercial success of gangster-rap, and rejecting audiences’ ideas of how a rapper should be. Artists from the Native Tongues collective were quintessential to the culture and its history through the way they approached the genre differently – both sonically and aesthetically – and in doing so, are credited as pioneers for Kanye West’s early-career, the Soulquarians-movement, the Pharcyde, and most other “concious-rappers”.
The Native Tongues and their “cubist-movement” in Hip Hop reached a creative peak between 1991 and 1993 with the releases of albums like “Black Reign”, “Buhloone Mindstate”, “De La Soul Is Dead”, “Midnight Marauders”, and particularly A Tribe Called Quest’s “Low End Theory”. Stripped of the funny Afrocentric costumes from their previous album; A Tribe Called Quest were thrust into the centre of New York’s Hip Hop scene with The Low End Theory. An album which defined the smooth, jazzy-soul loops that would be known as East Coast’s standard sound until the Puffy era. Tribe’s sound on this album is still so fresh and clean to this day, that even Dr. Dre admitted he studied the sonics of The Low End Theory while crafting The Chronic. Sound check The Low End Theory against De La Soul Is Dead, or any other contemporary release, with the same speakers to hear the difference for yourself.
The Low End Theory is A Tribe Called Quest’s “coming-of-age”; it’s an album where the group truly find themselves, and are done searching for influences or experimenting. The group defines what they’re drawn to – sonically and aesthetically – and don’t make any compromises about it for an attempted-exchange in mainstream appeal. It’s the group’s 2nd studio album so the story of the its conception isn’t completely told if you don’t consider the Native Tongues’ previous works that preceded it: “People’s Instinctive Travels and The Paths Of Rhythm”, “Straight Out The Jungle”, “3 Feet High & Rising”, and “All Hail The Queen” are examples of the Native Tongues’ works which established their early-styles and their strong Afrika Bambaataa influence; however, The Low End Theory captured A Tribe Called Quest’s own ethos, pathos, and logos without the Native Tongues’ influence, and set them apart from the collective as their own individual characters – as Phife eloquently raps so on “Scenario”: “My days of paying dues are over / acknowledge me as in there”.
Inspired the fast-paced and ever-changing lifestyle that their newly-found fame and wealth brought them; Tribe’s songs on The Low End Theory had a constant motif about their era’s technology, pop-culture, political-climate, and social-statuses, but there were undertones of Afrocentric textures and heavy jazz influences throughout the album too. The motifs are used in a way to “humanize” the group and avoid a sense of alienation among their audience and peers, but the afrocentricity and jazzy flavours of the album are used to keep the artists grounded to their culture and true to themselves too.
But by far and away, the most impressive part of The Low End Theory was the group’s rapping; particularly how they approached their songs’ subjects and messages. Instead of telling stories through the use of rhymes, the Tribe were instead distilling the essence of their subjects through abstracted lyrics. While the group were asking listeners “can I kick it?” on their last album, they were now inviting listeners to contemplate and deconstruct fragments of Q-Tip’s childhood on “Excursions” – the album’s opening track – with the lines: “Back in the days when I was a teenager / Before I had status and before I had a pager”.
The group were now strongly declaring their artistic visions, and pairing them with jazz-flavoured instrumentals and African influences; doing it all while using subtle, poetic strokes which articulated their lives and perspectives as 21-year-old emerging stars. The grounds which the group broke on this record has inspired everyone; from Nas to Drake. Neither tough guys nor suckers; the group’s confident delivery, genuine sentiments, and musicianship on this album cannot be denied by intellectuals or “gangsters”. This appeal wasn’t lost on Q-Tip either, as he broke it down quite simply on “Verses From The Abstract“: “Women dig the voice, brothers dig the lyrics / Quest the people’s choice, we driving for the spirit.”
The Native Tongues and their works were radical deviations at the time, in comparison to the commercially-successful “gangster-rap” and Hip Hop’s status-quo. Yet no matter how controversial the group’s styles were, or no matter how much criticism they received, the Native Tongues have established themselves firmly in the roots of Hip Hop. The innovations, the techniques, and the outputs of the group ensured that they’d become part of Hip Hop’s heritage. Universal adulation in hip-hop is practically unattainable nowadays, but in 1991 A Tribe Called Quest and The Low End Theory enjoyed an embrace that almost no other rapper and/or album has, before or since.
A Tribe Called Quest’s “Low End Theory” defined the group as one of the most influential-forces of the ’90s and even today.
Today Hip Hop mourns over the passing of Hayden Johnson — Prodigy — founding member, and one half of Queensbridge’s Mobb Deep, with fellow rapper Havoc.
Hayden’s work was very much an influential force in Hip Hop’s golden-age in the ’90s, with works such as The Infamous(1995) and Hell On Earth(1996) aging into ‘classics’ in the minds of many fans, and also being exemplary representatives of New York’s own style of rap in the ’90s — especially with the East-coast & West-coast’s cultural rap feud going on at the time.
Mobb Deep’s place in Hip Hop is already cemented; The Hip Hop duo’s image and sound further widened the sonic landscape of Hip Hop. Their 2nd studio album: The Infamous, is still widely regarded by many as a cornerstone album of both the ’90s Hip Hop scene, and New York’s Hip Hop scene too, with timeless anthem-cuts like Shook Ones (Part II) and Survival Of The Fittest — seriously, how many times have we heard Prodigy’s line: “I’m fallin’ and I can’t turn back” sampled on Lo-Fi beats, or interpolated by rappers?
Mobb Deep’s most celebrated works have been awarded many accolades in the years since their initial releases too. The Infamous and Hell On Earth have received notable critical acclaim, and have also placed on numerous “end-of-year”, “end-of-decade” and “all-time-greatest” lists too, alongside other similar and influential works from the duo’s area and time-period, like Nas’ Illmatic(1994), Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die (1994), and The Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers (1993).
Hayden Johnson and Mobb Deep’s influence on the culture and sound of Hip Hop is definitive, and can be very easily traced back from artists today like Ab-Soul, Troy-Ave, Joey Bada$$ and Pro Era. Hayden will be missed very much by his family, friends and fans. His music will be admired for the years to come too.
RIP Hayden Johnson — Prodigy of Mobb Deep. (24/11/1974) – (20/06/2017)
ATCVU 