"I don't really wanna beeeeee your..." No disrespect to the Chili Peppers but if you're into Hip-Hop, that's Bo$$. It was 1993 and like the song said: "everybody wanna sound grimey..." Onyx had the market cornered on the growling, gutter sound that was turning rap into Grit-Hop. You had the aforementioned Official Nastees, Hood Ratz(Bootlegga) and Raw Breed(Remember Rabbit Stew? OK other than any of their relatives and me, do you remember it?) There was no female representative of that hardcore genre until Lichelle Laws a.k.a. Bo$$ stepped up to the plate and she did just that, REPRESENT...then she Keyser Söze-d.
Early summer of '93 I got my hands on the "Deeper" single and I was impressed. This was a woman who was talking about strugglin', , drinkin', gun violence and didn't give a shit if she was fly or not ("so who the fuck cares that I got gray hairs and can't sleep"). Her no-nonsense attitude and lyrical contenet was embraced by the masses. She was for female empowerment but took a different route from Latifah and others by calling herself a bitch. Born Gangstaz was a bonafide hit for the female MC(soundscan of 370,000+ uheard of for a female back then) but an unflattering article in the Wall Street journal, a huge Hip-Hop publication(*gagging*) made it a wrap for her.
It turns out the thugette from Michigan wasn't as "hood" as the purists would have liked her to be. She came fromn a *gasp* middle-class background and was raised by both her parents(WHAT?) She also had a decent education and participated in many extra-carricular activities such as dance, etc. Funny thing is: THIS WAS ALL EXPLAINED IN THE FIRST TRACK ON THE BORN GANGTAZ ALBUM VIA A RECORDED PHONE MESSAGE FROM MOM DUKES! I guess people thought it was funny hearing an old lady talk about someone they just knew had to kill like 50 people before she dropped her first single. All rappers are killas, dealers and pussy beaters right? Bo$$'s second album never came to be and she wasn't heard of after '94.
In these days of Killa's living in Connecticut and thugs walkin around with security details, does she seem like such a travesty now? This chick could rhyme better than most chicks then and probably could hang now. So what she didn't rhyme about men treating her right or how everybody wants to eat her, she rapped about what she liked and more importantly WE liked it...for the moment.
This is my favorite song from her "Deeper", of course. Check it out and give Born Gangstaz a listen even if it's just for nostalgia.
Bo$$ if you read this holla at your lad.
Deeper-Bo$$
http://www.zshare.net/audio/02-deeper-mp3.html
