I spent the first 18 years of my life in NJ and CT just close enough to NYC that in the late 80’s and early 90’s I could tune in to WBLS, KISS-FM and occasionally WKCR Columbia (where Stretch & Bobbito reigned supreme) to hear much of “The Golden Era” of hip-hop as it happened. In New Haven I had 88.7 WNHU/University of New Haven and 94.3 WYBC/Yale University which both had excellent hip-hop programming (as well as the indie/punk/experimental/etc content you would expect from a college station). I could never figure out how or why I could or couldn’t tune into WKCR (I think I assumed it had something to do with the weather??) When I moved away in 1995 I really missed being able to hear Kid Capri, Red Alert, Chuck Chillout, Funkmaster Flex etc and mainstream hip-hop radio was just starting to enter the “shiny suit” era and I didn’t really feel like paying much attention anymore. Shortly thereafter, in 1997, I came across Stretch Armstrong’s “Lesson 1” mixtape (along with DJ Premier’s “Crooklyn Cuts” series) and discovered a whole new world of music that had happened in the two years I hadn’t been able to tune in to NYC radio. That mixtape led me to have a conversation with another customer in a record store, who then hooked me up with a tape of a Stretch & Bobbito show from 1993 (burned onto a CD-R) when Nas came on to promote his debut album “Illmatic.” (This was also memorable as it was the first CD-R mixtape I ever owned, and it didn’t play in my Sony Discman or my car, just my Sony 5-Disc changer). I can’t remember the whole tracklist but one memorable block of songs was Pete Rock & CL Smooth “One In a Million” into Casual “That’s How It Is” into K-Solo “The Formula (House Party)” into Akinyele “Checkmate”. What blew my mind was that I knew Casual, K-Solo and Akinyele but I had never heard these songs by them. I was far removed from hearing random LP tracks on hip-hop radio shows. The K-Solo track was especially mind-blowing as it was recorded to sound as if he was performing live at a house party, complete with poor mic sound quality and unfiltered echo. He starts the song asking the crowd to back up and by the end he’s announcing a fight in the audience and asking for security. It’s a fucking hard track and I was really pissed I hadn’t heard it before. It took a little searching but I finally found a used CD copy of “Times Up” , his 2nd and final LP for Atlantic, and the album “The Formula” had appeared on. Overall it was a fun listen, but already dated by the time I heard it. I felt the same way about a lot of similar artists from that era, 1987-1992. It’d barely been 10 years and hip-hop had lost its sense of humor and even some of the harder stuff like K-Solo and Akinyele sounded a little goofy compared to what was on the radio.
K-Solo was apparently aware that nerds like me felt this way and around the time DMX dropped his first album in 1997, K-Solo came out of virtually nowhere to attack X (whom he met in prison during a 3 year stint) and claim that X’s song “Spellbound” was ripped off from K-Solo’s breakthrough 1990 single of the same name. Solo came into the rap world as the elder member of The Hit Squad, the crew comprised of EPMD, Redman, Keith Murray, DJ Scratch and Das EFX. EPMD were the superstars of the collective and K-Solo was the first solo star to emerge from Hit Squad, even before Redman. Time hadn’t been too kind to Solo’s career and by the time DMX was blowing up and becoming an international star, Solo had only a few years prior popped up out of the “Where Are They Now File” to announce he had moved to LA and signed to Death Row Records. He’d then appear on Redman’s 1996 single “It’s Like That (My Big Brother)” which, while a truly great track, kinda seemed like a bone Redman had thrown his older, now lesser-known buddy. Worse, Solo’s own lyrics on the song reminded music nerds like me that in his appearance on EPMD’s 1989 track “Knick Knack Patty Wack” Solo, doing his signature “spelling-words-while rapping” thing, misspelled “BIRD” as “B-R-I-D” as in “I’m from C-I, L-I, F-L-Y…Like a B-R-I-D, in the S-K-Y”. In “It’s Like That” he (jokingly, I hope) says he’s rhyming into a “M-I-K-E MIC”.
The last I remember hearing about Solo was when I (for some reason) clicked a link on Twitter that led me to a 2007 interview where he discusses his disdain for EPMD and Redman, repeatedly challenges both DMX and Keith Murray to boxing matches, and veers so close to the now ubiquitous “90’s Rapper Turned Conspiracy Theorist” profile that I’m not even going to check Youtube if he has a bunch of interviews with DJ Vlad. I’m just going to assume they’re there, right in between Lord Jamaar and Eric B.
Unrelated, here’s a video from 2006 of Busta Rhymes making fun of a guy who crashed his Ferrari 360 Spider into Scott Storch’s house in Miami while Busta was visiting.
