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BIOGRAPHY | BEEFS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES
THE HORSEMEN | CLOAK 'N DAGGA
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He ain't the Big, Bad Wolf, but Canibus sure knows how to huff and puff. And he'll definately tear your house down.
The MC. Master of Ceremonies. Motivator of Crowds. While becoming the top DJ was all of the rage in hip hop's humble beginnings, the MC has evolved to represent all this rebel culture can signify. Intelligence. Resistance. Masculinity. Femininity. Creativity. Rage. All wrapped up in a B-boy stance. Transforming the English language into slangology. Telling the tales of the underprivileged - it costs nothing to pen the pain of people who have been deemed useless. A DJ can play records to make us dance, cry and celebrate, but who can recreate the tumultuous, complex, beautiful experience of ghetto children in song form? The MC. That's why he shines as a her to all who understand - and feel - that of which he speaks.
What do all the best, most memorable MCs possess? Wisdom. Skill. Knowledge. Mystique. And a fuck-you attitude. Soul, style and genius. Tight flow, great timing, rhythmic delivery. Dope voice, exceptional inflection, perfect clarity and volume. Your showmanship and freestyle ability have to be on point, and it ain't easy. There are grueling testing grounds - most lie in the heart.
Canibus, hip hop's newest super rapper, has plenty of heart; it's the hardware he's been without. "It's a jail cell," contemplates the lyrical analyst, "The paper. The lines and the margins become a jail cell." However, this new jack king of rap is properly outfitted for the 21st centruy now. "I got an IBM ThinkPad," he says. "It's one of the fastest ones." Cani's not trying to be a step behind anyone. And while he wants to be able to hit all rap music devotees, he insists he has a certain group in his sights. "Intellectuals," Canibus says, "is who I want to kick a conversation to."
Early on, Canibus' extraordinary rhyming sent a tremendous buzz through hip hop. Before blazing the mixtape scene with nitro freestyles and spittin' on The Lost Boys' sizzling 1997 underground single, "Beast from the East" featuring Redman and A+, Canibus was a surprise guest on the soundtrack for the 1997 documentary Rhyme & Reason. Performing solely on the strength of Ras Kass' faith in him, the hungry artist flowed viciously with the likes of Ras Kass and Heltah Skeltah on "Uni-4-orm." Ras even caught a bit of heat from Priority Records for sneaking in the young upstart. "Nobody knew who he was," Ras explains, "but niggas trusted my judgement, 'cause I said he was nice."
A mercenary on the mic, Canibus made a name for himself by lyrically twisting heads and wearing out countless rewind buttons with his otherworldly metaphors. But such braggadocio and I'm-the-nicest banter has its price. The same elements that make the perfect MC attract the vultures.
Take, for example, the 1961 Twilight Zone episode "A Game of Pool." Jack Klugman portrays Jesse Cardiff, a pool fanatic who longs to challenge deceased pool champion Fats Brown to prove that he, Cardiff, is the greatest player ever. So the late king of the cue balls (played by Jonathan Winters) returns from the valley of death to face his opponent. After a grueling match, Cardiff, one shot from victory, ignores Brown's warning about the consequences of winning. Cardiff hits the shot, then dies - only to become a ghost who must travel the earth, accepting challenges from countless aspiring champoins. Brown, conquered, happily ascends into heaven, his curse of perfection broken.
Change the channel to NYC. Webster Hall. At the 2nd Annual John Lennon Songwriter's Contest Awards, free drinks, hors d'oeuvres and a festive Asian theme make for the perfect afterwork event. Salt-N-Pepa and Wyclef Jean and the Refugee All-Stars are headlining. A distressed Canibus is pollyin' hard to get one of his boys into the tightly-secured event. "Yo, I'm in but my man's outside," he gripes, trying to sway an overwrought security nigga. "What I got to do, give him my laminate?" Homeboy's not feeling him. Canibus rolls his eyes and turns toward me. I extend my right hand to him: "What up, Canibus? I did the piece on you and L in XXL." Immediately his eyes snap to attention, a stone-crumbling glare. He juts his diminutive body toward mine, which is damn-near identical in size. Our noses are tip-to-tip. "Word?" he roars angrily. "I ain't like that shit!"
Damn. I stand my ground, unshaken, with his brolic bodyguard looming. After I inquire why, Canibus stutters, trying to explain his sentiments. "I, I, I...I mean, it's wack," he laments. "Those niggas don't have anything to do with the battle, and they speakin' on it. It just creates a certain atmosphere that ain't right." Hmmm. You make one of the hottest battle records ever - aimed at a living legend - and expect the world to listen and not comment? "Yeah, but ["Second Round K.O."] was something personal that I had to get off my chest," he says. But it was made for the masses, true? Looking up at the ceiling, he answers. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes I ponder if I should have done the shit or not." In the same breath, though, he spits with venom, "but [LL] disrespected me as a man, so I had to do it."
A dark-skinned cat approaches on the shady. "What up, Canibus?" he offered, pounds out. Love is exchanged, then the kid yells, "What up now, nigga!?!?" on some "Let's battle" shit. "You that kid from upstairs," mulls Canibus. "Didn't I tell you I'm not here for that shit tonight?" An altercation ensues, and security rushes over. After a few heated words, calm is restored. "See what I was talking about?" Canibus asks, shaking his head. "I go through it every day." He and his bodyguard then walk toward the exit, as if nothing had happened. Later, Canibus and Wyclef tear the house down.
Even before the LL fray, the life of 23-year-old Germaine "Canibus" Williams seemed like a continuous series of battles. The eldest of two sons, he dealt with confrontation after confrontation as a shorty growing up all over. D.C. Atlanta. Jamaica. London. New Jersey. Epic battles with the locals are the basis of all the aggression in his mind-twisting rhymes. "All I used to do was fight," he says with a long face, "Every day, just fightin' with niggas 'cause I was different."
Canibus describes himself then as a recluse. His mother Elaine's administrative position with a housing project company led to the constant moving, which prevented his getting close to neighborhood children. "My mom's company would give bonuses to the person who would pick up their family and go where the company needed the most help," he explained. "Single-parent home. We needed the dough, so wherever they sent her, that's where we lived."
Developing those social skills at a young age is crucial. Feeling out of sync, Canibus started to try on different personalities. "I used to say to myself, 'You gonna go as a thug this year and see what happens,'" he remembers, "I'd not brush my teeth, not comb my hair - I let it dread up and the whole nine. The next time I tried to go to school dipped everyday. I did my little jobs to get dough," he fondly recalls, "had my hot kicks, fly gear, all of that, until my dough started getting low."
Misunderstood and lost in the shuffle of an identity crisis, Canibus turned to rhyming. It all started with his mom's helping him purchase his first boom box. "It was an Edison, yeah, I used to just sit in front of it and watch the E.Q. levels go up and down." He smiles. Unknowingly, his moms set him on the path to contentment. "She just knew that it would make me happy. She didn't know why," he sayd, his voice low, "but she helped me get something that she knew was important to me. That's why I love her so much."
NYC. Sun Studios. Ceiling-to-floor, the spacious loft is filled with photography accessories. Black velour backdrops. Huge rolls of white construction paper. Gigantic light stands. Mobb Deep's "Eye for an Eye," is blasting courtesy of Mr. Cheeks of the Lost Boys, the designated DJ for the day. A friendly game of C-Lo is in full effect over in the left corner, between a representative of Pure Playaz clothing, Cheeks, Moe, the bodyguard from Webster Hall and two other cats. The Group Home fam is in full attendance, chillin'. Stylists are running ragged, trying to appease Canibus' fickle tastes.
Five days before the shoot, Canibus had called. "I want the shoot at a heliport, and I want the shots to be of me on the open door area, facing the inside of the helicopter, while we are in the air," he had said, as serious as a heart attack. "Then I want a real fly girl with me on a motorcycle. But the girl has to be fly, and I want a hot-ass motorcycle."
Unfortunately, with tight budgets on both magazine and label ends, Idea Man can't have that picture. Instead, Cani has to settle for a chopper - a burgundy, semi-rusted, road-battered, 1969 Triumph. But all isn't lost. Mr. Cheeks brought out - from his personal collection of motorcycles - a money green ZX 600 Kawasaki Ninja.
The bike's headlight damn near blinds the photographer. Gripping the cycle's handlebars, Canibus calls to Cheeks, "YO CHEEKS! How you turn the lights off?" Cheeks raises his eyebrows, yells back, over the blaring music, "OFF?! OFF?!"
Cani nods, and Cheek answers, "Turn the key off!" Cani searches in vain. Cheek jokingly says under his breath, "Turn the key, muthafuc..." and then blurts out on his way to help, "That's one thing about Canibus - he don't know how to ride no bike!"
Charles Suitt, CEO of Group Home, Canibus' label, vividly recalls meeting Canibus, circa 1995. "When I met Canibus, I had The Lost Boys, but they weren't signed yet," he says, digging into his grilled chicken platter. "This barber out in Atlanta knew me and my partner Big Tiz, who's locked down right now, and hooked us up with Canibus." Their relationship took a while to gel, because Canibus came to them, as Suitt points out, "on some real different shit, like, I couldn't explain it. I just knew he was different." Cheeks co-signs: "I know he a skinny little nigga. But that nigga powerful, though. He got heart. He got the balls for this."
It takes more than a tough set of nuts to survive the ratchet world of rap, especially when you're shown no money early on in the game. BJ Kerr, president of Atlanta-based Patchwerk Recordings, remembers when all Canibus had was a dollar, a dream and an ill rhyme partner. "He used to be in a group called T.H.E.M. [The Heralds of Extreme Metaphors]," recalls Kerr, who almost signed them. "His partner was this kid named Webb. Webb is dope as fuck too. He's right there with Canibus."
Canibus attended Dekalb Community College and worked odd jobs, but his life was all about beats and rhymes. "Canibus would come to the crib after work at 5 p.m. and wouldn't leave 'til like six the next morning. Straight rhyming, straight making beats," insists Webb (now C.I. a.k.a. Central Intelligence) from Atlanta. The two met through Webb's cousin Pat out in D.C. Pat called Webb and told him about the lyrically-advanced Canibus, who was moving to Atlanta. "You always hear cats are ill," Webb insisted, "so I was like, 'Yeah, yeah, send him through.' But when he spit, he was definately ill."
In late 1995, the two decided to make a run at the rap industry. T.H.E.M. performed at the 1996 Gavin convention and shocked Charles Suitt by presenting him with a tight 18-song demo, made in two and a half months. The project was constructed solely by the two, on Ensoniq EPS 16 and ASR 10 beat machines, played through the headphones of a four-track. "Suitt was like, 'Y'all definately did y'all thing,'" Webb assures.
The determined young rappers' training was vigorous. "We'd pull out the physics book and throw a word ou. Like, 'Canibus, take radioactive. What you gonna do with that?' And he would come up and hit me with a word," Webb recollects. "It used to get wild." Wild but useful. One night, the wonder twins of rhyme battled the Wu-Tang Clan and their extended family in a parking lot outside of a popular Atlanta nightclub in Stone Mountain. "First, it was just RZA and Rae. They just wanted to see what we had," Webb says. As the two proved to be formidable opponents, RZA called in the cavalry. "U-God spit, then we spit, Sunz of Man spit, then we spit." Webb gets hype at the memory. "After we knew, it was like 100 people surrounding us." With Meth, Ghost and the rest of the Clan in attendance, the crowd wanted to know who these kids hanging verse for verse with the Wu were, until "they brought Killah Priest in," Webb sighs. Priest kicked a wicked six-minute freestyle that capsized the duo. But respect was given nonetheless.
"In rhyming battles, Canibus was extremely aggressive. He memorized like 40 rhymes," Webb reminisces. "I died at about 23." Patchwerk's Kerr vouches for Canibus' relentless rhyming prowess. "In the booth, the nigga cuts the lights off, has candles burning in the dark, just snapping." Before that, he's in the hallway pacing like a lion in a cage, eyes closed, with his Walkman on blast - like a fighter in the training room, getting ready.
Although T.H.E.M. may have been the perfect combination of Canibus' fierce punchline battle verses and Webb's space-age lyrical complexity, all good things come to an end. "Unfortunately, about a year ago a third party got involved," Webb shrugs, "and made it seem like I was sayin' stuff about Canibus behind his back. We haven't even spoken since that day it went down. It's really over some nonsense." Asked later about his old partner, Canibus spits, "What you trying to get at? It's obvious that things happened if the nigga ain't around, right?"
Mid-Manhattan. Universal Records. 7th floor. Group Home's unfurnished new offices. I'm being entertained by Alex Andino, general manager of Group Home Entertainment (Canibus' position before getting signed), GH's stunning artist Tiye Phoenix and some Universal representatives. A visibly-weary Canibus arrives in a gray Gap pullover, black stone-washed jeans and black suede Tims and shoos away the entourage. "Okay," he grunts. "Talk to me."
Last fall, on the opening night of Puffy's restaurant, Justin's, Jay-Z advised the young mix-tape terror "to be prepared for what he was getting into." Canibus was actually rendered speechless for a moment: "I didn't know how to respond to that. I didn't want to come off as if I knew what he was saying, and I didn't want to seem like I didn't know. It was ill." What's iller is that it was the Roc-A-Fella don who also pulled Wyclef's coat at the event, and introduced him to Canibus. "I know you know who this is, right?" Jigga rhetorically asked Clef. That very night, Wyclef invited Canibus to rhyme on the remix of Clef's red-hot "Gone 'Til November" from his acclaimed solo opus, The Carnival. After a few more cameos, Canibus became a full-fledged member of Clef's Refugee All-Stars. "That nigga Clef didn't know me from anywhere and took me under his wing," Canibus reflects, "and took me around the world."
After a hearty hour of strolling down Memory Lane, our conversation naturally goes toward the LL conflict, and Canibus becomes agitated. This interview is suppose to be on some different shit, but who is gonna pass up the opportunity to find out about this historic battle from one of its participants? Not me. And in a naturally flowing conversation with no ill intentions, I unknowingly fire the cannon: "What was your initial reaction to LL's 'The Ripper Strikes Back?'"
Showtime. "Yo, you making this battle shit the bulk of the interview!" Canibus snarls. With over an hour's worth of tape on topics ranging from family and dolphins to technology and Bill Gates, I reply, "No, I'm not." While members of the Group Home staff creep around corners to witness what's happening, Canibus steps into Drama 101. "Well, if you want to know, read all of the other publications that did the same bullshit!" In debate mode, I retort, "How do I know what they print is correct? I need the background information straight from the source - you." Rising from his slouched position, he exclaims, "No, you don't! You just like the rest of them! You're a chameleon! You trying to trap me by talking about my childhood all nice, then bringing up this bullshit! I told you I didn't want to talk about this shit!"
At this point, Canibus ain't trying to hear a brotha. Fists clenched, he springs out of his chair towards me, chest all pumped up. Still sitting, I'm unfazed. Canibus is ranting and raving. "Word? You want to talk about something else now?!" Blood pressure bubbling, he grabs my tape recorder, which is resting on a partition above me. Still popping shit, he yanks out the tape, sets down the recorder, storms to his seat and stares me in the face. Just as I think to myself, "This nigga is trippin'," he places the tape between his hands like a sandwich and applies pressure. "Ugh!" His first try at breaking the tape is unsuccessful. "Ugghh!" Second go-round barely cracks the grame. On his third press, my tape is smashed to bits and thrown near a corner, "now let's see if you still want to talk," he sneers. I'm heated as hell, but I bark, "Yeah, I still want to talk, but the interview is blown the fuck up now!"
With his label's staff and various crew niggas present but trying not to intervene, Canibus and I experience an extremely tense cooling-down period. After justifying our reasons for reacting wildly, we realize the things that make us alike. Both young Black professionals. Both writers, sharing a love for new technology. Both living hip hop at it's highest levels. Bother under tremendous pressure. And both with a "little man complex." "Niggas like you and me are too similar to be going at each other, man," Canibus sighs. "A nigga could only speak on a topic but so much. After a while, that shit drains your life force."
Like a true-blue survivalist, Canibus attacks when cornered - not only in his feud with LL, but with every challenge. Imagine a brick wall behind you and a Mack truck coming full speed in your direction. FOr him, the brick wall equates to his hype-driven, highly-anticipated first album, Can-I-Bus?, and the Mack truck is everything else. But he only fears one thing: "I'm afraid that no matter what my accomplishments are, I'll go down in history for 'Second Round K.O.'"
No need to worry. This groundbreakin' debut is hip hop at its most creative and experimental. Tracks like "How Deep" take your mind on a quantum leap back to 1987, when Canibus was breakdancing with a crew called The Last Platoon. He even answers the questions that Q-Tip raised on "What?" from A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory. Being the self-proclaimed supreme lyrical machine, Cani ventures out to dangerous territory on "The Grand Deception," a list of conspiracy theories in rhyme form, and "Rip Rock," a foolhardy attempt at blending hip hop and heavy metal, Run-DMC style. The sublime "Get Retarded" find Canibus verbally bashing wack MCs over a neck-snapping old school drum pattern and staccato guitar strums. And don't sleep on "Hypnitis," a phat "Vapors" for the new millennium.
As evidenced by his coarse exterior and cocky temperament, Canibus is one MC who has hip hop by the throat, and he won't let go 'til he feels like it. "We are born into resistance," he says. And you can expect Canibus to carry on with the heart of a lion.
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