Lance Scott Walker: Well your first generation of stuff that came out - Wicked Cricket was definitely an early guy, didn't release a record until 1996 but he was an early freestyler and promoter in the clubs and a big part of that early scene. But all the early stuff, including early Geto Boys, it all sounded like East Coast; it all sounded like...Learn More

Rahiem at Rap Genius This episode of Outside the Lines With Rap Genius, we have a talk with one of hip-hop's first superstars. Guy Williams, better known as Rahiem (of all the ladies' dreams), from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The Five took their sound and style from parties in the Bronx to stages all over the world, while having...Learn More

SameOldShawn: What most people think of as the first rap record, "Rapper's Delight", you have a pretty unique relationship to that song Rahiem: The lyric that made me popular in the Bronx when I first became an MC was "I'm hemp the demp the women's pimp, women fight for my delight", and Big Bang Hank from the Sugar Hill Gang used that line in...Learn More

SameOldShawn: Somewhat ironically, the group's perhaps best known song, "The Message", wasn't originally the group's idea Rahiem: No, "The Message" was the idea of a musician who created the song, Ed Fletcher aka Duke Bootee. He was one of the members of the Sugar Hill Gang band and basically "The Message" started out as a spoken word piece. It...Learn More

SameOldShawn: Is it really true that Eddie Murphy got his 80's all leather everything look from you guys? Rahiem: Yup, absolutely. So did Rick James. Rick James was wearing different fabrics prior to us going on tour together. We connected him and Eddie Murphy to our stage costume designer, Nikki Stevens SameOldShawn: Wow, so it wasn't even a...Learn More

BDK: Because of "Raw Attitude", that's how I ended up getting the music for "Young, Gifted and Black". Me and Antoinette was cool, and Marley asked about doing a promo. I was like, you know, I'm gonna have Antoinette do it with me. I made a track over at Marley's house, and me and Antoinette, we did that "Raw Attitude" promo, cause I had "Raw", and...Learn More

SameOldShawn: What was a routine? Rahiem: Well a routine, to simplify it in today’s terms, would be a song, but a song that wasn’t recorded at the time because this was prior to rap music being embraced by the music industry. So, I was pretty much the one that spearheaded the whole singing and rap - you know, mixing those two elements together....Learn More

Lance Scott Walker: Just like you had an East Coast/West Coast thing in the 90's. In Houston, you had a North Side/South Side. Luckily, it never escalated to the levels the East Coast/West Coast did, but it could've if it kept going. What you saw were people like ESG, who reached across, he got out of prison and reached out to Slim Thug, "Let's do...Learn More

SameOldShawn: What do you think each member of that group brought to the collective, if you could put it into words? Rahiem: I think that Melle Mel is definitely made for television, like he's a character on and off stage. I think that if it were packaged in the right way, I think Melle Mel's aggressive character is so over the top that it's very...Learn More

Lance Scott Walker: In Houston, they don't care. And so, you know, you gotta take that tact with the book also - in Houston they don't really care how they fit into the greater rap narrative. As far as the overall global rap scene, they just don't care. It's their scene and it's their world, it's their economy, and so I didn't really look at it...Learn More

Lance Scott Walker: Midtown is a disease in Houston that has spread. It used to be this kind of cute little word because it was a sort of... Sort of a, I wanna say - not going to say a deserted area - but it was an area with a lot of warehouses. There were a lot of older houses, you know, some shotgun houses and there was one sort of area in...Learn More