Don't Rhyme for the Sake of Riddlin' by Russell Myrie

Author:Russell Myrie [Russell Myrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847676115
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

21

After the Storm

Unsurprisingly, the Griff controversy affected the music. In a sense the group did break up. The worst musical consequence of the whole situation was that the team that put together It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back never worked together again. The credits of Public Enemy’s third album reveal that Bill Stephney, credited as producer on Yo! Bum Rush the Show and production supervisor on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back was not present for Fear of a Black Planet.

Well, that’s not strictly true. Below The Bomb Squad’s credit for taking care of everything to do with the album’s creation is the short message, ‘Overseen in the 1990s: Fuck Dick Lewis – Mr Bill Stephney is watching!’ This is a clear reference to the inlay of Yo! Bum Rush the Show where among the thank yous is the sentence: ‘Producer’s note: the 1990s are here, so take no shorts (particularly when we know that Dick Lewis is watching).’ Back in those days, there was a commercial in the United States, and New York especially, for an electronic store called Numark and Lewis. Dick Lewis, the owner of the stores, hosted most of these commercials. His catchphrase was, ‘Dick Lewis is watching.’

‘That was a good thing,’ Bill says, ‘cos Chuck and I really hadn’t been communicating that much. Since I was severed from the Public Enemy process that was Chuck saying no matter what, Bill Stephney is a part of this. It was a nice thing for Chuck to do.’ Nevertheless, from that specific period onwards Bill was essentially separated from PE. He asserts that while the Griff affair indirectly caused this to happen, it was not the main catalyst.

When SOUL records finally did open for business, they released some great records that failed to see much success. ‘Change the Style’ wasn’t the only great record on Son of Bazerk’s Bazerk, Bazerk, Bazerk. ‘The Band Get Swivy on the Wheels’ and ‘J Dubs Theme’, favourites of Bill Stephney’s, are just two other joints that make the album memorable. If you see it, cop it.

‘It was good stuff but it was too conceptual,’ Bill decides of groups like the Young Black Teenagers and their debut album of the same name. The group of young white boys took their ironic name from the surprise that had resulted when it became obvious that white kids were getting down with hip-hop culture. Ice-T’s 1993 album Home Invasion – whose cover featured a young white kid surrounded by symbols of black culture – trod similar ground. ‘If not for the name they probably would have been one of the great white rap groups of all time. Their name was too much baggage.’

It definitely was. It must be said that YBT’s biggest hit, ‘Tap the Bottle’, occurred after they left SOUL records and dropped their second album Dead End Kidz Doin’ Lifetime Bidz. Gotta love that title.

But overly conceptual records weren’t the biggest problem. Bill recalls, ‘The business

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