Although known to the world as an unpredictable, skilled and hilarious MC, Redman came up in hip-hop as a DJ, around age 12... While DJing in clubs around his hometown of Newark, NJ, MCing was always in the back of Red's mind. He recalls: "I always kind of wanted to MC, but I really got into it when I heard EPMD and Biz Markie. I knew that I had that same energy inside me. Everybody else was more technical, but EPMD was more slow with their flow, natural." As fate would have it, Redman met his idols in '91, at a Newark club called Sensations. DJing at the time for Newark MC DoItAll (from Lords of the Underground), Redman stood in the back as his friends took turns freestyling for Erick and Parrish before the show, trying to impress the two, who had recently begun building their Hit Squad family. "My boys told Erick I could rap, too, so E asked me to freestyle. I started spittin' and EPMD put me on stage that night." Shortly after bringing him on tour with them (he doubled as K-Solo's DJ), Erick and Parrish hit up Def Jam for a Redman LP deal... The album was mostly recorded at Charlie Marotta's North Shore Soundworks studio on Long Island. E Sermon oversaw the process, but Redman was left to figure out things on his own more often than not. "I was under a lot of pressure to learn," Redman remembers. "E showed me a couple (of recording) moves, threw me in the studio and just left me there. But I picked up shit real quick, and Erick was always around if I needed him." After a couple months in the lab, Redman emerged with a killer piece of wax that mixed loose-limbed humor and deeply funky beats lived up to the new layers to the Hit Squad sound. Released in September '92 the LP went gold behind hit singles "Blow Your Mind" and "Time 4 Sum Aksion." The Sooperman Lover tells us how he freaked the funky fly stuff on his debut..." cont'd below via Classic Material in XXL by Brian Coleman. Click play, too!
The full Classic Material feature in XXL is below...
