In January the legendary DJ Premier spoke to HipHopDX about Gang Starr’s breakthrough sophomore album, Step in the Arena, for the first in the site’s new series revisiting time-tested Hip Hop albums with their creators to coincide with noteworthy anniversaries of those releases. And now, Smoothe Da Hustler and Trigger Tha Gambler join the classic company of Guru and Preemo with the second induction into DX’s “Timeless” album series: Smoothe Da Hustler’s Once Upon a Time in America.
Released on March 19, 1996, the critically acclaimed, but commercially overlooked offering, has stood the test of time, sounding just as potent today as it did when a gallon of gas cost less than a buck.
While technically a solo Smoothe album, the gloriously grimey collection was truly a tag team effort between the thoughtful hustler-turned-rapper and his gun totin’, rhyme slingin’ little bro’ Trigger. The two blood brothers from Brownsville, Brooklyn, along with their Nexx Level Click co-horts D.V. Alias Khryst, Kovon and neighborhood beatmaker D/R Period, made “Hustlin’” a relevant topic of discussion for a Hip Hop song 10 years before Rick Ross.
Their corner-huggin’ content was matched with an unparalleled focus on innovative rhyme schemes delivered via extraordinary back-and-forth exchanges.
To mark this month’s 15th anniversary of Damon and Tawan Smith’s jaw-dropping introduction to the world, the dynamic duo spoke with DX and revealed rarely known details about the creation and response to Smoothe’s defining debut, including insight into their war of words with the other Brownsville tag team on the rise at the time, M.O.P., as well as their “beef” with Brooklyn legend Big Daddy Kane.
So while the Q&A below is a lengthy read, it is definitely a worthwhile one. A must-read for anyone old enough to remember coppin’ Smoothe Da Hustler’s classic cassette, or anyone of any age who is interested in learning about an astounding album that captured the attention of everyone from The Notorious B.I.G. to Big L to Rakim to Tha Dogg Pound without so much as a second glance from the mainstream.
HipHopDX: No interview about this album can start any other place but with one of the most influential Hip Hop songs of all time, “Broken Language.” First off, what was the genesis of the “the” prefaced rhyme scheme used on that song and at various other points during the album?
Trigger Tha Gambler: That was something that me and Smoothe [Da Hustler] used to do, freestyling. Just freestyling – me, him and [D.V. Alias] Khryst, we used to sit in the hallway and just come off the top of the head rhymin’ like that. So we just decided to put it on wax, and try it out. It basically was a new flow. At that time a lot of brothers wasn’t rappin’ like that, or trying to just be different.
Smoothe Da Hustler: So how the song came about: we got the track, and [Trigger Tha Gambler], he was actually goin’ in. We was playing cards – we upstairs – and I had got the track from D/R [Period] and it was playing, and Trig came back at the table and was like, “Yo. Base your eyes on the guy.” And as he started goin’, I’m like, “Yeah, aiight.” And we just kept goin’ back and forth with each other. After it was done and we recorded it, we realized that it was TOTALLY, totally left field from ANYTHING that we had heard. That was something that we definitely wanted to let the masses hear, once my opportunity was kinda sealed. ‘Cause at that time we was shoppin’, trying to get a deal. But once we got a deal [with Profile Records], that song automatically had to go on the B-side [to my 12” single, “Hustlin’”]. … And just how we approached it: we knew we wasn’t gon’ lay a hook. At the time we was making it we was like, “Nah, we just gon’ go straight through.”
Trigger Tha Gambler: Just back to back.
DX: Now, Smoothe, how pissed was your mom when she heard that line, “The white girl gangbanger / The virgin Mary fucker, the Jesus hanger”? [Laughs]
Trigger Tha Gambler: [Laughs]
Smoothe Da Hustler: [Laughs] Ayo, lemme tell you, at first she was like, “Oh my God!” Like, Oh, we turned her off. We turned her off with that record. I mean, we were saying the most violent shit. But, as we kept playing it around the house, and our friends started ridin’ past playing it, and then people we ain’t know started [playing it], she was like, “Yo, I love this record.” And actually, that’s one of her favorite records. Because she know when she first heard it she was just like, “Oh no.” Like, “No.” But we was like, “Nah ma, this is it!”
Trigger Tha Gambler: [Laughs]
Smoothe Da Hustler: [Laughs] Imagine trying to convince your moms – you like 19 …
Trigger Tha Gambler: You felt a little guilty at one point letting her hear it, but after awhile it just settled. Then once she got a chance to see the video and everything ….
Smoothe Da Hustler: Yeah, she fell in love wit’ [it]. I mean, but then she understand that we from that environment. Like, we kinda tried to sum everything up in that one record. And just being from that environment, I mean, we ain’t have no choice but to speak on the environment. We ain’t from Beverly Hills; we from Brownsville. That’s all we saw, so we can only talk about what we saw, and what we been through. So, at the end of the day she knew it was all relevant.
DX: I thought you guys were kinda doing what Big L was doing at the time. He was the “Devil’s Son,” so I thought you guys were too just doing the then popular shock-value Horrorcore.
Smoothe Da Hustler: Well, I mean, even that to an extent. The whole song was actually supposed to be a shock value, ‘cause it was so different. Like, we just came in just talking the craziest stuff. And remember, it was straight direct but wit’ a twist, unlike anybody else’s [approach]. So, not even taking nothing away from Big L – Rest in Peace to him; he was my man actually. He came down on the train –
Trigger Tha Gambler: Yeah, to the “Broken Language” video.
Smoothe Da Hustler: Yeah, to the video shoot. Like, it was a crazy, gutter video shoot. We had [Grandmaster] Melle Mel [of The] Furious Five – a few of them came through. Big L came through. Shyheim came through.
Trigger Tha Gambler: Monie Love ….
Smoothe Da Hustler: [Big L], he was by himself.
DX: Alright, let’s get a little bit more into it. “To the death thinker, M.O.P. bell ringer.” Let’s clear up once and forever what y’alls real relationship was with Billy [Danze] and [Lil] Fame.
Trigger Tha Gambler: To be honest with you, when I said [that] it wasn’t like goin’ at [M.O.P.] in no kinda way. [Lil] Fame and them used to live right up the block from me and Smoothe, like three blocks up from us. And, basically it was kinda biggin’ ‘em up [with that line]. I remember back in [1994] when they came out with they first album, [To The Death], me and Smoothe and my crew, we walking up the block one day, and they used to have this joint called “Ring Ding,” and that was like one of my favorite joints on their album, and I just got so sporadic one day I started bustin’ a .32 up in the air while we walking up the block [and listening to the song] ….
Smoothe Da Hustler: [Laughs]
Trigger Tha Gambler: But that was one of my favorite joints, so that’s why I bigged them up on that song. And I know a lot of people thought we had drama and beef and stuff like that, but when we would see each other it was never no drama. It was never none of that, at all.
Smoothe Da Hustler: It was friendly competition. Taking it even back further, I remember back in the day my boy Robert Baskins, and God bless the dead, my man Jam, they lived in the Plaza’s. And Lil Fame – [in 1992] they was doing The Hill That’s Real project. But right before that, we was doing community centers, and Lil Fame had did a deejay [gig at one]. He was my deejay for two, three sets. Bringing it up further, we’d see them on the [road]. I remember a show we had with Run-DMC and them [in 1996]. And, they had put out a record, [“World Famous”], saying, “I’m outspoken…niggas language is broken / The labels need to stop the bullshit they promotin’,” or something like that. And I came back out with “Murdafest,” just gettin’ back at them. So, we at the show, this is a show in a college – I think it was in Virginia – and they jumped on stage. And they performing, and they tearing the house down. Me and Trig, we in the audience, we watching, we in the cut. And, boom, it was time for them to say the diss part, and they just stopped and they didn’t say nothing. They let the beat ride. And so, when we got on stage and did our set, and had the show rockin’, when we did “Murdafest,” when it was time for me to go into my third verse, to go in, I just stopped. And we left it at that. So it was like an unsaid, Aiight, let’s cut the nonsense out. Which was totally respected: they didn’t try to play me at the spot; I didn’t try to play them at the spot. But we see each other [now] and it’s all love. I got a record now actually with Billy Danze – shouts out to Billy Danze – Lucky Don, and Rock from Heltah Skeltah called “Straight Outta Brownsville”