Six Degrees Of Separation: “Remember The First Hip-Hop Album You Bought?” Slim Thug, Yo Gotti, Saigon, Willy Northpole, Asher Roth…

15 years ago view-show 1,011,087

six-degrees-blog-coverRemember the movie Brown Sugar? Well if so, do you recall Sanaa Lathan’s character “Sidney Shaw” asking the people that she interviewed when they first fell in love with Hip-Hop?

For everyone that answered that question in the movie came a different tale of what initially inspired them to do what they do.

In this edition of Six Degrees Of Separation [Click for other editions] the focus is on the first album each artist bought, (for this writer it was Brand Nubian’s One For All album) and how it affected them.

This time around Asher Roth, Yo Gotti, Saigon, Detroit’s Finale, Willy Northpole, Slim Thug, West Coast producer J. Wells, and New York lyricist Dashah all share their own experiences on the subject. Maybe you have something in common—you never know…

[Click on names for individual interviews]

iHipHop.com: Do you remember one of the first Hip-Hop albums you ever bought?

slim_press31Slim Thug: My homeboy gave me a copy of Eazy-Duz-It by Eazy E, and that was the first tape I had… It wasn’t even mine, it was his and he just let me listen to it on his headphones, and I just kept listening to it… That sh*t tuned me out, you know what I’m saying?

That’s the first mothaf*cka I remember jamming to man, and the first time I remember listening to music, and that type of sh*t… It came out in the 80’s and I don’t remember how old I was, but I was young… I’m 28-years-old now, and I still remember listening to that sh*t all the time…

gotti-article-2Yo Gotti: I’m going to have to say it was from 8Ball & MJG, and it was their album, Comin’ Out Hard

saigon-blog_phixrSaigon: Yeah, it was a long time ago…

I didn’t actually buy it but, my dad had dropped it off for me; it was a UTFO album…

I was hooked from there…

Around that time, I think I was around 6-years-old…

All I remember was that I was really young…

article22Dashah: The first Hip-Hop album that I ever physically went to the store and bought was probably The Chronic… I had to have my mom with me because back then they were really big on the parental guidance thing back in the day when they first came out with the explicit stickers on it…

So that’s the first record I went out myself and bought, but the first album that was given to me was 36 Chambers… My older brother gave that to me, and that’s what really got me going as an MC, and really made me want to do this…

willy-article3Willy Northpole: I would have to say East Coast All-Stars’ Self-Destruction… It was the one with Public Enemy, Kool Moe Dee, and a bunch of other cats on there…

I was about 5-6 years old when that came out, and my mom made me remember everybody’s verse, and I had to perform it at a talent show, and I won that sh*t… [Laughing]

So that was the East Coast, but as far as the West Coast goes, I would have to say Too $hort’s Life Is…Too Short album… That was a classic album, and my mom was into Hip-Hop, so she used to clean up to that sh*t…

asher-article-3Asher Roth: The first album I ever bought was Jay-Z’s Volume 2., but the first album I sat down and listened to and was like, “OH SH*T!” was the Reflection Eternal album, by Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek… After I listened to that, I was like, “Yeah, okay.”

finale02_phixr23Finale: I always listened to Hip-Hop, but when I made the decision to start spitting, was when I got to college in Atlanta and someone had gave me a copy of OC’s Jewelz album on tape… That’s why to this day I say that OC is my favorite rapper…

I studied that tape from front to back, and I think that’s one of the most complete albums ever in Hip-Hop…

The way he spit on it kind of inspired me on how I approach a project… Not so much the way I spit, but just the way they put that project together—I don’t think there are too many projects our right now that is parallel to that…

wells2J. Wells: I would have to say Scarface’s The Untouchables… I really loved Hard To Earn by Gang Starr, and that was it for me… Then it was The Chronic with Dr. Dre