The management turned Record Label was home to DMX and the LOX. 3 Former artists under Dean's Ruff Ryders Labelĭarrin "Dee" Dean began in the entertainment business by starting Ruff Ryders Entertainment as management company.
He should spend more time in Los Angeles. Basically, he’s from a giant bank condensed into a 33 square mile police state. His hometown is still treacherous, just in a different way. His first solo album is called 1993, because his whole life has been post- 36 Chambers.
It wasn’t the crack-addled city of the 80s, and his upper west side neighborhood wasn’t as turbulent as it was when Malcom X was roaming the streets a few blocks north. On “Seedy Motherfucker,” another track from Lil Me, Wiki raps about the type of New York he grew up in. The footage has a style similar to “Market,” interweaving grainy clips of the two driving with clearer clips of them rapping outside their car in an alley. The flimsy narrative of the visual is that Wiki and Antwon are on the run from the police, having just stolen hip-hop. The song is “Patience,” off the solo album he released in December called Lil Me. In between the Babylon set, the Low End Theory set and whatever else he was doing out west, Wiki also found time to shoot a music video. If you light up a joint like the teenagers standing near me did, Lee Spielman will personally come over and tell you to get the fuck outside. The floor is littered with empty beer cans brought in by those not yet of legal age. There are t-shirts for sale but no one monitoring them. The ventilation is not very good, and the AC is not turned on. It’s as DIY as a store steps away from Hollywood Blvd. The vibe in Babylon matches everything you’d expect a Trash Talk-run venue to be like. Wiki and Antwon performed after “Market,” and both artists had the crowd going nuts. In a stylized video with a good soundtrack, New York doesn’t seem so miserable. The video, which is now available on YouTube, is a meditative tour through the country’s most populous city. Wiki makes an on-camera appearance to rap his verse for “Lord’s Mess,” over a beat created by Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and Ratking’s Sporting Life. Dozens of kids stood reverently, watching as their East Coast counterparts weaved in and out of traffic, skitching on cabs and grinding on basketball court bleachers. I walked into the event just as the video was being projected onto the wall. The occasion was the debut of “Market,” a seven-minute skate video shot on Super 8. One of their stops was Babylon, the all-ages venue / skate shop Trash Talk’s Lee Spielman opened in the heart of Hollywood last year. Ratking was on the West Coast a few weeks ago, performing at various venues throughout town. Yet, somehow, some of his best work has been made during visits to Los Angeles. Modern Manhattan and the joys and pains of living there are the predominate themes driving the music he makes as a solo artist and as 1/3 of Ratking. Wiki is as New York as a yellow cab, bagels and lox, or stop and frisk. Will Hagle hung out on Fairfax long before the OF invasion.