S. Samuel
Brooklyn rap duo M.O.P., consisting of Billy Danze and Lil Fame, have revealed their Top 5 favorite hip-hop collectives, ranging from Run-DMC to Mobb Deep.
The duo paid homage to hip-hop pioneers but also showed love to underground duo Smif-N-Wessun.
“Run-D.M.C. is just amazing, dude. The style that Run had was just ridiculous. Even though lyrically he was dope too but he was more style…[EPMD]. Incredible, they had a fly style. We didn’t even know where they were from, but it was just the way they came across with the going back and forth flow…Smif-n-Wessun was just incredible. They rapped like they were high as h*ll and if you wanted to enjoy their music you just had to get high as h*ll and just sit down in the basement and just rock with Smiff-n-Wessun.” (XXL Mag)
M.O.P. also gave props to Mobb Deep and gave accolades to themselves.
“You cannot front on Mobb. We came into the game together and I watched them grow. I watched them go through a lot. They always put themselves in a winning position. I don’t know whether they were setting up to get like that or whether it was just faith…[M.O.P.] Man it’s amazing that two kids from the world that we come from can get together and make magic, and the way we feed off each other…man it’s like the way we build records I’ve never even seen or heard of it being done that way.” (XXL Mag)
A couple years ago, Billy Danze spoke on never releasing an album through G-Unit Records.
“Basically both labels were broke,” he said in an interview referring to G-Unit and Roc-A-Fella. “We were in a position to get deals from these labels, and also from LOUD Records too…All three of those labels were the biggest East Coast urban labels at the time, but every time we got to one of them, they started declining…It was just a timing issue, and if we would have gotten to either label a year before — it would have worked out…But we were in the game when the Roc was a pebble, and before G-Unit got put on…As long as we were able to make music, and put albums out, we were still happy because we don’t have those fans like everyone else has…The fans that we have are more like family members because they’ve been around for our whole career…Our fans want us to be in a good position, and they don’t want us to be on a label that’s crumbling.” (iHipHop)
M.O.P. parted ways with 50 Cent‘s team around February 2008.
While M.O.P.’s three year stint on G-Unit did not yield an album, the group benefited greatly from the situation, according to their longtime manager. “The great thing about the G-Unit deal is that it cleared all the debts the group carried over the years,” Laze explained. “So we are starting basically from scratch.” (All Hip Hop)
Check out some past M.O.P. footage below:
