A wealth of write-ups could be drafted on the celebrated career of the Kool Genius of Rap, born Nathaniel Thomas Wilson, July 20th, 1968, the emcee, regarding, e.g., his lisp, a trademark; his multisyllabic rhyming, of which he was an innovator; his verse on hip-hop pioneer, producer, Marley Marl's “
The Symphony” (1988), a standard, performed alongside his Cold Chillin' labelmates Masta Ace, Craig G, and, perhaps, his best competition for greatest rapper of the 1980’s, not named Rakim, Big Daddy Kane; but his singular talent in his prime was his ability to write the most noxious song lyrics the genre had seen without a hint of irony.
Sure, Billy Danze’s counterpart, Lil’ Fame, of the hip-hop duo, M.O.P., which has a reputation for graphic lyrics itself, has joked, “I yapped the gold cross off John Paul III,” adlibbed, simply, “Who want they motherfuckin' ass whooped?” multiple times at the end of a record, and intimated slapping an adversary with presumed hand claps in a verse, across his group’s various recordings, but facetiously, giving the impression of a warning not a threat—a caricature.
Mr. Wilson on the other hand loses himself in the speaker in his lyrics, no matter how despicable, becoming him, a rapist; a mob hitman; a murderous, cuckolded ex-con out for revenge against the opportunist who replaced him while he served time—never betraying the lyrist behind the mask, and with a total commitment to character, the kind of which is produced in film.
In “
Train Robbery,” a record it can be assumed The Notorious B.I.G. heard and later decided to put his own spin on (“
Gimme the Loot”), from
Live and Let Die (1992), an album removed from the shelves for its violent content by Warner Brothers, in light of label mate, Ice T's, controversial "
Cop Killer," he raps, “All of the sudden I just nutted, pulled up my pants and zipped up. She's on the floor with her mouth flooded,” having forced himself on a piteous, female train-occupant—taking a break from shaking down her fellow passengers, with his sociopathic co-conspirators.
Later, the three armed robbers shoot at police officers as they make their getaway, once as they exit the train, and then again in a high-speed chase down the interstate.
“
Hey, Mister Mister,” a song so misogynistic Epic Records refused to include it on G Rap's 1995 album,
4, 5, 6, contains the exchange, “Hey mister mister, what the fuck you doing? Hey, mister mister. Keep walking Past. Don’t interrupt me when I’m whooping on my bitch ass.” First, a woman is confronted with an accusation of cheating by her boyfriend, and then beaten on the sidewalk in broad daylight, lest he be looked at as weak by his peers, for having countenanced disrespect from a disloyal female.
The violence only intensifies from there in the succeeding verse: a woman is slapped and then raped by a vindictive drug dealer, after its discovered the count from his narcotics proceeds have been low.
“I ain’t got a quarter, ‘cause I’ll be damned if I support her,” G Rap claims on "
I Ain’t Trickin’,” from
Rated XXX, a contract-fulfilling, compilation album released in 1996, which sounds as if it could have been another recording meant for
4, 5, 6, if not for its misogyny. “I’m gettin’ rich but, yo, bum bitch, I ain’t trickin’,” part of the chorus reads. In another lyric, he announces, “‘Cause, yo, I ain’t about going out like a sucker! What? We ain’t fuckin’. Cool, I’m out this motherfucker, because I was taught to only give a dog a bone. Bitch, if you’re hungry, then take your fucking ass home!”
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No Endz, No Skinz” contains one of the rap collective D.I.T.C. member, Big L's, most absurd lyrics, “A chick asked me for a ring, so I put one around her whole eye,” as a pun.
There’s never any pretense in music written by Kool G Rap.
When asked if his single “
Riker’s Island,” released in 1986, before his debut,
Road to the Riches (1989), and only later included on
Wanted: Dead or Alive (1990), his sophomore album, about New York City’s infamous jail of the same name, was autobiographical, he responded he’d never been arrested; like an actor, he’d mined the character having experienced the facility within himself.
One might ask, when preparing for a role, if I were this person, what version of this person would I be? Leonardo DiCaprio said of playing the slave-owning, white supremacist Calvin Candie in
Django Unchained it was the most exacting role he’d ever undertaken, finding it difficult to mine such an odious character.
Kool G Rap has never had such difficulties, telling an interviewer, when questioned whether a song could be too violent, “The more ... the better,” possibly proceeding from coming of age in 1980’s crime-infested Corona, Queens, New York, seeing many of his tales firsthand.
Kool Keith of Ultramagnetic MC’s, a Boogie Down Productions affiliated, hip-hop group, founded in the 1980’s, coined the term “pornocore” to define east-coast, hyper-sexualized rap, a play on “horrocore,” a second subgenre that was trending at the time of the release of his pornographic and semi-autobiographical solo album
Sex Style (1997), imagined in the heart of the U.S. porn industry, San Fernando Valley, California, with one line reading, "I masturbate. See ya girl cock her legs back, tied like a figure eight."
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Talk like Sex" (1990) by Kool G Rap lays bare the lyric, “I’ll stick a chick and it kills her. I’m probably related to long-dong silver,” demonstrating pornocore's forefather, Mr. Wilson’s callous indifference to his sex partner’s pleasure, lack of morality, and obsession with his “brown stick of dynamite.”
There’s a character type in Greek theater that recurs across literary genres, an archetype, said to be possessed by a morality-obscuring "ruling passion," e.g., greed; lust; rage; love; etc., called the
alazon, by the 18th century, English poet, Alexander Pope, and later explored in
Anatomy of Criticism (1957) by the Canadian, literary critic, Northrop Frye.
Live and Let Die’s “
The Ill Street Blues” confronts the listener with such a passion, containing the lyric, “You lose, ‘cause I’ve got the Ill Street Blues,” describing a frustration and lack of good fortune that moves one to inflict pain on innocents, the kind of which was noted above in “
Train Robbery,” and exists in much of Kool G Rap’s music.
Whatever the ruling passion, like many mentioned above, Nathaniel Thomas Wilson could find, put on, and present to his audience for them to make of what they wish—the many masks of Kool G Rap.
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