Deep Album Cuts Vol. 332: Big Daddy Kane
I wrote a Spin list of the 50 best hip hop singles of the 1980s in August to mark hip hop's 50th anniversary, which of course included a couple of Big Daddy Kane appearances ("Ain't No Half Steppin'" and "The Symphony"). I haven't done too many rap playlists in this series lately, but there's a good number of '80s trailblazers I still want to cover, have had this Kane playlist on my to-do list for a long time.
2. Long Live The Kane
3. Just Rhymin' With Biz (f/ Biz Markie)
4. On The Bugged Tip (f/ Scoob Lover)
5. Young, Gifted And Black
6. Warm It Up, Kane
7. Mortal Combat
8. It's A Big Daddy Thing
9. Put Your Weight On it
10. Who Am I (f/ Gamilah Shabazz)
11. Mr. Pitiful
12. Prince Of Darkness
13. Come On Down (f/ Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes)
14. A Job Ain't Nothin' But Work (f/ Lo-Key)
15. Looks Like A Job For...
16. Stop Shammin'
17. That's How I Did 'Em
18. Somebody's Been Sleeping In My Bed
19. Terra N Ya Era
20. Enterprizin
Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Long Live The Kane (1988)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from It's A Big Daddy Thing (1989)
Tracks 9, 10 and 11 from Taste Of Chocolate (1990)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Prince Of Darkness (1991)
Track 14 from Mo' Money: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1992)
Tracks 15 and 16 from Looks Like A Job For... (1993)
Tracks 17 and 18 from Daddy's Home (1994)
Tracks 19 and 20 from Veteranz' Day (1998)
Kane was arguably the best rapper in the world at one point, or at the very least party of the late '80s holy trinity, although he's probably not regarded as highly as Rakim and KRS-One today. In some ways he's the guy who directly passed the torch to the next generation of great MCs, though, since Jay-Z was a protege of Kane in the early '90s. Jay appeared on the Daddy's Home posse cut single "Show & Prove." And after he became a star, Jay paid homage to Kane many times, including rapping over the "Young, Gifted & Black" beat on 2003's The S. Carter Collection mixtape, and quoting "Warm It Up, Kane" on "La-La-La (Excuse Me Again)." Kane is a pretty huge influence on a lot of '90s rappers, though, including Biggie, whose "Respect" was an homage to "Mortal Combat," and 2Pac, whose "Keep Ya Head Up" used the same sample as "Prince of Darkness."
Big Daddy Kane got some of the best beats from Marley Marl, Prince Paul, and Easy Mo Bee in their prime, but Kane was a pretty good producer in his own right, "Warm It Up Kane" and "Mortal Combat" are killer tracks. "Come On Down" is a pretty great posse cut with Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes, released shortly after The Low End Theory but before "Scenario" had been released as a single.
The sound of rap used to evolve a lot more quickly, especially in the late '80s and '90s when lyricists and producers were advancing the genre creatively by leaps and bounds, and very few besides LL really thrived for more than two or three albums in that era. So I don't think it's too much of a discredit to Kane to say that he really lost momentum after his first two '80s albums went gold. And while Taste Of Chocolate went down as one of the first disappointing albums where a great rapper kind of lost the plot and swerved too hard into R&B crossover stuff, there's some excellent songs on there. "Who Am I" feels like a good example of a rapper who wasn't considered especially political or message-based doing a really good conscious song (with a guest verse by Malcolm X's daughter!). And he continued to make some hot records throughout the '90s, although you can definitely hear him playing catch-up with the changing times, but he could still rap his ass off.
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