The 411 - posted on February 5, 2012 by DJ Vybe

Remembering Big Pun

Christopher Lee Rios (November 10, 1971 – February 7, 2000), better known by his stage name Big Pun (short for Big Punisher), was a Puerto-Rican American rapper who emerged from the underground rap scene in The Bronx in the late 1990s. He first appeared on albums from The Beatnuts, on the track “Off the Books” in 1997, and on Fat Joe’s second album Jealous One’s Envy in 1995, on the track “Watch Out”, prior to signing to Loud Records as a solo artist. Pun’s lyrics are notable for technical efficiency, having minimal pauses to take a breath, heavy use of alliteration as well as internal and multi-syllabic rhyming schemes. Big Pun died of a heart attack at age 28. About.com ranked him #25 on its list of the 50 Greatest MCs of Our Time (1987 – 2007).

Music career

Sometime during the ’80s, he began to write rap lyrics, forming the Full-A-Clips crew with Triple Seis, and Cuban Link who was at the time named “Lyrical Assassin”. At this point Big Pun was operating under the alias Big Moon Dawg. Rios met fellow Puerto Rican and Bronx rapper Fat Joe in 1995 and made his commercial debut on Joe’s second album, Jealous One’s Envy, in addition to appearing on a b-side to Joe’s “Envy” single, “Fire Water.”

Later, “I’m Not a Player” (featuring an O’Jays sample) was supported by a significant advertising campaign and became an underground hit.

Capital Punishment

In 1997, producer Knobody’s production partner Sean C took advantage of his new role as A&R at Loud Records to play Knobody’s tracks to Big Pun. Suitably impressed the rapper hired Knobody to remix “I’m Not a Player”. The remixed song, featuring Joe and titled “Still Not a Player,” became Big Pun’s first major mainstream hit and major breakthrough for Knobody. The full-length debut Capital Punishment followed in 1998, and became the first album by a solo Latino rapper to go platinum, peaking at #5 on the Billboard 200. Capital Punishment was also nominated for a Grammy. Pun’s second album ” Yeeeah Baby”, although not as successful as his first also went platinum producing two solid hits in “it’s So Hard” and “100{f6b09334f0aeb1294a0c146d54b005647a6400f235d4c7c08f88511a6fe1b8aa}”.

Terror Squad

Big Pun became a member of Terror Squad, a New York-based group of rappers founded by Fat Joe, with most of the roster supplied by the now-defunct Full a Clips Crew who released their debut album The Album in 1999. The album didn’t fare well commercially but it was well received critically and the album was meant to start the foundation for all other terror squad members to release their solo projects.

Artist bio licensed under GFDL from Wikipedia.

The 411 - posted on December 22, 2011 by DJ Vybe

Comeback Heavy Hitters of the 90s

As one of New York’s hottest DJs, I can tell you that every era of music repeats itself. And for me (DJ Vybe), that give me one more or a hundred more reasons to take it back to the 90s — the platinum era of Hip-Hop/R&B.

Thinking back, it seems like the majority of the hot tracks where produced by a core of Producers like Puff Daddy, Eddie F., Eric Sermon, Tony Dofat, Andre Harrell, Flava Unit, and a few others like them. And in the 90s when vinyl was vinyl, the aroma of cutting open a stack of new wax from the record pool, breakin’ ya back with 10 crates of records for every party, and you looked forward to the movies with the merging of hip-hop and Hollywood films by Spike Lee and Hype Willams; it seemed like every joint was HOT. But if it was STRAIGHT FIRE in my opinion it had to be released from Sony/BMG Records, Tommy Boy, Uptown Records, RUSH/Def Jam Records, Bad Boy Records, or JIVE Records.

One group I am pleased to see coming back to the forefront is SWV.

 Sisters with Voices, better known as SWV, is an American female R&B trio from New York. Formed in 1990 as a gospel group, SWV became one of the most successful R&B groups of the 1990s. They had a series of hits, including “Weak”, “Right Here/Human Nature”, “I’m So Into You”, and “You’re the One”. The group disbanded in 1998 to pursue solo projects, and reunited in 2005. SWV is currently ranked #100 on the Top 500 Pop Artists of the Past 25 Years at the website Rock on the Net. As of 2011 SWV has recently signed a record deal with Mass Appeal Entertainment and E1 Entertainment. On June 10, 2011 SWV was featured on the official remix of Chris Brown’s remake of their Right Here/Human Nature song, “She Ain’t You”. SWV released their first single “Co-Sign” on December 15, 2011 via iTunes off their fourth studio album, I Missed Us

Look for “I Missed Us” in stores on April 17, 2012 via eOne Music and Mass Appeal Entertainment.

In the meantime you can hear tracks from the upcoming release on my show at www.realdjvybe.com on any given Friday night, and follow my conversations with Coko, Lelee and Taj aka SWV on www.twitter.com/realdjvybe. Come Vybe with us.