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BIOGRAPHY | BEEFS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES
THE HORSEMEN | CLOAK 'N DAGGA
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High times - Canibus has already rapped with Wyclef, KO'd Cool J, and set the Hip-Hop world on its ear. But will his first solo joint live up to the buzz?
It's 3:30 A.M., and Canibus is only now starting to hit his stride. Earlier in the day, at his label's office, the rapper was punctuating his paragraph-long proclamations with weary yawns. But now he's full of energy as he sits in a chauffeured sedan, heading across the Manhattan Bridge to DJ Clark Kent's Brooklyn home studio to work on beats for his upcoming debut album, Can-I-Bus?
"I always sleep during the day because there's no traffic out here at night," Canibus says, leaning back into the car's gray leather upholstery. "That's why I schedule everything for the late night - everything runs so much smoother." Since this afternoon, he's added a dark green military-style jacket to his hip-hop mission gear: a black skullcap, baggy jeans, and old-school Adidas with dark blue stripes.
Canibus is admiring the New York skyline when he's interrupted by his cell phone. "S'up?" he says. He speaks in a low voice and chuckles occasionally. "You want to talk about a nigga that don't sleep?" he says afterward with a sly smile. "Oh my word!" He's talking about Fugee Wyclef Jean, Canibus's close friend, manager, and one of his producers. "It's West Indians, man - me being from Jamaica and him from Haiti. We feel the need to stay awake because we think somebody's going to take something from us. I'd rather stay awake like a zombie than close my eyes and let somebody take shit away from me."
So far, that vigilance has served the Jersey City rapper well. After L.L. Cool J dissed him on the song "4,3,2,1," rapping, "How dare you step up in my dimension / Your little ass should be somewhere crying on detention," Canibus recorded the single "Second Round K.O." to settle the score. Over eerie beats, an operatic sample, and vocal encouragement frome Mike Tyson to "eat, eat, eat MCs," Canibus accuses Cool J of "frontin' like a drug-free role model," mocks his sitcom, and threatens to "stick you for your Vanguard Award / In front of your mom / Your first, second, and third-born." Released as a single in April, the song elevated Canibus from promising underground rapper to hot hip-hop new-comer. Ironically, it's the smartest salvo in a lyrical feud since Cool J took on Kool Moe Dee with "Jack the Ripper" nine years ago.
The feud started with a misunderstanding. Cool J invited Canibus to rap beside Redman, Method Man, and DMX on "4, 3, 2, 1" because of Canibus's underground credibility and reputation for incisive freestyle raps. Admiring Cool J's microphone tattoo, Canibus improvised, "Yo L, is that a mic on your arm? / Let me borrow that." Canibus meant it as a compliment; Cool J took it as a challenge. Canibus says he voluntarily changed the verse, but Cool J didn't in turn change the scathing rhyme about Canibus he had added to the song.
When Canibus heard the finished track, he felt violated. "I had to do what I did," he says. Cool J couldn't let it go either - and the feud has escalated into a hip-hop phenomenon rivaling Roxanne's battle with U.T.F.O. Cool J responded with "The Ripper Strikes Back," dismissing Canibus as an amateur and calling Wyclef "a Bob Marley impostor." Wyclef came back with "What's 'Clef Got to Do With It," threatening to push Cool J "further back than your hairline recedes." (Neither Wyclef nor L.L. Cool J would comment on the feud.) Even a little-known rapper named Truck Turner has gotten into the act with a single dissing Canibus. The feud has helped make Can-I-Bus? one of the most eagerly awaited hip-hop debuts since Snoop's Doggystyle.
The feud also reminds Canibus of why he started rapping in the first place, back when he was known as Germaine Williams. Born near Kingston, Jamaica, his father a professional cricket player and his mother a radiologist, Canibus immigrated to America with his mother after his parents split when he was two. The family didn't stay in one place for long, moving to New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, London, and Atlanta.
"I was always the new kid, and because of that I was fighting every day," says Canibus, who took his name as a reference to both marijuana and "can-I-bust" a rhyme. "When I'm rhyming I feel that mental push to always come off stronger than the next man. It's like therapy every time I go in there and damage a record."
Canibus conveys that intensity in person: His face is angular, and looking into his eyes is like getting into a staring match with a panther. He's also low-key enough to bring his laptop to record-company meetings and surf the Net obsessively. "The Internet fascinates me because it's boundless," Canibus says, eyes wide. "If I don't use Ebonics and shit, I can be a middle-aged white man. I could kick it with a white chick in Wyoming and sweep her off her feet. That's deep. What becomes the most common language, then, is intellect. Fuck racial boundaries. I think my music transcends that. It's all intellect."
With dense lyrics and sights set far beyond hip-hop's usual turf battles, Canibus is an MC for the information age. While most rappers fixate on Rolexes, Cristal, and BMWs, Canibus rhymes about conspiracy theories, alternate futures, and hip-hop integrity with a sharp, clipped delivery. He also takes the genre's tradition of lyrical boasts to a grandiose level. On "How We Roll" he rhymes that "I roll up on your crew quicker than long sleeves / At a speed that would confuse Keanu Reeves."
Produced by Wyclef, DJ Premier, and Kent, among others, the songs completed so far for Canibus's debut are rhythmic and raw - minimalist enough to keep the focus on the rapping. "I guess ['Second Round K.O.'] is now a chapter in rap, and that's cool, but that's not what I want to be known for," Canibus says. "Will I be able to impact people the way I want to so that six years from now you'll hear my album? That's what I aim to achieve - timelessness."
An hour later, we arrive at Clark Kent's South Brooklyn apartment. Within minutes, the producer starts laying down beats in his bedroom preproduction studio, a mad scientist's laboratory packed wall-to-wall with old records and diskettes filled with programmed beats.
Kent hits a button on his drum machine and a beat fills the air. After he gets the tempo just right, he adds in a sample filled with heavy bass, disco-style strings, and blaxploitation wa-wa. Canibus nods his head as his eyes burn with recognition. "That's Enter the Dragon," he says, looking down at a record with a black-dragon logo spinning on the turntable.
As the sun rises outside, Canibus listens intently to Kent's beats, asking to hear the ones he likes again. Out of fifteen beats, he selects three; he'll add raps to them in the next few days. And as the car takes us across the bridge back to Manhattan, Canibus finally falls asleep in the backseat.
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