Pic courtesy of Fat Lace.
Back in 2006 I wondered why Schoolly-D never responded to Spoonie Gee’s ‘That’s My Style‘, included lines such as ‘Come in here from where ever you came/tryin’ to steal my style and plus my name.’ As was pointed out in the comments section, Schoolly fired back with a couple of lines at the beginning of ‘Housin’ The Joint‘ (‘You say I tried to diss you and I stole your style/but the days you was rockin’ I was still a lil’ child’), but I’ve always found this to be a weird piece of rap history, as I’d never noticed any similarities between the two. Looking back now, I can kind of see how the similarity in their names and the fact that the opening story in ‘P.S.K.’ involves trying to pick up women from a car in a similar vein to the start of ‘Love Rap’, but it still seems like a stretch.
In recent years I was able to speak to both parties involved and get their sides of the story, as well as a third party perspective:
Spoonie Gee: As far as I’m concerned, his style was my style. There wouldn’t have been no Schoolly-D if it wasn’t for Spoonie Gee. A lotta people thought he was me, it was crazy. We did a show together. He was OK, after we met each other, things alright. We didn’t have a fight or anything like that. He admit he was a fan of mine. It was OK.
Grand Daddy IU: I know Schoolly-D bit the shit outta motherfuckin’ Spoonie Gee’s shit! That’s uncontested, my nigga. Schoolly-D bit Spoonie Gee’s whole style and everything. If you was a hip-hop nigga, you knew! Spoonie Gee, that was his shit. I don’t know Schoolly-D – I heard that he’s an official nigga, gangster nigga, that’s neither here nor there – but nigga, you did what you did. And he made a living off it! So fuck it.
Schoolly-D: I think his New York homies got his head pumped up. There was a line of ‘PSK’ where they thought I was saying something about Spoonie. I was like, ‘What?’ It was fun for a second – I think that was a gold record for him. He made the diss record, then I made the diss record and then we went on tour. Everybody on the bus was from New York and I was from Philly, and they tried to get us to bang it out but it was a ridiculous thing. We both made a couple of dollars off of it, that song he did became a big hit. Mine became a big underground hit. Us being rappers, you’ve gotta protect your neck, but other than that I felt it was silly because he’s my hero and I didn’t want to fall into the part of just entertainment when I’m an artist who sometimes raps. It was fun, but I just wanted to keep it art. I just want to keep the respect I’ve had for the originators. I kinda pulled it from the radio, and he kept his on the radio and he toured for a long time with that. But me on the other side? I just felt like I was being disrespectful. I felt some kind of way because he’s my hero, so the only time I ever performed that song in public was for Chuck D. He begged me to do it and I never performed that song ever again.
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(c) unkut.com – A Tribute To Ignorance (Remix) – Read entire story here.