If you’re curious to find out more about Memphis hip-hop and listen to some music I’ve included links to articles, interviews, playlists, and a short documentary that I used to put this article together.įu, Eddie. In Part II, we’re going to interview some Memphis legends and talk about production. We love the darkly hypnotic sounds of these artists and we hope you do too. Skinny Pimp’s 1996 album, King of Da Playaz Ball, is a masterpiece. After that, the scene split in two with DJ Squeeky and DJ Zirk on one side and Skinny Pimp, Juicy J, and DJ Paul on the other, exchanging diss tracks.ĭespite going through tumultuous times, all these artists continued to put out some of their best work. His relationship with his first producer, DJ Squeeky, abruptly ended when they got into a fight at Club Memphis. Skinny Pimp became a local sensation doing club performances all over Memphis with DJ Paul, Juicy J (both original members of Triple 6 Mafia), and DJ Squeeky. Skinny Pimp in an interview with Hot 1079 We was just doing it just cause we love it.” “When I went over to Squeeky’s house we weren’t really worried about no money. When DJ Squeeky pulled him into the studio in 1993 for the track Lookin For Tha Chewin, he was more than ready to start his career. Inspired by listening to local artists like Gangsta Pat and Spanish Fly on the radio, Skinny Pimp went to work early, writing out his first raps in school. He started putting his own music into the club mixes and creating mixtapes to sell to his fans. DJ Spanish Fly wanted people to get buck in the club to grittier music literally buckin, jookin, choppin, gangsta walkin were all dance styles that emerged in Memphis at this time. At that time, local clubs were packed, but they were playing tracks like Set it Off, disco, and R&B chart-toppers.īut times and tastes were changing in the transition between the ’80s and ’90s. In the late ’80s, Fly got into music and dropped out of high school to became an electro DJ. Without a doubt, DJ Spanish Fly is the Godfather of Memphis hip-hop. Here are the key players in early Memphis hip-hop, gangster rap and horrorcore. They are extremely rare, in a degraded condition, and fetch high prices among collectors. The tapes that are left today sometimes show up in marketplaces such as Discogs. Few tapes made it out of the Tennessee-Arkansas-Mississippi tri-state area. Cassette tapes were also sold at clubs and schools. Once an album or a mixtape was completed, producers and rappers would swing by local car stereo shops to sell their cassette tapes in bulk. Producers were not afraid to use the same samples or to sample each other’s tracks. They preferred to loop rather than chop their samples and found inspiration in unusual places – like film scenes and horror soundtracks. Memphis producers didn’t abide by common ‘rules’ around sampling.