Tracks of the Week: How to Lead Off or Close a Posse Cut Courtesy of Keith Murray and Kwest
Keith Murray shows you how to open a posse cut on “I Shot Ya.” Kwest shows you how to close it out on “5 Star Generals.”
I keep thinking about first lines in hip hop cuts because that’s the criteria Doghouse Reilly uses for determining which lyric goes on a shirt.
It turned into a sideline solo trivia game I play in my head all the time. It’s also infected my listening habits. Part of my brain is always scanning the first line when a hip hop track comes up on shuffle, which it does about 65% of the time.
The other day “I Shot Ya” pops on — a posse cut anchored by LL Cool J and also featuring Keith Murray, Prodigy, Fat Joe and Foxy Brown. It’s probably a bit too vulgar and aggressive for a Doghouse tee, so I’m gonna try to screenprint it on your brain instead.
Imagine you’re Keith Murray, already getting a lot of buzz for your work with Def Squad, and you get assigned the leadoff verse. The great LL Cool J has picked you for this five-minute farm team of potent rising talent.
What’s your first line?
Here was his solution:
“I’m here to make a dollar out of 15 cents/And let my balls hang like I’m on the toilet takin’ a shit.”
I wonder how many lines he jotted and scratched out on the pad before settling on that — an unrhymed, brash piece of idiomatic double-barrel provocation.
As a strategy, it makes total sense; walk right up and toss a bag of snakes on the poker table. In practice, I think it works because of the energy and level of commitment in that and the follow-up lines.
Now here’s a different one to think about — a master class in how to close out a posse cut. In 1998 Shabaam Sahdeeq puts out a 12” on the Rawkus label and puts a track called “Five Star Generals” on it — a convoy of underground talent with himself, AL, Skam and Eminem.
But at the end, it’s Kwest’s turn. You can go back to the preceding verses and check it out for yourself, but I’m confident in saying he just buries everybody:
I loved finding this track because Kwest’s debut LP is still one of my favorites. I don’t think Kwest really ever got his due. He was a big talent who got lost in various stages of label hell and shifting tastes. Those launch windows are brutally small and the world spins so fast.
There you have it: One example of how to lead off and another of how to finish a posse cut, courtesy of Keith Murray and Kwest tha Madd Ladd.
Related Listening:
• “Hostile” from Erick Sermon’s debut solo LP, No Pressure. This one features Murray rhyming with Sermon over one of the album’s many badass beats. I always love it when an MC starts a verse by yelling out his own name. Murray often boasted that he was the best of his class. He certainly raps like he believes it.
• Also check out a track called “101 Things to Do While I’m With Your Girl,” by Kwest tha Madd Ladd, whose delivery and wit make this one of the best entries of the “I’ll take your girl” song category ever. I would frame this right on the same wall with Big Daddy Kane’s “I Get the Job Done” and LL’s “I’m That Type of Guy.”