Black Sheep Albums:

8WM/Novakane (2006)

Non Fiction (1994)

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (1991)

Dres Solo Albums:

Sure Shot Redemption (1999)

Mista Lawnge Solo Albums:

Class of ‘89 (2006)

MP3:

Black Sheep Audio (Coming soon)

Podcast: Coming Soon

Website: Black Sheep

Black Sheep (Dres and Mista Lawnge) is one of the ill crews to step forth from the Native Tongues family. Debuting in 1991 with classic songs like, “Flavor of the Month” and “The Choice is Yours,” Black Sheep made noise in the hip-hop community and unleashed an unintentional classic, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing onto the unsuspecting public. Unfortunately, the good fortune from their first album didn’t carry over to their slept-on and poorly promoted second album Non Fiction. After the disappointing sophomore effort, the group disbanded with Dres continuing onto a solo career and Mista Lawnge fading into the background.

What you’re about to read is probably the last interview with Black Sheep as a group as they broke up after a string of dates on the road just prior to their comeback release and about a month or so after this interview took place. Let’s just say that wasn’t hugely shocking to us. The lack of production from Lawnge on the new album seemed to be one indication while the lack of vibe seemed to be the other. Maybe it’s just our imagination. Peep it for yourself as we get at the crew about the past present and the fu.. ahh forget it.

Halftimeonline: I heard you guys met back in North Carolina. How did you two meet and how did ya’ll both end up in North Carolina cuz I thought you both were from NYC?

Mista Lawnge: My immediate family is from North Carolina. My mother’s side of the family is from there so she went to NY, met my pops had me and then relocated back to North Carolina after my father died in ’74. So I was in and out of North Carolina because of that. I still have connections in both North Carolina and New York.

Dres: My stepfather was in the army and he wound up getting stationed in North Carolina [and that’s how I ended up there]. I went to high school down there and that’s where I met Lawnge. We had musical friends and we used to all meet over there everyday. I was only down there for a year but over the year we got close. It was nice cuz everything was over at my man’s house so we were scratching and rhyming. Lawnge was definitely a prodigy. He was younger but he was probably the nicest one.

Halftime: So I’m assuming you spent a lot of time honing your craft?

Lawnge: Yea, that was basically all I had. I was in a small town with turntables and that’s pretty much what I focused on. Anybody who put scratching on a record that’s where my whole style came from. I was stepping my skills up to whoever was putting scratches on wax since I wasn’t in the mix at the time being in Carolina. I wasn’t around the nicest DJs in Philly or NY so I had to work with what was distributed by those dudes.

Halftime: Did that actually help more because I’m sure you got noticed immediately when you started scratching?

Lawnge: Oh we were definitely the small town stars because we were all they had. Everybody from New York always associated together. So no matter what part you were from you were automatically cliqued up in an organization.

Halftime: How did ya’ll come up with the name Black Sheep? Was that something ya’ll had before you linked up with Native Tongues?

Dres: That was at the time we were being introduced to brothers as ideally being a group. We kinda looked at the groups individually and if anything we were in the same vein musically but the lyrical content was gonna be different as far as a Native Tongue family member. So we felt that we would be the Black Sheep of the Native Tongues. That’s how the name came.

Halftime: How did you guys first link up with the Native Tongues anyway and who did you meet first?

Lawnge: That was part of my in and out of New York travels. Red Alert came to a show in Carolina with Sparky D. He was djing back in ’84 or 85 and he saw me djing and he said you’re nice man if you ever come to NY give me a shout and he gave me his number. So I did just that. The next time I was in the city I called him up and he ran me around and introduced me to everybody and his nephew happened to be Mike G from the Jungle Brothers. So Mike was the first person I met. Then I met Af and then I met Tip before Tribe Called Quest when he was just forming Tribe. He was just doing guest spots on Jungle Brothers stuff. So that whole connection came from Red Alert initially.

Halftime: I read in an interview with Dres that you did the scratches for Buddy. Were there any other things you did during that Native Tongue era cats may not know about?

Lawnge: I gave Tip a couple of beats. I gave him records to use on a couple albums. I was in the background on a lot of stuff that happened. Just some little stuff nothing crazy that I really want to talk about. Nothing huge.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Posted by Jbutters on Monday, December 18th, 2006 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.