Albums:

Gravity (1997)

Ambushed (1994)

In the early nineties Da Bush Babees hopped in the game with their debut album Ambushed. Powered by songs like “Remember We” and “We Run Things”, the Brooklyn trio (two emcees (Lee Majors and Mr. Man) and a reggae artist (Light)) gained mad love for their ragga influenced hooks and pinpoint rhymes. They returned in ‘97 with Gravity, their second album, right as hiphop was making the transition from more street oriented rhymes to the jiggy era. With its superb production from Mr. Man, Pos (De La), and newcomer Shawn J. Period many consider the follow-up a hiphop classic as it successfully blended jazz, hiphop and reggae and introduced budding superstar Mos Def to the masses. Unfortunately critical acclaim alone doesn’t sell records and Warner Brothers pulled the plug on a third album. Rather than get jerked by another label they stepped into the background. Only now have they resurfaced with plans for a comeback. We got in touch with them and they dropped some jewels on the rap industry and let us in on their plans for the future.

First big up to my man Tadah from Urbansmarts.com for hooking up this interview. In the interview he did with you, you mentioned working on various projects over the years but before we get into that I wanted to know what stopped you guys from putting out a third album after Gravity was such a critically acclaimed LP?

Mr. Man: What happened with the third one is we weren’t on that label anymore. It would have probably been a natural progression of things if we were on the label where the very next year we would have come out with another album. But since we weren’t on Warner Brothers after the way they pretty much smashed up the second album, it was like it’s time to go.

Light: We had the sign or something where we were smart enough to bounce and I think it was good timing because there are so many other things going on with hiphop that you don’t have to just be an artist struggling to promote an album with no help. When you’re making a product and they gonna sell it for fifteen dollars and then give you pennies on it its kinda like highway robbery. It’s good that we were able to leave in our early twenties and still have a little life going on.

I was thinking all since this happened around ’97, at the start of the whole jiggy era, did that have anything to do with your departure as well?

Light: Ha, nah I think what happened was a lot of money was being made in hiphop but the money wasn’t going directly to the artist. It was going to a lot of people behind the scenes. The artists are just starting to get it now and it’s a little late because the major labels are pulling back on that money. Like Mr. Man said it’s a natural progression to go onto a third album if things are doing well, but if the things aren’t going well and they aren’t promoting it it’s a natural progression to back out and make something else happen.

Mr. Man: I must concur.

Mr. Man I remember right after that you was hitting with Kweli and Mos Def on Fortified Live and then you dropped a single under Khaliyl. Why did you switch up your name for that joint?

Mr. Man: Right after we finished the album I started doing just straight production and I just wanted to create a different producing entity. My name is Khaliyl so people just started calling me Mr. Khaliyl. It’s not even like I was telling people to call me that they just started calling me that. By that time, I was doing all of this production at Rawkus and they just put that on the record and it kind of stuck. It wasn’t like today I’m going to call myself Mr. Khaliyl. They just kinda ran with it.

I remember at that point a lot of cats were expecting a solo album, did you have one in the works at that time or was it just a few singles here and there?

Mr. Man: You’re always writing and recording but at the time I hadn’t thought about putting together a whole project and doing an album by myself. That’s kind of where we are going now with this new project. We have a new project that we’re doing collectively and we have our solo missions that we’re also recording. Now it’s more like that but back then I was more interested in strictly producing and Rawkus offered me some singles and I was like cool I’ll do that.

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Posted by Halftime on Sunday, May 23rd, 2004 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.