Ill Bill’s got friends in fly places
By CHRIS FARAONE | September 3, 2008
The strongest evidence that Bill really is a personable roughneck could be his extensive but unlikely connections in the industry. Through his 20 years in hip-hop he’s rolled with everyone from the blackest of rappers, like Jeru and Sticky Fingaz, to the palest ones, like MC Serch, with whom he started Non-Phixion in the mid ’90s. His new disc features Vinny Paz, Immortal Technique, B-Real, and Bad Brains among others, with guest production from such platinum legends as DJs Muggs and Premier. “I’m an old dude,” says Bill. “I’m 36, and New York is a small place when you’ve been around the block for that long.”BAD BRAINS | He may have chosen the mic as his mallet, but Bill grew up on punk and metal. After he’d been trying to link with Bad Brains through shared friends for two years, frontman H.R. and bassist Darryl Jennifer showed at one of his Los Angeles shows. “H.R. is a wild dude. We ended up recording at DJ Lethal’s studio through the next day — he’ll be on my next couple of albums.”
MC SERCH | The Third Bass–man discovered Bill off the single “Dope Fiend,” which Southpaw Records released without ever notifying Bill. “It worked out for the best, though, because Serch heard it. We started Non-Phixion two years after Derelict of a Dialect came out and three years after he got Nas his deal. It was a crazy time — I was like, ‘You want to start a group with me? You just went triple platinum.’ ”
TECH N9NE | Bill befriended the platinum-selling clown-faced Missouri rap sensation on the 52-city Fire & Ice Tour earlier this year. But despite rumors that Reprisal was dropping on N9ne’s Strange Music, it isn’t. “Tech is my homie — don’t get it twisted. But while we see eye-to-eye artistically, we never had a business conversation. Other people at Strange handle those things, and we just couldn’t come up with a win-win.”
Related:
Birth of the DVDJ, Rhythm for days, Part-time villain, More 
- Birth of the DVDJ
Much of the hype swirling around the show was that Peanut Butter Wolf was going to "scratch" DVDs, thereby inventing a whole new style of performance. Slideshow: Stones Throw Anniversary Tour at the Paradise Rock Club, November 1, 2006
- Rhythm for days
Jay Dee didn’t make music, he made movements. If it knocked in the late ’90s, he probably had a hand in it.
- Part-time villain
As much as Ill Bill eschews clichés, the Brooklyn rap goon is either a righteous friend or a torrential enemy.
- MF Doom & Madlib | Madvillainy 2
Madvillainy 2, not the much expected follow-up to the groundbreaking Madlib + Doom 2004 collaboration but a radical remix of the original album.
- What rhymes with Barack?
The story of underground hip-hop these days often seems like the inverse of Barack Obama’s story.
- Due Dilla-gence
Extraordinarily missed Detroit beat stylist J Dilla (a/k/a Jay Dee) was righteously benevolent.
- Clik tracks
Hide your naughty daughters and aspiring MC sons: Brooklyn’s Duck Down is that kingly retrofitted, incomparably propped hip-hop label that all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to fuck with.
- Fantastic damage
Unlike hip-hop acts that deny bucking convention for the sake of eccentricity, Anti-Pop Consortium were as clear on day zero as they will certainly be at Great Scott next Thursday about their maverick intentions.
- Music Seen: El-P
Nearly two weeks ago hip-hop legend El-P visited Maine for the first time.
- Get sprung
Between the packages that turn up on my Jamaica Plain doorstep and the envelopes that stuff my Phoenix mailbox, I have enough music to start a mixtape spot in Downtown Crossing.
- Come clean
Jeru the Damaja vocalized underground agony before RZA declared that R&B stands for "rap and bullshit," before Dead Prez blasted "monotonous material," and way before Immortal Technique announced that he would soil a Def Jam development deal.
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More
, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, Underground Hip-Hop, Bad Brains, Vinny Paz, Non Phixion, MC Serch, Nas (Rapper), Immortal Technique, Less
