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The story of Esham
Esham Attica Smith, an underground artist from Detroit, is one of the most influential hip hop artists today. From his humble beginning as a rap artist, when he was eight, to his rise to the illest MC from D-town to date. The orginator of the horrorcore scene, and the godfather of acid rap.
Esham was born in New York, but mostly lived in Detroit city, although he commuted back and forth between the two. When he was eight he was sent off to long island to live with his grandma, after being caught stealing cars. While in New York, E started to listen to hip hop artists such as, Run DMC, Fat Boys, Geto Boys, and N.W.A., but also was listening to Hard Rock artists, AC/DC, Led Zepplin, Alice Cooper, and Ozzy Osbourne. In Detroit, he and his brother, James H. Smith, started to produce records on their self-made label, Reel Life Productions. Esham did all the rapping, engineering, and producing on the album, while his brother put the product on the street, with his hook-ups. When he was in the ninth grade in Osborn High, at 15, he released his first record,"Boomin Words From Hell", which was so successful that he re-released it in 1991. It also was the first rap album that had a song about drug abuse,"True". During those days Esham and Kid Rock ruled the scene in Detroit, Esham putting out two more albums in 1991 "Erotic Poetry" and "Homey Don't Play", which Esham had clown makeup on the front cover and it was produced by Icp producer, Mike E. Clark.
In 1992, the Insane Clown Posse came to Esham, and Kid Rock, to pay them for their contribution for their debut album,"Carnival Of Carnage", Kid rock explains,"Boomin' Words From Hell! I promoted that on that Ice Cube tour. I took 500 of his cassettes with me and gave them to everyone I know. We were, like, hangin' out fuckin', like, every day, me and him, and then ICP tried to get in the picture. Me and Esham were, like, running Detroit back then. I mean, go and ask any kid. Back in the fuckin' early '90s, it was Kid Rock and Esham, and we started the whole fucking shit. Shit you not. I helped Esham out, Esham helped me out. We were just fuckin' cool like that. And then fucking ICP came along, and they had a little bit of money. 'We'll pay you guys a little bit of money to be on our record.' We were both like, 'Fuck it.'" Violent J of the Icp retorts,"That was a strategy we did. See, we took Esham who--we loved his music, and we didn't really like Kid Rock, you know what I mean, but we paid 'em both to be on our album, our first album. Esham is super-in-the-house. The fact is while you're paying your dues, you thinking nothing's going right and you're fucked in all aspects, but in reality, you're totally hooked up by paying those dues because you got all this back catalog, all these old records that are owned by you, not no record label."
ICP opened for Esham on many shows and Esham produced for ICP,"Carnival Of Carnage", and "Beverly Kills 50187". Also in 1992, Esham released Judgement Day, Vol 1 and 2, which was the first double album in America. Also In 1992, Esham hooked up with long time friend, TNT and Mastamind to form the group NATAS, and released,"Life After Death". NATAS stands for, "Nation Ahead Of Time And Space, or " Niggaz Ahead Of Time And Space", however people get the wrong idea, as Esham states,"First of all Natas stands for Nation Ahead of Time and Space. And you don’t really go through life reading things backwards. You don’t look at the word “live” and see “evil”. You see things for what they are, and some people might get something negative from that. But for all the people who really understand the music and get the surge of energy, we put out what it’s about—they know what it’s about it ain’t have nothing to do with Satan."
In 1993, Esham released,"KKKill The Fetus", which might be his most wicket album to date.The album came under controversy, however when Pro-Life organizations were angry about the albums pro-abortion lyrics. Esham made a video, and single for ,"Hellter Skkkelter", but it was rarely played on TV or radio, which made Esham angry at radio and media. In 1994, NATAS released,"Blaz4me", and later that year a kid smoking a blunt and drinking, shot himself while listening to the song,"Life After Death", by NATAS. The media qucikly pointed the their fingers at Esham, but Esham explains how he feels, "Children listen to all sorts of things. Music does not play that much of a significant role in their lives to me that would get them in any kind of trouble. I never listened to an Ice Cube CD and did anything bad. Sometimes the music that we make touch people’s lives, to the point that no other record that they’ve heard has done that. Sometimes they can relate to things we’ve done, bringing the all around universal way. In regards to the parents, parents always got pissed off, they got pissed off at Elvis Presley. Parents are continuing to get pissed off throughout the rest of history." Also that year, under desperate times for drugs (Esham used to drop acid) he needed more money so he joined Warlock Records, and released, "Closed Casket" , which produced the video and single for, "Diggin On Da-Dl". He also Contributed to, "The Fear Sondtrack",in which a part of the movie called, "The Fear" , you can hear Esham sing,"Rocks Off!", briefly. He also made a single for,"Mental Stress".
In 1995 he dropped off of Warlock, and signed local rappers, Dice, Lord Maji, and Razzaq, to RLP. Also NATAS released one of their most wicket albums,"DOUBELIEVENGOD, which Mastamind explains the reaction,"The third Natas album, Doubelievengod, that just shook muthafuckas lives for real. They just knew we was devil worshippers then." Mastamind released his solo album,"Lickkuiddrano", that year. Some rappers in New York who heard of how ill NATAS is, took thier style and devolped what is known as,"Horrorcore". although he is considered a big role in horrorcore, Esham wants no part of it. He said,"Horrorcore is something fictitious. Other groups in other regions, when they pass through this area, they lookin’ and listenin’ too. They just took what we were doing, which was ‘acid rap’. That’s what we called it. They took it back to their superiors, and they called it horrorcore. We don’t even like to be affiliated with that.
In 1996, fellow RLP rapper Dice released "Theneighborhoodshittalka" and Esham released "Dead Flowers". In 1997, Esham released a compilation of some of his wicket songs called,"Detroit Dogshit". Later that year he started to put out flyers simply saying,"Who Is Bruce Wayne?". Many had no clue what that meant until Esham dropped his new album,"Bruce Wayne:Gothom City '87", in which he changed his style, and was under a new company called Gothom. NATAS blew people's minds with their new album,"Multikillionaire:The Devil's Contract", and E was featured in Murderdog Magazine. In 1998 he was voted the most slept on artist in the Source Magazine. In 1999, Dice and Razzaq were caught stealing money from Esham, and were kicked off the label, however there are conflicting views on what happened. Gothom signed onto Overcore records which is a subsidery of Overture records, and Esham released,"Mail Dominance", which had a video and a single for,"Twirk Yo Body" and after long delays, NATAS released,WWW.com.
In 2000, Overcore signed a deal with TVT meaning nationwide distrubution of Esham and NATAS albums. WWW.com was re-released, with a special CD limited to 30,000 copies. Also Esham released,"Bootleg:From The Lost Vault, which had previously unreleased tracks, and enhanced Cd features, which include, pictures, a interview, and live concert footage. In the following year (2001) Esham releases his wicket rhymes once again on an album entitled "Tongues." Basically it's a big ass bash on all copycats, above all Eminem. His references are such as "They won't let me on MTV I'd beat up Carson Daly // And remind Eminem of D'Angelo Bailey // Haley's in a coma, Haley's in a coma // I smell the aroma, of a dead body..." and "This white boy named Eminem say he's live like me // Talkin' about he from Detroit the East Side like me // Talkin' about he don't spit Acid Rap but spit Acid like me // Bitch I'm a Nigga // And you a Honky." The album brings all of Eshams wicket acid rap rhymes and was truely a great gift for all Suisidalists.
The year 2002 came around, but Esham didn't until the summer at the Gathering of the Juggalos 2002. Immediately rumors started that he was signed with the Hatchet. Turns out in the following months that the rumors were true and he was a performing act on Psychopathic Records. With the new lable can a slightly new change in his name. Insteady of being Esham "The Unholy" he is now Esham "The Boogieman." Esham debuted on Psychopathic with ICP's sixth and final Joker Card "The Wraith: Shangri-La." Many people feel that Esham has sold out but his rhymes are still as wicket as before. December 10, 2002 Esham's "Acid Rain" album was released. It is basically a compilation of Esham's greatest tracks including narrations by the Insane Clown Posse and 5 new tracks. It shows all of Esham's wicket rhyming aspects and is a great overall album. The album closes with the wong "Redemtion" which is about his life and how he has been face to face with the devil. He has walked into the light along with all Juggalos. I'm sure we will see a new side of Esham soon, until then we need to just wait and see what he produces next. |
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