Canibus
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Wikipedia-Article "Canibus"
Canibus (Can-I-Bus, Rip the Jacker or just Bis for short; b. Germaine Williams to Basil and Elaine Williams, 1974) is a Jamaican-born, African-American rapper.
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Background
After his parents divorced, Germaine moved to the United States with his mother at the age of thirteen. His first new home was The Bronx, where he found an interest in the hip-hop culture, beatboxing, breakdancing and rap music. Due to his mother's job he was often forced to move, living in Washington D.C., Miami, England (where his mother originated from), Atlanta and New Jersey. This constant movement limited his ability to make friends and turned him into something of a recluse. Williams graduated high school in 1992 and went on to work for AT&T and the US Department of Justice as a data analyst. It was at this time that Williams became an internet 'junkie'. Having grown interested in computers and the internet, Germaine studied computer science at DeKalb Community College (now Georgia Perimeter College) in Atlanta.
Music career
He began rhyming in the mid-'90s and by 1995 formed a duo called T.H.E.M. (The Heralds of Extreme Metaphors) with Atlanta rapper Webb. While he was with Webb, he took part in a legendary cypher with Killah Priest and the rest of the Wu Tang Clan family in Atlanta, which earned him respect from the rap veterans. In 1996, T.H.E.M. split and Canibus teamed with businessman Charles Suitt to form management company Group Home Entertainment. He began infiltrating the mix-tape circuit in 1997 and got his first big break when Ras Kass invited him to record a verse for the song "Uni-4-orm", which also included Heltah Skeltah. Canibus also collaborated with The Lost Boyz, who were represented by Group Home Entertainment, on their Love, Peace & Nappiness album. Canibus featured on the songs "My Crew" and "Beasts from the East", the latter being considered one of his finest verses ever.
For the first part of 1998, he was managed by the main man behind the Fugees, Wyclef Jean, who was introduced to him by Jay-Z. It was at this time that the intense rivalry between him and rapper LL Cool J began. The battle stemmed from a collaboration with LL titled "4, 3, 2, 1" from L's 1997 album Phenomenon. Supposedly, LL took offense to two lines that referenced his tattoo of a microphone on his arm (which in actuality were Canibus' way of showing LL respect) and wrote an indirect diss to Bis in his verse on the same track; Bis' lines were removed before the track was officially released but LL's lines remained. After he inked a deal with Universal Records, Canibus released his debut single, "Second Round K.O." in 1998, in which Bis sent an all out assault on LL for dissing him on "4, 3, 2, 1". The rivalry continued, with both sides releasing further diss tracks, but eventually the feud fizzled out. Later on in his career, Canibus would have a similar, but less publicized rivalry with hip-hop superstar Eminem.
Bis' debut album Can-I-Bus came out in September of 1998, and the general public felt genuinely disappointed, saying that the album suffered production-wise and rhetorically. While the first single, "Second Round K.O.", was a success (with the song and video featuring Wyclef Jean and a cameo by boxer Mike Tyson), the album itself was a commercial failure. Despite eventually being certified Gold, critics (including The Source magazine) also panned the album. Because Wyclef produced most of the tracks, Bis blamed him for his album being a "commercial failure" and cut ties with him. He went as far as to diss Wyclef on his second album for it ("You mad at the last album? I apologize for it / Yo, I cant call it, motherfucking Wyclef spoiled it!"). Bis' second album, 2000 B.C., was also released to mixed feelings. Though most agreed it was an improvement on Can-I-Bus, many still felt that the production was subpar and the content repetitive. The album also suffered from having very little promotion. At the end of 2004, Bis and Clef met up and settled their differences; they have since worked together on a remix of the Machel Montano song "Carnival Survivors". In an interview with HipHopsite.com conducted in November of 2005, Bis said he recorded five songs with Wyclef and Jerry Wonda at Platinum Studios in New York for the upcoming Fugees' reunion album. Whether or not those recordings will appear on the album hasn't been determined yet.
In 2001, Canibus released his third album C True Hollywood Stories, based after the television show E! True Hollywood Stories of the E! Television network. It was released on Archives Music, a label owned by Bis' future business partner Louis Lombard III. It was a controversial release due to the album's overall concept, which is still a little unclear to this day. Many people took it as Bis' attempt at going commercial and wrote him off as a one-hit wonder, while others have called it a concept album in which Bis satirized the mainstream hip-hop scene. Most explanations since the album's release seem to lean towards the latter. When his new official website MicClub.net went up in the end of 2002, the summary of this album in the merchandise section called it "an introspective look into the ultimate fan 'Stan's' take on the current state of hip hop". In an interview conducted in 2005, Bis' former hype man Pak-Man, who worked on over half of the album with Bis, spoke on CTHS, with his explanation leaning toward the satire idea: "At that time Canibus was in the studio recording a lot of songs and mean a lot, but he didn't want to make the fans wait no more so he did C True Hollywood Stories and he wanted to have fun wit, so thats what we did we had fun wit." In an interview on the website AllHipHop.com posted on April 8th, 2005, Bis was asked what direction he was trying to take with that album, in which he stated "That album depicts the state of affairs in my life at the time - nothing more, nothing less".
Aside from being a solo artist, Canibus is also a member of a number of Hip-Hop groups as well. In 2000, Canibus teamed up with Kurupt, Ras Kass and Killah Priest to form rap supergroup The HRSMN (originally spelled out as 'The Horsemen'). Their first collaboration together was the song "Horsementality" from Bis' second album 2000 B.C.. Since then, they have done various collaborations on each other's albums and rumors of a HRSMN album were rampant including speculation about collaborations with Pharoahe Monch, Common and Rakim among others. In 2003, Killah Priest's management released The Horsemen Project, an EP of previously unreleased outtakes recorded by the HRSMN in 2001, around the same time Bis recorded Mind Control (which would be released officially in 2005). As of 2005, the official full-length HRSMN album is still in the works. Canibus is also part of a duo known as Cloak & Dagga, which also features Phoenix Orion. Cloak & Dagga released their debut album Def Con Zero on October 25, 2005. The album was released through Head Trauma Records the label owned by K-1 fighter Dewey Cooper, and featured guest appearances from Kool G Rap, K-Solo, and former 106 and Park host Free. There is reportedly another C&D album in the works. Bis apparently also plays a part of a rock/rap group known as BlakMilc. The first appearance of Bis with BlakMilc can be found on Bis' recent mixtape, Mic Club Masters Vol. 1
In the span of his career, Canibus has released six full-length solo albums. His most recent solo album, Hip-Hop for Sale was released on November 22nd, 2005 through partnership with Babygrande/Koch. The album was originally planned to be released in May of 2005, but it was pushed back to November because 75% of the material was leaked in December of 2004 in the form of an unoffical mixtape titled The Virtruvian Man. Out of the 11 tracks on the official album, five of them are from TVM, remastered for the official release. The album was mostly produced by Virginia-based producer Nottz, with some realtively unknown producers picking up the slack. .
Canibus has an assorted number of projects that will be coming out soon. It has been officially reported that in 2006, Bis will release his eighth album Mic Club Volume 2, the sequel to his fourth full length album, Mic Club: The Curriculum. In October 2005, Dewey Cooper announced that Bis will release another album on his Head Trauma label in 2006: a solo album titled Caesar Germanicus. And Canibus himself has confirmed that he will also be releasing a sequel to his fifth album Rip the Jacker in the future (some people have speculated that "Caesar Germanicus" will be RTJ 2, but this has yet to be confirmed). Other future projects from Canibus include an autobiographical documentary DVD showcasing his entire career in music, the long awaited HRSMN album, the second C&D album, the BlakMilc album, and and a rumored collaboration with Kanye West.
Military career
In 2002, Canibus signed up for the United States Army. For the longest time, the reasons behind this weren't entirely sure. It was originally thought that he did it because he was affected by the September 11, 2001 attacks but according to a interview with SOHH.com from 2005, there was another reason: "I enlisted because I wanted to get away from the music," said the MC. "I wanted to do something that gave me a separate definition from what I had done all through my teens and twenties. I was 28 when I enlisted" [1]. In May of 2003, two months before his fifth album, Rip the Jacker, would be released to very positive reviews, he graduated from Ft. Knox and started out as a reconnaissance specialist. In 2004, he was caught smoking marijuana and was discharged for it.
Discography
Albums (solo)
- Can-I-Bus? (1998)
- 2000 B.C. (2000)
- C True Hollywood Stories (2001)
- Mic Club: The Curriculum (2002)
- Rip the Jacker (2003)
- Mind Control (2005)
- Hip-Hop for Sale (2005)
- Mic Club Vol. 2 (TBA)
- Caesar Germanicus (TBA) (Estimated to be released in Spring 2006)
- Rip the Jacker 2 (TBA)
Albums (group)
- The HRSMN - The Horseman Project (2003)
- Cloak & Dagga - Def Con Zero (2005)
- The HRSMN - Untitled HRSMN Album (TBA)
- Cloak & Dagga - Second C&D Album (TBA)
- BlakMilc - Untitled BlakMilc Album (TBA)
Mixtapes
- My Name is Nobody (2003)
- The Brainstream (2003)
- Mic Club Masters Vol. 1 (2005)
Films
- Bamboozled (2000)
- Beef 2 Documentary (2004)
External links
Official Websites
- Official Homepage
- Gladiator Music Website
- Head Trauma Records Official Website
- Babygrande Records Official Website