Schooly D - Biography
By Paul Glanting
Before 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg gave middle America a window into gritty inner-city life and grinned as suburban kids purchased their albums in droves and then cautiously hid them from their parents under their beds, there was Schoolly D. While a good amount of early eighties hip-hop romanticized the struggles of inner-city life and opted to focus more upon the positive community that came forth because of it, Schoolly D was one of the first rappers who chose to explicate the strife and emphasize the nihilism that arose out of urban life. Often dubbed the “Godfather of Gangster Rap”, Schoolly D’s crime-ridden rhymes were certainly a precursor to gangster rap’s celebration of malevolence. While never attaining the prominence of artists like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, Schoolly D was making parents and community leaders alike, breathe heavy before the often imitated controversy-as-a-business-plan formula was established. Along with other hip-hop pioneers like Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane, Schoolly D was controversial before being controversial was cool.
Jesse B. Weaver was born in Philadelphia in 1966. Like many urban youth of the era, Weaver’s ears were drawn to hip-hop pioneers like the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Funky Four Plus One. Opting to try his own hand at rapping, Weaver took the alias Schoolly D and began to pen his own lyrical narratives. While many of Schoolly’s rapping-peers waxed poetic about block parties, girlfriends and friendly lyrical competitions, Schoolly’s rhymes relished in unabashedly speaking about guns, casual sex and smoking marijuana. Because of his expressed fondness for violence and debauchery, Schoolly found it difficult to find a label willing to sign him. He therefore, released his first single Gangster Boogie / Maniac (Cut Master Records-1994) on his own. After gaining a little buzz, Schoolly D released another single with a pair of gritty singles in C.I.A. / Cold Blooded Blitz (Schoolly D Records-1985). Schoolly D’s steady flow was a laid-back and smooth delivery which perhaps made him sound more convincing when discussing violence, drugs and sex.
Despite his difficulty in finding a label to back him, Schoolly D would eventually ink a deal with Jive Records- a label that would gain notoriety for launching the careers of many hip-hop icons such as A Tribe Called Quest, Boogie Down Productions and DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince. Now on a major label, Schoolly D released the eponymous Schoolly D (Jive-1986). Produced by DJ Code Money, the instrumentals on Schoolly’s self-titled album were thumping and far more aggressive than mainstream audiences were used to, symbolically following suite with his fearsome lyrical content. The six-track album kicks off abrasively with the self-explanatory “I Don’t Like Rock & Roll”, where the Philly-born rapper declares rock music and its “long haired people” archaic and obsolete. While many critics found the album excessively antagonistic, future rappers like 2 Live Crew and Ice-T- who has cited “P.S.K” as one his earliest and greatest influences- certainly took note of the album’s standoffish tales of firearms, women, and weed.
While Schooly-D’s major label debut was praised for its general DIY-ethic, his sophomore album Saturday Night - The Album (Jive/Schoolly D Records-1986) was noted for an upgrade in production value. His debut heard Schoolly D spit his grimy tales over sparse drum-machine compositions but the production on Saturday Night - The Album begins to dabble with more sample-based production and better song construction. However, while Schoolly D’s status as a “musician” may been elevated, his status in the eyes of community leaders and critics was anything but respected. Schoolly D’s tone on his second album is more serious making the sexually-frank ideas on songs like “Saturday Night” more disturbing. Nevertheless, Saturday Night - The Album does hear the rapper becoming increasingly more aware of the quickly growing nostalgia surrounding the origins of hip-hop, origins which songs like “Dedication to All B-Boys” and “We Get Ill” suggest that he was aware that his output was contributing to this nostalgia as well.
Schoolly D continued to amplify the crass nature of his music with his next effort Smoke Some Kill (Jive-1988). The album title itself an ode to smoking premium pot, critics censured Smoke Some Kill as being representative of the lowest common denominator of what rap music had to offer, often claiming that Schoolly D sacrificed any artistic merit, opting to be lewd and belligerent instead. Schoolly’s third album was indeed lewd, as evidence by songs like “Mr. Big Dick” and the drug-anthem "Same White Bitch (Got You Strung Out On Cane)." Schoolly D also takes his disparaging of rock music a bit further on “Signifying Rapper”, where he subverts Led Zeppelin's “Kashmir” and just one song after "We Don't Rock, We Rap" where he verbally trashes rock music.
Schoolly D’s next album, Am I Black Enough For You? (Jive-1989), remained loyal to his hardcore roots but he also began to adopt a good amount of Afro-centricity, which was becoming increasingly popular with artists like A Tribe Called Quest, KRS-One and Public Enemy. Songs like “Don’t Call Me N****r” and “Black Jesus” were perfect examples of Schoolly’s fusion of fierce street sensibility and his own black-awareness. Once again, however, Schoolly D met opposition from critics, as his efforts to reinvent himself as a Black nationalist were panned as gimmicky and halfhearted, especially when compared to albums like Public Enemy’s iconic It take a nation of Million to Hold Us Back (Def Jam-1988), which was released just one year earlier.
In the early nineties, Schoolly D began associating with cult-filmmaker Abel Ferrara, whose career ran parallel to the Philadelphia-rapper’s in terms of the onslaught of accusations which claimed that his remarkably violent films sought merely to exploit malice. For his gangster cult-classic King of New York, Ferrara used several of Schoolly D’s past songs including, “Am I Black Enough For You?” and “Saturday Night”, for the film’s soundtrack. Again hoping to use the rapper's music in his films, Ferrara had initially placed Schoolly’s song “Signifying Rapper” onto the soundtrack for his next film Bad Lieutenant, which starred Harvey Keitel as a police officer spiraling into addiction. Despite the fact that “Signifying Rapper” had been out for several years prior to the release of the film, Jimmie Paige and Robert Plant decided to file a lawsuit for “Signifying Rapper”’s uncleared sample of “Kashmir”, which eventually resulted in the song being removed from subsequent releases of Bad Lieutenant. Despite being forced to remove the song, Ferrara has stood up for its usage and has insisted that Schoolly D’s subversion of the song is far superior to “Kashmir.” Schoolly D would continue to work with Ferrara, writing the song “The Player” exclusively for Ferrara’s 1997 film The Blackout and Schoolly would later score Ferrara’s film 'R Xmas.
Schoolly D continued to release albums including his 1991 effort How A Black Man Feels (Capitol Records-1991). While the album received remarkably better reviews than his previous effort, Schoolly was still seen as concocting mediocre attempts at sounding progressive.
While not a commercial success, Welcome To America (Ruffhouse-1994) was met with a fair amount of critical praise. Gangsta rap -a genre Schoolly D largely helped create- was now an immensely lucrative sub-genre of rap music. However, the nearly unanimous verdict surrounding Welcome To America was that Schoolly D was attempting to recapture the gangsta rap glory that he helped create. But, Critics felt that Schoolly’s problem was that he lacked the lyrical prowess and charisma that many of his predecessors, artists like Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Notorious B.I.G., possessed.
Schoolly D has gone on to yield a pair of largely unnoticed albums with Reservoir Dog (PSK Records-1995) and Funk ‘N Pussy (Chord Records-2000), both of which met the same mixed reviews his past albums met and lackluster commercial reception. However, the rapper from the City of Brotherly Love has gone on to a fruitful career in music production and scoring, composing music for longtime collaborator Abel Ferrara's projects as well as producing music for the Cartoon Network’s cult-hit cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force, on which he also occasionally narrates.
If there ever was a “Cult” rapper, Schooly D is it. Having unknowingly created one of the most commercially successful genres of music ever, without enjoying the profits if it but still being one of the the targets of its criticism, Schoolly D merely sought to describe his urban surroundings with an unapologetic view of the world. While his albums never attained the commercial or critical success of many of his predecessors, his brutal depiction of inner-city life make him one of hip-hop’s true innovators.
