But Nickatina’s second effort wasn’t all darkness it includes some lighter cuts. Nickatina now seems more aligned with E-40, who was in his contemplative phase as well-“Changes” was popular around the same time-and one can see how Nickatina is adding to the conversation socially conscious rappers were having about drugs and its effects on Black America. Up until this point, the influence of Too $hort is seen in Nickatina’s focus on sex, drugs, and petty crime, but this song seems more nuanced early Short Dog doesn’t seem interested in offering commentary on the state of his environment. Again, he favors the realistic over the romantic, emphasizing the darkness of gangsta life: “My partners mamas smokin’ rocks and turns into a ho.” This song reveals the necessity of criminality for the denizens of Nickatina’s kingdom, and it’s not something to celebrate. In “Situation Critical,” Nickatina chronicles the cocaine crisis of the late eighties and early nineties. On I Hate You with a Passion, his second album, released in 1995, Nickatina favors layered beats, dripping with sludgy synthesizers that are as dark as his lyrics. He and E-40 have similar passions for language a love of slang and the drive to create it is a huge element in Bay Area rap and hip-hop, and Nickatina’s hand in this shows just how essential he is to the musical DNA of this region.
#ANDRE NICKATINA ALBUMS CRACK#
Nickatina’s responsible for perhaps the most inventive phrase uttered in a rap song: crack raider, which is the phrase for a crackhead that fancies himself a handyman. Nickatina’s rap lexicon is expansive, imaginative, and rivals any other lyricist in its sheer originality. As with all the best rappers, Nickatina begins to create his own language-he introduces us to chewy (weed mixed with cocaine) and clucker (a chump), just to name a few. “The Most Hated Man in Frisco” features a similar drum beat over a drowsy organ that makes me think of old vampire movies.
#ANDRE NICKATINA ALBUMS FULL#
It’s on this track that Nickatina exhibits his lyrical talents by describing smoking weed in perhaps the best way: “Blaze like it’s barbequed beef/there ain’t nothing like a blunt full a funk in your teeth.” I was so taken by this line that when I was fifteen I dreamed of getting, “blunt full of funk” tattooed in Old English lettering on my neck.
“Smoke Dope and Rap,” still a fan favorite after nearly twenty-three years, is comprised of a snare, kick, and guitar. His lyrics are dripping with an oddly humble strain of braggadocio: Nickatina raps about dime bags and Cutlass Supremes, not kilos and Ferraris. Nickatina’s first album, The New Jim Jones, released in 1993 under the name Dre Dog, is filled with lo-fi beats that are dark, slow, and stripped down. What’s even rarer: Nickatina’s been consistently releasing new material, and that seems to be the only thing that matters to him: creating music. While most of the area’s rap comes from east of the Bay Bridge, Nickatina’s from the city. For one thing, he’s one of the few rappers who has been respected by his contemporaries for over two decades, yet has stayed underground. Nickatina has made it his life’s work to chronicle this period in San Francisco’s story, and in so doing has become elemental to the backbone of Bay Area rap. But before San Francisco became a playground for nerds with seven-figure bank accounts, it was a city with grit and flash, a place with streets as seedy as its history. San Francisco’s a place where you’re just as likely to see Guy Fieri in a Lamborghini as you are to goosestep over a fresh puddle of human diarrhea on your way to BART. The disparity between the rich and the poor is grotesque. If you’re not a millionaire and reside in San Francisco, you either live with your parents, a handful of roommates, or under Highway 101. Even the nearby Tenderloin’s rent has skyrocketed (though you’ll still see someone openly hitting a crack pipe at two in the afternoon). Now, the Fillmore is a neighborhood like any other in this city under glass: $3,000 a month apartments, hot yoga studios, and third wave coffee shops dedicated to the slow pour. He hails from the Fillmore District-a part of the city that was filled with complicated people, a seedy nightlife, and a tragic, sordid past.
Populated with pimps, junkies, hustlers, Cadillac El Dorados, and working-class drug dealers, Andre Nickatina paints a portrait of a San Francisco that no longer exists. Justin Carroll-Allan backed up Jason Kidd at Cal.
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