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Tag: Filthy Rich

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Drop Top

When Sir Mix-A-Lot and his business partner Ricardo Frazer left Nastymix, they established a new label called Rhyme Cartel. According to Discogs, the first release on Rhyme Cartel was the lead single to Mix-A-Lot’s third album Mack Daddy, a track called “One Time’s Got No Case.” Throughout 1992, the label released titles by Mix-A-Lot, but Ricardo and Mix wanted to grow the business. They began to look for new artists, and E-Dawg was one of the first signees to join. E-Dawg wrote two songs which appeared on the Seattle… The Dark Side compilation, and those same two cuts, “Drop Top” and “Little Locs” were also released as a twelve-inch single.

A-side “Drop Top,” featuring smooth-voiced rapper Filthy Rich, is a local classic, and could be heard everywhere in ’93. Verse one sees E-Dawg talking about an average day, and what it’s like driving around the hood in his convertible. Filthy Rich raps verse two, and also sets the mood at the start of the track, “Just kickin it, got the dank, got the drank, got the bank, and it’s all good.” A slick video for “Drop Top” was produced for BET and MTV audiences, helping the track gain exposure.

The B side is “Little Locs.” It starts with the sound of a gunshot and proceeds with E-Dawg proving his gangsta bona fides. “I know two roads to life, the straight and the crooked, the crooked road is in the O, so I took it,” he raps, highlighting his connection to Oakland, California. Both “Drop Top” and “Little Locs” were produced by Eugenius from Homegrown and Criminal Nation.

In a 1993 interview with Billy Jam available on Youtube, E-Dawg talks about his plans for putting out a record in ’94 on “Def American,” then he remembers that Rick Rubin has stricken “Def” from the name and corrects himself. But that E-Dawg album on American never arrived. Years later, he released two albums, Platinum in 1999 for Spot Entertainment, and How Long in 2010 which was released on Hard Road. After putting out E-Dawg, Rhyme Cartel went on to release music by singer/spoken word artist Jazz Lee Alston, electronic artist Kia, and rap/rock act Outtasite. Written by Novocaine132

Drop Top was created in and features appearances from:

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