EXCLUSIVE: Big Daddy Kane Discusses New Group The Las Supper & Album

[Photographs by Sean Ryon]

New York’s Blue Note Jazz Club isn’t exactly the first place one would expect to experience a live hip-hop performance. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, the venue has been a staple of the city’s jazz scene since its doors first opened in 1981. But hip-hop? Other than a plethora of samples pulled from its Half Note Records imprint and a handful of performances – including a memorable cipher featuring Kanye West and Mos Def in 2011 – the Blue Note is perhaps better known for its history as jazz hotspot as opposed to a haunt for hip-hop heads.

That certainly wasn’t the case this past Monday March 11th, however.

Beginning at 8 PM, hundreds of patrons filed into the venerable New York institution to see the Las Supper – a genre-bending Voltron outfit comprised of live band the Lifted Crew, singer Showtyme and emcee Big Daddy Kane. The crowd was a motley assembly of jazz aficionados and hip-hop purists, with fedoras and four-finger rings in tow. Even Kane’s “Show & Prove” collaborator Scoob Lover and famed DJ/Hot 97 personality Mister Cee found themselves in the mix. Yet despite the patchwork of personalities in attendance, the audience was unified in its desire to witness a cross-generational mash-up of hip-hop and soul.

The show kicked off with a raucous instrumental performance courtesy of the Lifted Crew. The New York-based act – a 10-piece live hip-hop group that has earned its stripes backing the likes of Slick Rick and Naughty By Nature – blazed through a set of notable funk and soul classics, setting the tone for the rest of the evening. Showtyme and Big Daddy Kane joined the Crew on stage shortly after, covering records like the Undisputed Truth’s “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” Singer Showtyme – a frequent collaborator of Pharoahe Monch – took center stage, imbuing his performance with a sound and energy reminiscent of Motown’s heyday.

The Las Supper then segued into a performance of cuts from its upcoming debut album Back to the Future. Even though the effort marks Big Daddy Kane’s first full length release since Veteranz Day fifteen years earlier, the Juice Crew alum made it abundantly clear in his performance that the project isn’t simply him rhyming over the sounds of a live band. Rather, the Las Supper pulls Kane’s lyrical acrobats into the framework of classic soul and R&B music. Ever the performer, Kane commanded the stage alongside Showtyme and the Lifted Crew, even stopping the show at one point to direct patrons to call their mothers and thank them. And in true James Brown fashion, Kane also curated an improvisation session, during which he introduced each member of the Lifted Crew while they riffed on their respective instruments.

Kane and company closed out the evening’s performance with live renditions of a few of the emcee’s most revered classics. While artfully rendered versions of “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” and “Smooth Operator” left audience members in awe, it was Kane’s final performance of “Raw” off his seminal 1988 debut Long Live the Kane that brought patrons to their feet. As the Brooklyn titan strutted across the stage unleashing a flurry of polysyllabic rhymes, it became clear that even after two-plus decades in the game, nobody does it quite like Kane.

Before the show jumped off, XXL got the chance to sit down with Big Daddy Kane to discuss the Las Supper and its impending release, Back to the Future. During the interview, Kane explained the intricacies of collaborating with Showtyme and the Lifted Crew, and how his decades of experience rhyming over soul and R&B samples has prepared him for this latest effort.

XXL: When did the Las Supper and its album Back to the Future come together?

Big Daddy Kane: To be honest with you, this project has been a real roller coaster-ride [with] really getting everything together and really getting things focused. Now, I feel it's there, it's tight and it's straight now. So it's like, when did it come together? It came together when we finished the album…[but] I love old school music, that's just always been my thing. To have the opportunity to record it with a great vocalist like Showtyme and a great band like the Lifted [Crew], I'm honored and I'm happy to be doing this because that type of music has always been my thing.

XXL: All three parties involved – Showtyme, the Lifted Crew and yourself – have pretty deep solo discographies. With that in mind, what made the three of you want to link up?

Big Daddy Kane: It's like, you want to mess with vintage music, but there's no need to mess with it if you're going to stay in the past because it's already been done. You reflect on something but you give it a modern twist. I think that Showtyme has those Bobby Womack-type of chops, so he can really reflect the past, but he also gives it that kind of K-Ci Hailey [of K-Ci and JoJo] twist to modernize things. The Lifted Crew, I think that they're a great band that plays great soul music. They may have studied a lot of soul, but really, their heart and soul is in hip-hop. They love backing hip-hop artists; so therefore, they're going to give it the modern twist. Plus, the hip-hop being mixed with vintage soul is just something that hasn't really been done; that's really what I bring to it.

XXL: I'm curious about the collaborative process behind the kind of a project. How did you work together as a group with so many musical components, yet still be able to anchor it in hip-hop?

Big Daddy Kane: [We collaborated] by making sure that it's a team effort. You've always heard R&B songs where there's an eight or 16 bar break for the rapper to spit, and I say from the '90s on up to now, [with] the majority of those songs, the verse the rapper spits ain't really got shit to do with the song…we're gonna make sure that that's not what's happening. [People would] normally [think], “Wouldn't a bridge be here? But it seems like the bridge became the rap section.” We want people to get that feel, so now what you're saying is it's a group. It's not some R&B dudes that let Kane rhyme on a song; it's a group. It's like these songs are together and mixed, like, "Yo, he sung half the verse, he rapped the other half, he sung another verse [and] he rapped the other half." The chemistry has to really bond in a way where it is a group effort.

XXL: In a lot of ways, hip-hop took R&B as kind of its musical blueprint through sampling and repurposing the sounds of a whole host of soul artists into hip-hop beats. How did you guys try to approach and encompass all the different facets of R&B and soul music with losing that hip-hop edge?

Big Daddy Kane: It’s just basically playing soul music, good soul music. Bottom line, that's all [the Lifted Crew] really had to do - play good soul music, come up with something creative that sounds like a song [and] not just a verse-hook, verse-hook. You've got a bridge, you've got a b-section – [we] just create songs. That was basically all they had to do: create good soul music.

Now with me, on the other hand, incorporating me, it was to be done in a way [where] it doesn't sound like a rapper rhyming on a song. It sounds like if hip-hop existed in the '50s and '60s and was something normal that you would see at a Temptations session [or] something normal that you would see at an Otis Redding session.

XXL: When I think of your past work – especially in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s - something that’s always stood out to me is that the samples used in your songs always maintained the feeling of soul and R&B music, more so that many other emcees. Coming into this project, was there a conscious decision to recapture that sound, or move beyond it?

Big Daddy Kane: In all honesty, the project is not about me; the project is about them. It's not a Kane album; it's a Showtyme and Nicky Cakes [guitarist/singer, Lifted Crew] album. They are the lead vocalists; I just have rap parts in there. They're Sam, I'm Dave. They're Hall, I'm Oates [laughs].

Because we're combining two different genres, I'm making my presence felt on these songs. But like what you were saying - that's what makes it easy; because of stuff I've done in the past where I'm familiar with soul music. It's easy for me to put a verse in this here song and make it work. When you talk about hip-hop, [there was no] music origin for hip-hop; when hip-hop started, it started over other peoples' music, and other peoples' music was soul, disco and rock.

XXL: So much of soul and R&B is based on the live performance, and obviously you’re known as one of hip-hop’s great live showmen. How does that factor into the Las Supper?

Big Daddy Kane: Honestly, I really think the shows are going to be the thing that tells the story. Just seeing how it goes down I think is even more amazing. It's a great album, I think it sounds great, but I mean, to see it is even more amazing because we have fun with it…[and] Showtyme – have you met him? Well, he's an Energizer Bunny, there's really no off switch. I give him Prozac when I need to rest. Lifted, they perform a lot, and their sets are always very energetic. With me, what I did to try to complement what we do now [on stage], I sat with Show and [watched] videos of Sam and Dave like, "Look how they're doing that! See how they move - when he moves, then he moves here" - just showing old stuff like that.