Today we’re looking at a record from Spoonie Gee and The Treacherous Three, from Enjoy! Records, in 1979.
The A side features Spoonie Gee’s Love Rap, the second single from Spoonie Gee (aka Gabriel Jackson), but the first on Enjoy! (which just happened to be owned by his uncle). Love Rap is all about Spoonie’s adventures hooking up with fine females, and is an early example of lyrical rhymes that use rap music to tell a story instead of just crowd call-and-response rhymes or telling everyone how great you are.
The B side is New Rap Language from Spoonie and his former crew, The Treacherous Three (Kool Moe Dee, LA Sunshine, and Special K). The song is a 9 minute example of “Speed Rapping”, created by Moe Dee, and would become the signature style of the Treacherous Three. But the song also created a shift in rap music from the simple “disco rap” sound of The Sugar Hill Gang, towards a style that focused on more complex, internal rhymes. It really did create a new rap language.
And if you’d like to hear more about the history of The Treacherous Three, one of the most influential early rap crews, I put out a podcast episode all about them on my show, Bring the Noise: A History of Early Hip-Hop.
