Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz

Holy N-Word, Batman! You might want to turn the speakers down if you're listening to this in a work setting.

This song was CRAZY addictive back when I was in 8th grade. Everyone knew the words and we swore this was the. best. song. ever. It was all over the radio, MTV and BET. I have this cassette single, too. New York OWNED rap in the late 90s.

The one thing I remember the most about Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz was that they were the cockiest mofos on earth. They once did an interview where they said they had been in the rap game for 10 years or something like that. Maybe they were underground or all over the mixtape circuit, but this was their breakout hit, and their last.

Also, these two had an odd affiliation with Shaquille O'Neal for some reason. When Shaq wasn't on the court he was trying to "rap," I guess...and somehow released...wait for it...five albums, two soundtrack albums and a Best-of compilation. That's more than the average shelf life of a female R&B singer. Tariq and Gunz make sporadic appearances on some of his work, including this gem here:



I may have seen the above video maybe once or twice in my life, but I clearly remember Gunz having his own verse in a Shaq song called "The Way It's Goin' Down" that was released shortly after "Uptown Baby (Deja Vu)." I remember the video had airplay on MTV (and was a much better effort than this here -- it was directed by Joseph Khan!), but I can't find it anywhere online.

Cash Money, No Limit and other Southern rap outlets gradually gained an increasing hold on hip-hop, to the point where we are now where New York rap isn't as prominent in the mainstream as it once was. As N.Y. rap started to disappear, so did many of their artists.

How to make a comeback:

Well, have they gone anywhere? Both Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz have their separate MySpace pages and Peter's son, Cory, has his own page and is trying to break in the game. I feel really old that my old favorites have children who are trying to rap. It looks like Cory is collaborating with Ryan Leslie...so...um...good luck with that. I noticed a few things after browsing their and their friends' pages though:

1. Joseph Khan left a comment on Cory's page. Wow.
2. Tariq has Cory in his top friends, but not Peter. Peter has Shaq in his top friends, but not Tariq. Cory has both Peter and Tariq. Tariq has plenty of big names including Olivia (OK, maybe not) but not Shaq. Drama?
3. Twism still exists? OK...
4. Someone's a big JT fan, obviously...