Mac Dre - Samples, Covers and Remixes on WhoSampled. Discover all Mac Dre's music connections, watch videos, listen to music, discuss and download. It's young Mac Dre from the C-r-e-s-t Down and dirty, doin things that only players can do Straight California livin is what I'm sayin to you Ridin, sidin, whippin, dippin 24/7 a brother ain't trippin Mac Dre, the one you like to listen to Nationwide and now I'm fins'to Put a little slang in the rap game And come up strong for The Mac, mane.
(Redirected from California Livin')
Andre Louis Hicks (July 5, 1970 – November 1, 2004), better known by his stage nameMac Dre, was an American rapper, hip hoppioneer, and record producer based in Vallejo, California.[1][2] He was instrumental in the emergence of hyphy, a cultural movement in the Bay Areahip hop scene that emerged in the early 2000s.[3] Hicks is considered one of the movement's key pioneers that fueled its popularity into mainstream, releasing songs with fast-paced rhymes and basslines that inspired a new style of dance.[3] As the founder of the independent record label Thizz Entertainment, Hicks recorded dozens of albums and gave aspiring rappers an outlet to release albums locally.[4]
In 2004, Hicks was killed by an unknown assailant after a performance in Kansas City, Missouri,[5] a case that remains unsolved.[6] Download viva video maker for mac.
Early life and career[edit]
Andre Louis Hicks was born in Oakland, California on July 5, 1970 and then moved to the Vallejo area. He would often frequent the Country Club Crest neighborhood, known locally as The Crest. In 1989, the outgoing Hicks made waves with a cassette tape featuring the single, 'Too Hard for the F---in' Radio' while still a student at Vallejo's Hogan High School. NPR noted his 2013 sound as being 'fast and confident' further writing that 'he built upon the bouncy bass that had its roots in the funk era.'[7] When asked about his childhood, Hicks stated that 'Situations came out for the better most of them, I went through the little trials and the shit that I went through.'[8] Hicks first adopted the stage name MC Dre in 1984, but altered it to Mac Dre the following year because he considered the name sounded 'too East Coast-ish'.[9] Hicks recorded his first three EPs as Mac Dre between 1988 and 1992.[1]
Conviction[edit]
In the early 1990s, the city of Vallejo experienced a surge in bank robberies. Vallejo police began to focus on the Crest Neighborhood as a source of the crime. Hicks was vocal about the actions he saw being taken by the police and incorporated their aggressive surveillance of residents into his music. As gangster rap music consistently grew in popularity, law enforcement officials began to examine the lyrics of local rappers to utilize as evidence in criminal matters.[10]
On March 26, 1992, at age 21, Hicks was invited by friends to a road trip in Fresno. Hicks had performed in the city two weeks prior and decided to go on the trip so that he could re-visit a woman he knew there. While driving back to Vallejo the car was surrounded by the FBI, Fresno, and Vallejo police. The police stated that while Hicks was at a motel, his friends were allegedly casing a bank but had changed their mind when they saw a local Fresno TV News van in the bank's parking lot.[11]When questioned by the police, Hicks stated that he did not leave the hotel therefore did not know anything. How to download webtoon on mac. The police subsequently charged him with conspiracy to commit robbery, although no bank robbery was conducted and Hicks was neither with his friends nor near the location of the purported bank.[12]He was sentenced to five years in federal prison after he refused a plea deal for the conspiracy charge. The trial was later listed among Complex Magazine's 30 Biggest Criminal Trials in Rap History.[13] At the time of his conviction, Hicks owned the record label Romp Productions.[1] Hicks was released a year early from prison for good behavior on August 2, 1996, after serving four years.[1] It was during his time in prison that Hicks developed a 'better appreciation for freedom, life, fun.'[14]
Post Prison Career[edit]
After his release from Lompoc Prison[15], Hicks wanted to start doing music that was easy to dance to. He and longtime friend and fellow rapper Troy Reddick, a.k.a. Da'unda'Dogg, decided to try to do something different. The duo recorded several songs to pitch to major record labels. One song was sent to various West-Coast-based representatives of the well-known Oakland rapper Too Short for an upcoming compilation, Nationwide: Independence Day, but was not selected and it is unknown if the song ever made it to Too Short.
In 1998, Hicks relocated to Sacramento to distance himself from the eyes of Vallejo law enforcement and founded a new label, Thizz Entertainment, now managed by Hicks' mother.[14] In 2000, Hicks' change in sound became influential in the Hyphy Movement.[14] Hicks continued to release multiple popular albums independently until his untimely death in 2004.
In 2019, Grammy-winning Atlanta rapper and multi-platinum producer Lil Jon, with the blessing of Hicks' mother, would incorporate the same vocals in the single 'Ain't No Tellin' and release through Geffen Records.[16] Ironically, Lil Jon's 1998 debut to the Bay Area was through a song on the same Too Short compilation. Reddick, in a statement to Complex Magazine, stated, 'Of all the vocals Jon got, he picked some from the record Dre wrote to be released by a major label, and 23 years later Lil Jon has completed his goal!' [16]
Death[edit]
After Hicks and other Thizz Entertainment members had performed a show in Kansas City, Missouri on October 31, 2004, an unidentified gunman shot at the group's van as it traveled on U.S. Route 71 in the early morning hours of November 1. The van's driver crashed and called 9-1-1, but Hicks was pronounced dead at the scene from a bullet wound to the neck.[17] Download vector magic full crack mac.
He was buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.[18]
Discography[edit]Studio albums[edit]
Posthumous studio albums[edit]
Collaboration albums[edit]
See also[edit]References[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mac_Dre&oldid=979309807'
Mac Dre :: The Musical Life of Mac Dre Vol. 1 - The Strictly Business Years 1989-1991 :: Young Black Brothaas reviewed by Matt Jost
Andre Hicks' posthumous releases might just outnumber Tupac Shakur's. The collection at hand deserves a closer look because it operates with a sense of history, gathering tracks from the earliest stage of his career. Although Mac Dre's years with producer Khayree normally fly under the banner Young Black Brotha (also the title of his very first EP from 1989), the label was called Strictly Business at that time. As for the exact duration of these 'Strictly Business Years', there's some doubt that the collection's 13 tracks all have their origin in the timeframe given in the subtitle since some of them weren't released until 1992 or 1993, and even factoring in a prison term it's unlikely that everything here falls into that three-year period.
What is confirmed is that it all started in 1989 with the 19-year old releasing the EP 'Young Black Brotha' (not to be confused with 'Young Black Brotha - The Album,' which concluded the Strictly Business era in 1993). Dre's debut release is represented with three tracks - 'Young Black Brotha,' 'Livin a Mac's Life' and 'Too Hard For Da Fuckin Radio.' Spelled 'Too Hard For the Fuckin Radio' here, the latter song is exemplary of Mac Dre's music. Loved in and highly representative of the Bay Area but long ignored in the rest of the country, it embodies the independent spirit that drove a rap scene that didn't constantly hope to be discovered by the national music industry. The irony is that Khayree was also part of one of the most successful rap albums of that time, Vanilla Ice's 'To the Extreme,' but that's another story.
'Too Hard For the Fuckin Radio' doesn't revel in the fact that it doesn't conform to a radio format the way N.W.A or the Geto Boys would have done. It's not something he rubs in the face of white America or the music industry but a self-evident fact. Showing traces of Schoolly D and Too $hort, Mac Dre's performance is however rhetorically more refined, the playfulness elevating the raps to the level of what we know as 'game'. Khayree wisely plays support with a back-to-the-basics, yet also slightly tongue-in-cheek beat whose kicking drums are themselves a significant reason the song was too hard for radio.
Perhaps San Francisco's KMEL, an early supporter of rap music on the West Coast, was an exception along with college and community radio, but remember this was music that was mainly spread by word of mouth. It is also music that derived much of its identity from its home turf. Mac Dre wasn't only out for personal gain and fame, he also came to represent the Crestside of Vallejo, setting off a tradition that over the years would cement this neighborhood's reputation for rap especially grounded in its place of origin. At the same time it inherently had a broader appeal because just as the anger of Compton, California, echoed all over America, it too spoke for many others living under similar conditions. Most rappers in the earlier days of rap with a socially conscious/street edge were aware of the fact they were pieces of a bigger puzzle, that theirs was the story of many. 'Young Black Brotha,' Mac Dre's self-portrait of the artist as a hoodlum (to take up a turn of phrase coined by 3rd Bass) has a noticeable critical undertone:
'Young black brotha, can never be a lover
He keeps a joint in one hand and heem in the other So fly, you never see him bummy He's never had a job but keeps a pocket full of money Live low, Daytons and Vogues A beeper on his belt and a gang of hoes Been in and out of jail since the day he was ten The hall, the county, and next is the pen See he really doesn't know what the game's about Get in, stack a bank and get the fuck out Because a d-boy's life is cool at first But in the end it's the pen or even worse a hearse Young brotha loves to get keyed Cause he feels so good when he's hittin' the weed He's never been to high school, let alone college And has so much game and too much knowledge Some call him a sad case, but how do they figure? Many wanna be like that young nigga And it's not just him, it's another and another Cause many of us live the life of a young black brotha'
It's that sense of reality that attracts many people to rap to this day. The Mamas & the Papas were famously 'California Dreamin' in 1965, but Mac Dre and Khayree (and guest Coolio Da' Unda' Dogg) were 'California Livin',' focusing not so much on the cliché image of California that already existed before the '60s, but the frequently dangerous streets where the only thing glamorous are the customized cars, 'where you can drop the drop, or blow the brains / hit the intersection and do some thangs,' but also where 'brothers on the savage grind' are 'livin' way too real.' Obviously it also celebrates the party and player lifestyle that always had its place in West Coast rap, and it foreshadows the movement Mac Dre spearheaded much later in his career, hyphy. 'California Livin' (here included in the original 1991 version) may not be a universally understood ode to the most famous of all U.S. states but it's a proud moment in Bay Area hip-hop history.
The spirit of history hovers over 'The Musical Life of Mac Dre Vol. 1,' rising from song blueprints for the kind of rap music that isn't purely action or fantasy but has some advice for you, sometimes matter-of-factly, sometimes condescending, sometimes sympathetic. In tracks like 'Livin a Mac's Life,' 'Da Gift 2 Gab,' or 'On My Toes' MD gives up game in truly exemplary fashion. Even across music that may sound dated to today's ears, the era's influence on two decades of rap (and counting) is heard crystal clear.
Mac Dre Songs
With rap opening up, becoming more honest and personal in recent years, revisiting these years can also serve as a reminder that straightforwardness has always been one of rap music's strengths, even as it ever so often was cloaked by superficiality. On 'They Don't Understand' Mac Dre and partner Ray Luv rhyme with reason about their decision to choose the rap game over the crack game. Dre relates how he got caught up in the fast life, exercised writing and rapping in jail and, with the help of Khayree, learned to make a living as an artist. Likewise, 'Times R Gettin Crazy' is driven by Dre's hope that others don't make the same mistakes:
'Children - from the black minority
Locked down in the Youth Authority DeWitt Nelson, Washington Ridge These are places they lock down kids It ain't right, it wasn't meant to be We don't belong in no penitentiary You got a talent? You better use it Pick up a pen and write some music And if not, boy, play sports Get to hoop-ballin', hit the courts The dope game just ain't cool You better try and stay in school' Mac Dre Music
It's a sad irony that the two songs that follow the above and close the collection (apart from an instrumental) feature vocals that were recorded on lock-down, 'It Don't Stop' and 'Young Mac Dre' both being rapped over the phone from the Fresno and Sacramento county jails. https://intotree548.weebly.com/photoshop-elements-13-for-mac-download.html. The ultimate tragedy of course is that Andre Hicks' remaining time on this Earth wasn't only limited because he would spend a considerable part of it behind bars but by ending much too early in 2004.
Numerous have been the attempts to commemorate (and capitalize on) Mac Dre's death. This isn't Khayree Shaheed's first time and at least one of the two tracks he claims to be 'unreleased' is not (factual liner notes would also have been preferred over the sentimental thank-yous), but he deserves credit for reissuing Dre's earlier works in some context, unlike the excessive 'The Best of Mac Dre' series. It makes for an essential listening for those interested in the artist and the place and the time reflected in his first recordings.
Music Vibes: 8 of 10Lyric Vibes: 8 of 10TOTAL Vibes: 8 of 10
Moto z2 play user manual pdf. Originally posted: October 29th, 2013
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