The story behind Black Moon’s ‘Who Got Da Props’
Black Moon, while never as successful as their contempories Nas, the Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep or the Wu-Tang Clan, were key to reviving New York hip-hop in the mid-’90s.
Released in 1993, a few weeks before Wu-Tang’s debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) arrived, the group’s debut album Enta da Stage was a powerful statement of intent from the trio, who counted rappers Buckshot and 5ft and producer DJ Evil Dee as its members. But despite being critically acclaimed, the album was not very popular. It didn’t sell well.
The album was created after the single ‘Who Got Da Props’ found minor success in ’92, reaching number 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 and being well-received by those who heard it. The song, which later featured on Enta da Stage, showcased the group’s talents perfectly.
‘Who Got Da Props’ started life as an instrumental that, according to Evil Dee, the group used to blast out of a car stereo. “My friend Sham, he had this Jeep with the ill sound system,” he recalled to DJBooth in 2018. “We would ride around the block and bump the instrumental to ‘Who Got da Props.’ People bopped their heads.”
The group apparently noticed one especially notable person responding positively to the instrumental, which is when the group understood that they had a winner. “When I saw Spike Lee bopping his head, too,” Evil Dee said, “I knew we had something special!”
In the famous rap history book Check the Technique by Brian Coleman, Evil Dee explained that the group had initially planned to release another song as their first single, but, in the end, they decided it wasn’t right. That’s when they returned to finish this ‘Who Got Da Props’ track.
“Buck pulled the instrumental out and said he was going to write to it,” he said. “A couple days later he was like, ‘Yo, man, everybody wants props, so we should call it ‘Who Got the Props’ and it’ll be telling people that we got the props.’”
Buckshot took the lead on the song, apparently because 5ft wasn’t able to write his parts in time. That worked out just fine, as Buckshot’s performance was more than enough to power the track.
“I came out a time where you just had to be you,” Buckshot told DJBooth, reflecting on his style. “As easy as that sounds, it is hard to do. A lot of people just follow trends and don’t have the ability to attract people. It was surprising, but people were attracted to what I did, they could see it was authentic and new.”
He credited his aggressive rapping style as being a response to his short stature. “I am very small,” he said, “so I had to make a decision early on that I was going to go as hard as possible. [I had to make it clear that] nothing was going to intimidate me.”
‘Who Got the Props,’ and later the Enta da Stage album, showed off Black Moon’s skills, and it arguably sparked a broader comeback for East Coast hip-hop after a period of dominance out West. While the group never found huge success in their own day, they’ve since become well-regarded cult heroes of sorts.
“We were just really confident kids,” Buckshot reflected of their early days. “You gotta remember this was prior to the Wu-Tang, they hadn’t come out yet. Mobb Deep didn’t even blossom fully to what it became. I mean, Havoc is featured on our album [on the track ‘U da Man’]. We opened doors. We showed you could be raw and unapologetically street, and still get on the radio.”