How MC Lyte used her first song to take a stand: “I wrote when I was 12”
MC Lyte is one of the pioneers of female rap after coming onto the scene in the late ’80s, becoming the first female rapper to release an album. From the get-go, she was making music with meaning behind her lyrics.
The 54-year-old (real name Lana Moorer) released her first single, ‘I Cram to Understand U (Sam)’, in November 1987, which went on to appear on her debut album, Lyte as a Rock, in 1988. The song’s overall message is to warn people about the dangers of drug use and how it impacts relationships.
“I do believe having the opportunity to release music shouldn’t be taken for granted,” she told the Grammys. “And so, with that notion, I always, I guess, even from ‘I Cram to Understand U’, my very first song, I always wanted to record with a purpose.”
Produced by Audio Two, Lyte wrote the song when she was just 12 years old but recorded it when she turned 14. “The first time I recorded this song, I was 14 years old,” she explained to Vibe. “I did ‘I Cram to Understand U’ in Tony’s studio in Brooklyn—he later went on to become [DJ] Clark Kent. When it was finally pressed for record, I was 16. It was actually a rhyme that I wrote when I was 12.
“I just remember it being on a four-track Tascam. The boiler was making noise while we were recording, and we had to wait for it to stop [laughs]. I had all my rhymes in a notebook. Milk (Lyte’s brother, Milk Dee, of Audio Two) made the track, and I had the rhymes to go with it.”
Lyte detailed the drug theme throughout the song, which was inspired by people she saw at the hospital where her mother worked and those she would walk past in the streets of Harlem, where her grandmother lived. From that moment, she made it her mission to spread her message to the world.
“[The crack addiction storyline of the song] came from two places,” she said. “My mother used to work at North General Hospital in Harlem. Whenever I would go, there would be a slew of heroin and crack addicts and everybody there at the rehabilitation centre that was a couple of floors down.
“I would have to come into contact with these addicts, and I would think, ‘Wow, what a jacked-up way to be.’ I would never want that for myself or any other young person that I knew, so I was going to make it my responsibility to tell people about drugs so that they could avoid them at all costs.”
She added, “Then also my grandmother lived in Spanish Harlem. I would visit her from the age of a baby until I was 14 years old, and I would see the crackheads all over the street. And one of my cousins was a crackhead. I didn’t even know what crack was before that, but my cousins used to talk about him.”