The one rapper Black Rob credited for his storytelling rap style
The career of Bad Boy Records alumnus Black Rob never reached the same heights as many of his contemporaries, but he had a unique talent for storytelling. His verses could be vivid in their detail, which was a technique he learned from one of the best.
As a kid learning to rap, Rob was a big fan of early hip-hop stars like Spoonie Gee and Doug E Fresh. As he stated during a 2013 interview with Unkut, he loved their organic, party-focused approach to the craft.
“Hell yeah! Parties, break-outs—the whole shit!” he said of his childhood rap idols. “Doug E Fresh was definitely slamming, man. I already wanted to my thing, but it gave me some inspiration to be the best that I could be.”
As Rob grew older and started to take rapping more seriously, he turned to other artists for inspiration. Clearly drawn to the art of storytelling, Rob was especially enamoured with one MC in particular: Slick Rick, a legend when it comes to spinning yarns within his songs.
“He was definitely hittin’ them with the songs, man,” Rob said of Rick. “I took hold of that, I grabbed the tapes and I was listening to it and I was like, ‘Oh shit! Where this shit came from?’ I started putting that shit on cap—cappin’ that. From there? It was no holes barred, man.”
Slick Rick’s influence was evident throughout Black Rob’s entire career, which, admittedly, never quite took off to the heights that it had initially promised to. While Rob fell into the same circles as Diddy, eventually signing up with his Bad Boy label, he never found the same levels of success as some of his peers.
Rob appeared on several Bad Boy releases as a featured artist throughout the ’90s, before releasing his own debut album in 2000. That record was called Life Story, and it featured the song ‘Whoa!,’ which was released as a single. Reaching number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100, it would prove to be his biggest ever hit.
Rob released several more albums after his debut, but none of them ever managed to take root in the public’s consciousness. He carried on putting out music until the mid-2010s, but he then fell on hard times. Ill health and periods of homelessness came to mark this period.
Black Rob died in 2021, aged only 52. His end was a tragic one, his rap and storytelling legacy obscured to most. He was never a huge star, but his talent was a unique one—and it had been inspired, above all, by Slick Rick.