Slick Rick explains the main difference between England and America
As is apparent in the unique lilt of his accent, Slick Rick’s background is more complicated than his East Coast rap stylings might suggest. Rick was born in England and spent much of his childhood there.
Rick spent the early years of his life in Mitcham, an area in South London, before his parents decided to move to America in the latter half of the 1970s. They ended up settling in the Bronx, when Rick was 11 years old.
As he got older, Rick came to embrace the new hip-hop culture that was establishing itself around him on the streets of New York. He became a core part of the culture, in fact, growing into one of the most influential rappers of his generation. But, even so, he never quite lost all of his English ways.
Rick’s English accent never truly left him, even as he adopted many of the mannerisms of his contemporaries on the streets of New York. His sense of humour, as evidenced in his songs, always retained a certain English quality, too.
It makes sense that Rick held onto a certain Englishness, as he was fairly old when he moved to America. Certainly by the age of 11, he had developed strong memories of the country of his birth that never truly left him.
Speaking to Wax Poetics in 2020, Rick mentioned some of the differences between the UK and the US that he found striking when he moved. “What I remember about London,” he said, “is [that] they didn’t play any Black records. Records I grew up with were common stuff like the Beatles, Bill Haley, and stuff like that.”
Rick was quick to insist that he enjoyed those artists as much as anyone, but, all the same, there was a dearth of Black artists available to him in his early childhood. That changed when he moved.
“I love that stuff, don’t get me wrong,” he said of the records that actually were easy to get in England. “But when I came to the Bronx, it was a lot more multicultural. The Black soul of the ’70s was in full effect! Shaft, Bruce Lee, and all that was going on! America, the Bronx specifically, was exciting and a lot busier in comparison.”
Disco was an especially exciting sound for the young Rick to discover in America. “A lot of people forget that disco was a huge part of hip-hop when it first started,” he noted. “Heartbeat by Curtis Mayfield was real popular. Gloria Gaynor and those kinds of records were everywhere. You wouldn’t think I was a disco head, but I was listening to a lot of disco then.”