Nov 11, 20266 min read

Today in Hip Hop: November 11

A farewell from Queens, a late career run from another Queens king, and a Memphis arrival all share this date. November 11 carries weight.

OMYGOTTI

Toronto hip-hop artist | 730K+ Facebook

2016

Tribe Delivers Its Final Album

A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here, Thank You 4 Your Service on November 11, 2016, closing a recording story that had started in Queens in the 1980s. The album arrived eighteen years after The Love Movement and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, a rare chart peak for a group returning after such a long silence.

Phife Dawg died in March 2016, months before release, after recording his parts alongside Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White. Blackout Hip Hop marks ten years since the release today and traces the reunion back to a Tonight Show performance in November 2015. Guests across the record include Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White and Elton John, yet the voice listeners came back for was Phife, present throughout.

My take: A final album that debuted at number one and still sounded like a beginning. Tribe protected the legacy by ending it on their own terms.

2022

Nas Extends The Kings Disease Run

Nas released Kings Disease III on November 11, 2022, his fifteenth studio album and the third chapter of his celebrated run with producer Hit-Boy. The Bounce records that the Grammy nominated album debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200, continuing a late career stretch that many younger artists would trade their whole catalogue to match.

Nas — Photo: All-Pro Reels via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The first Kings Disease had won Nas his first Grammy in 2021, after decades of being called one of the greatest lyricists alive without that particular trophy. By the third volume, the question was no longer whether he still had it. The run had become the standard for how a veteran protects a pen, picks one producer, and works like the ranking still matters.

My take: Three albums deep with one producer and zero coasting. Nas turned longevity into a competition he keeps winning against himself.

2008

T-Pain Brings The Circus To Rap

T-Pain released his third studio album, Thr33 Ringz, on November 11, 2008. Built around a ringmaster concept, the record reached number four on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top R&B and Hip-Hop Albums chart, at the height of a run where his voice and his vocal processing shaped nearly every hit on radio.

The album carried singles including Cant Believe It with Lil Wayne and Chopped N Skrewed with Ludacris. History has been kinder to T-Pain than the era was. The singer who was mocked for Auto-Tune is now routinely credited by younger artists as a writer and melodist first, and the technology argument looks smaller every year beside the songwriting record.

My take: The ringmaster framing was honest. For a few years the whole show really did run through Tallahassee, hooks, harmonies and all.

2022

GloRilla Levels Up From Memphis

GloRilla released her EP Anyways, Lifes Great on November 11, 2022, and it peaked at number eleven on the Billboard 200. The project landed months after F.N.F. (Lets Go) turned a Memphis newcomer into a national conversation, and it carried the follow up pressure that ends many viral runs before they become careers.

Instead of shrinking, she widened the record. Tomorrow 2 brought Cardi B onto a remix that pushed the song further up the charts, and the EP framed GloRilla as an album artist in the making rather than a single with a story attached. November 11, 2022 was a crowded day in rap, with Nas and Yung Bleu also releasing, and her project still cut through.

My take: Viral gets you a meeting. A top fifteen EP in the same year gets you a career. GloRilla did the second part while everyone watched the first.

1974

Static Major Is Born In Louisville

Songwriter and producer Static Major, born Stephen Ellis Garrett Jr., arrived on November 11, 1974 in Louisville, Kentucky. The Bounce credits a pen that served artists including Aaliyah and Nicole Wray, and both The Bounce and KLFD Radio note his posthumous feature on Lil Waynes Lollipop, the 2008 single that topped the Hot 100 and later earned Diamond certification.

Static died in February 2008, weeks before Lollipop became the biggest record in the country. His group Playa had already helped shape the sound of late 1990s R&B, and his writing on Aaliyahs Are You That Somebody remains one of the great behind the boards credits in the culture. November 11 is a birthday the songwriters deserve to hear said out loud.

My take: Some architects never get the cover story. Static Major wrote hits for other peoples legends and then his own voice topped the chart after he was gone.

2014

Big Bank Hank Of Sugarhill Gang Dies

Big Bank Hank, born Henry Jackson, died on November 11, 2014 at age 58. KLFD Radio and The Bounce both mark the date and the same fact pattern. Hank was one of the three voices on Rappers Delight, the 1979 Sugarhill Gang single that carried rap onto mainstream radio for the first time and proved a hip hop record could sell like pop.

Rappers Delight ran over the bassline of Chics Good Times and put three MCs from Englewood, New Jersey in front of an audience that had never heard anything like it. Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee were not the architects of the Bronx block party, but they were the first rap voices millions of people ever heard. That doorway matters, and Hank stood in it.

My take: First heard is its own kind of first. Whatever debates surround the record, Hank helped carry rap from the park to the radio, permanently.