Requiem For A Rapper

Jimmy Spicer may have been the most influential rapper you never heard of. He was to early rap what Robert Johnson was to the Blues. His three recordings ‘The Adventures of Super Rhymes Rap,’ ‘Dollar Bill Y’all,’ and ‘The Bubble Bunch’ never went gold or platinum, but they are seared into the music and styles of Snoop, Warren G, the Wu Tang Clan, Busta Rhymes, Coolio and MC Lyte. He passed away last week at 61 years old from brain and lung cancer.

I first heard his music in 1980. I was walking up Colden Avenue to Kissena Boulevard, in Flushing, Queens when I heard a voice echoing off of the surrounding red brick buildings like a ping pong ball. “Look up in the sky,” the voice commanded, “it’s a bird, it’s a plane…No, I’m Supe, Supe, Supa Rhymes.” Then a conga break mixed with the chest pumping bassline from ‘Bounce, Rock, Skate and Roll’ by Vaughn Mason and Crew came in.

I didn’t know who he was but I could tell he had a knack for theatricality and an ear for what was hot in the street. And one of the hottest things on the street at that time was the five second drum break from Captain Sky’s “Super Sporm.” Every black kid in the Five Boroughs – who was up on it, wanted to be a “death” deejay like Flash or Starsky and cut the phrase ‘Super Sporm’ to pieces.

Rap records were a new thing in 1980, when a new single came out it was the talk of the street like the hottest drug on the market. Any aspiring emcee back then memorized this new joint “Super Rhymes Rap” like it was a sacred scripture. You prayed to it, you lit incense and burned sage while it played trying to absorb its essence. I had to have it. There I stood in Jimmy’s Music on Main Street (this was long before the massage parlors) looking up at the black cover and black label with silver graffiti writing. 

The cost of a twelve-inch single in 1980 was $3.69 ($4.15 with tax) I was thirty-five cents short that day. I had spent forty cents on the latest X Men comic book. Had to have that too. I didn’t get “Super Rhymes” that time and it would be a couple of years before I would come across it again. By then I practically knew the song backwards and forward. When I met Jimmy thirty years later he was amazed at how well I knew the record. “I don’t know,” he would say when I would ask him a question about his discography, “you probably know better than I do.” In some cases I did.

Jimmy proudly told me how Dazz Records had no logo or anything when he signed with them. Grabbing a pencil he sat down and in one sitting drew the graffiti style lettering on a piece of paper.

“Super Rhymes” was a departure from anything back then. It was one singular smooth, at times animated voice, telling long stories over a hardcore version of Vaughn Mason’s “Bounce, Rock, Skate and Roll.” But unlike other rap storytellers he changed his voice when assuming a character like Dracula or Cowway Hossell.

“The guy you see on KBC while Joe Frazier box Muhammad Ali.” It was funny, it was funky and it was def.

For much of its formative years Hip hop was a subculture. Its traditions were born and bred in the streets and were nurtured in isolation. No one had pop culture aspirations back then. You were either a neighborhood hero or if you played in all Five Boroughs you were called a legend. Only a handful of acts became stars in the early days like the Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and Kurtis Blow. Everyone else – even though they had hot records, they were the underground. Jimmy figured prominently amongst that bunch.

As legendary as his recordings were on the hip hop scene, by the time he was twenty-six years old, he was fading into obscurity. Maybe he felt like he couldn’t compete with the newer acts like RUN-DMC, Whodini and The Fat Boys. When I asked him why he stopped recording in the mid-80’s, he told me that he was married with a family and he wanted to be a stay at home dad.  That answer never sat well with me. There had to be something more to it. Turns out he did do some recording from time to time and he worked in the offices at Russell Simmons RUSH Artist Management. But it’s something that James Brown once said that seems to apply here. Brown said the longer an artist stays away from performing the more you start to doubt yourself. As a result Jimmy became hip hop’s version of Bobby Fisher.

I located him in 2008 after years of searching for him. At first he wouldn’t consent to an interview. And then he finally did in 2010. I found him to be just like his records: funny, animated and insightful. We talked and went clubbing in Brooklyn until the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps one day I’ll recount my story of hanging out with Jimmy.

I hadn’t spoken with him in months when a picture showed up in my twitter feed for a GoFundMe page, which said “I Need Help Fighting Cancer.” The man in the photo looked familiar to me, it was Jimmy. According to the ad he was suffering from advanced brain and lung cancer. I didn’t believe it.

I was shocked. Jimmy took care of himself. He was an avid roller skater, he danced, jogged and didn’t eat pork. How in the hell someone like him gets cancer is beyond me. I immediately called him to see what was going on. He said he was walking down the street one day and his leg started dragging. He didn’t know what was going on. It went on for a couple of days before he went to the doctor. After running some tests they wanted to do an MRI. It came back with a grave diagnosis: stage four brain and lung cancer.

“I wanna live!” he told me on the phone as he rattled off all of the lifestyle changes he was making. He was a man determined to fight. It made me think back to when I first met in him in 2010. I asked him how he was able to do all of the many activities he did. “Man,” he said to me with a touch of incredulity in his voice, “did you hear me when I said, ‘I wanna be a hundred before I’m through?’ I meant that,” he said with his eyes burning with sincerity.

I wanted to see him do it.

On August 29^th my phone rang back to back to back. I didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the line. It was Jimmy. “Hey, I’m just calling to say thank you brother.”

For hip hop fans my age Jimmy didn’t have to thank us for anything. We have to thank him. His voice and his music fired our imaginations. “Super Rhymes Rap” was an integral part of us learning how to rap. He had a funky almost Dr. Seuss like impact on many of us.

“Of course brother,” I told him before I asked what was going on.

He hesitated a moment before saying, “Well, it looks like my battle with cancer is coming to an end… they’re saying any day now.”

Tears filled my eyes. There isn’t much you can say when someone tells you that their time is short. I thanked him for his influence on me as a young teenage aspiring emcee for whom ‘Super Rhymes’ and ‘Dollar Bill’ were like a flashlight on a roadmap down a long dark windy road in the middle of the wilderness in unknown terrain.

“Jimmy, I was really hoping you were gonna beat this thing and make it to 100.”

He slightly chuckled and said he wished he could too.  

I thanked him for sharing his story with me. He thanked me for telling his story. “Listen,” he said to me, “I want you to tell everyone that I appreciate all the love that has been shown to me over the years, and I thank God for giving me a talent I could share with the world.”

Sadly Jimmy lost his battle with cancer on September 27^th 2019 he was 61 years old. May God be pleased with him.