With Mack Daddy swagger and dextrous flow, Big Daddy Kane made the ladies swoon and the guys jealous. His ladies-man persona inspired an ill-fated 1991 Playgirl spread, resulting in homophobic backlash that basically killed his career. But he’s still doing his thing, and Kane reflects on hip-hop’s golden age and a very scary female fan.
The craziest thing that ever happened to me with a female fan was in Detroit in the late eighties. She was just staring at me the whole show and made her way backstage. It was like she wasn’t even blinking, with this crazy, serious look. We started talking, and I invited her back to the hotel. We’re in the room, and I told her that I was gonna take a shower real quick. When I was done, I opened the shower door, and she was just standing right in front of the door. It was steamy in there, so I didn’t see her and hadn’t heard her come in. She had that same crazy look. Then she said, without blinking, “I just want to wash your back.”
I’m standing there, dripping wet, and said, “Excuse me?” She said it again, “I just want to wash your back. That’s all I want to do.” I said, “You know I just took a shower, right?” She didn’t say anything and stared back. I said, “I’m actually good.” She took this long pause and said, “It doesn’t matter. I just want to wash your back.” Now, I’m scared. I put on a towel and started looking around the bathroom to make sure I hadn’t left any hair in my comb and checked my pockets to make sure she hadn’t taken anything for some voodoo shit. She said it again, “Can you please let me wash your back?” I said, “Can you just hold on one minute, please?” I went to my security dude’s room and said, “Yo, come get this crazy-ass girl out the room, please!”
In my mind, I wanted to be a super-lyrical, serious rapper starting out. I wanted to amaze people, like the way I would do on street corners in regular rap battles. I thought that would come across well on the stage. When you’re battling on the corner, the people in that small circle can hear every word you’re saying. On the stage, it’s coming through loudspeakers with 500 people in the room. I started out doing club and house parties with Biz Markie, as neither one of us had a record deal at the time. Biz wanted me to do funny rhymes on stage. He wanted funny stuff about girls, and I had those, but it wasn’t the type of rap that I wanted to be recognized for, as that was his thing. One time, we were opening up for Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick, and I refused to do the funny rhymes. Slick Rick had just put out “La Di Da Di” which was funny rhymes about girls.
Once Biz started beat-boxing, I went into the super-lyrical, fast-flow, Big Daddy Kane stuff. I was just spitting, and that’s when I realized that Biz knew what the hell he was talking about. I watched people in the crowd turning and walking away. We were an inch away from getting booed and, from that day on, I learned that all that serious stuff is cool, but there’s gonna be people in the crowd who can’t get every word. You need to stick to what’s simple, what works, and can captivate the crowd in that moment. I learned a lot that night about being a performer, and it stayed with me. I learned the hard way.
Me and Biz were doing shows for a production company called Mike and Dave, and we were doing shows around Long Island, the Bronx, and Harlem. We were taking the train to get to the shows, and we didn’t have any money. We were always hopping the turnstiles, or we would walk from car to car, hoping the conductor wouldn’t catch us because we couldn’t afford tickets to where we needed to go. Sometimes there’d be a stage, sometimes we’d be on the floor. One time, we performed on top of lunch tables. Rob Base was there, as he didn’t have a record deal either. We came home with stripper money that night—only one-dollar bills—because it was only kids at the show. They were paying us fifty dollars to perform with their lunch money. Imagine two dudes on the back of the A or F train with big knots of dollar bills in their pocket. It looked like a fat wad, but it was pretty embarrassing.
That was the crack era, in 1984. There were definitely drug dealers in the crowd, but it was a party. People weren’t just smoking crack on the floor. It was cool, and even the cats that were hustling came to party. I’d see them on the floor doing the wop, the running man, and even the cabbage patch. People left their beefs outside unless they didn’t like the record playing. There would be thugs, gangsters, drug dealers dancing their asses off, enjoying themselves. But if you played “Brooklyn’s in The House,” by Cut Master D.C., or “Top Billin” by Audio Two, I don’t know why, but it just triggered something in cat’s minds. They’d hear that beat, and it was suddenly like, “I gotta rob everyone.” I’m serious—these were the two chain-snatching songs. Those songs came on, and dudes would lose their damn minds. They would snatch your gold chains, your girlfriend’s earrings, and it made those dudes in the crowd violent.
If it was an entourage of people, they would wild out, snatch somebody’s stuff, and pass it off to one of their crew. He’d pass it to someone else, and that person would stash it until they were ready to leave, in case security was searching people. If it was only one or two people, they’d punch you in the face, snatch your shit, and run straight for the door. There wasn’t jealousy on the scene, but we were all competitive. We’d be doing a show with LL Cool J, and we got to rock hard. L would have explosions and fire lighting up on stage, and we didn’t have all that production. We had to take it to the next level energy-wise.
We all used to rock a club called Latin Quarters, and the wildest night I remember is when they tried to rob Jam Master Jay. It had to have been about at least ten of these cats going at Jay and the Beastie Boys’ guy, DJ Hurricane. Jay had the gigantic, big rope chain with the Adidas on it, and they were trying to get it. Jay was just there hanging out, and I swear, he looked just like Jim Brown when Jim was on the Cleveland Browns. Remember how you’d see Jim running, and there’d be six people on his back? That’s how Jay looked, fighting off all these people that were jumping on him from different angles. I saw glasses smashing, chairs flying, and the music stopped. All this commotion was going on, and they cleared the whole floor out.
I gotta give props to Jay because at the end of all this, when the smoke cleared, he still had his shit on his neck. Jay was stocky but short. But, they didn’t get him. He fought off ten Brooklyn cats that night, going hard on him. They never got him, and you gotta respect that.