Artist of the Week: KRS-One

Our gaze this week falls upon the eyes of a legendary figure in the world of hip-hop, the one and only KRS-One. The New York rapper is part of the genre’s vaunted ‘golden age’ period, which covers the music from the late eighties to early nineties, and is held by many as the finest ever to pick up a microphone and rhyme. Which is quite the accolade considering the impact the genre has had since it exploded forty years ago.

KRS, or Kris Parker as the IRS know him, first came to prominence as the rhyming half of Boogie Down Productions alongside DJ Scott La Rock. They would ignite infamy in hip-hop with a series of diss records which took offence at the Juice Crew, from the Queensbridge borough of New York, recording ‘The Symphony’. Their dispute was that they held it up as a claim of hip-hop starting there instead of where BDP were from, and retaliated with a title bigging up their own point of origin (and hip-hop’s factual birthplace), ‘South Bronx’.

It’s doubtful as to whether the Juice Crew did mean it; the protagonists have repeatedly denied the accusations and KRS even claimed at a later date the retaliation was instead down to a dismissive comment of a previous record from the duo by the Juice Crew’s DJ Mr Magic. One thing that isn’t for dispute though is the importance of it in hip-hop, with many citing it as the ultimate battle in a genre based upon them.

And the winner isn’t open to debate either; KRS doing so resoundingly. His ability to pretty much take on an entire borough and win set off a trajectory which would see him at the pinnacle, the death of La Rock sadly contributing to a focus on more politically charged music which is held up as some of the finest ever created.

At a point when hip-hop was crammed full of withering attacks on the political system, be them via the West Coast histrionics of Ice Cube, Public Enemy’s barrages of noise or the more subtle nuances of ‘daisy age’ groups De La Soul and a Tribe called Quest, KRS-One stood as the finest of them all. The success continued well into the nineties, with perhaps his most famous record, ‘Sound of da Police’, brilliantly combining the aggressive capabilities of hip-hop with a vehement social critique.

And now he’s heading over to the UK to bring his peerless rhyming ability and astonishing stage presence here for a series of shows. We’ve got tickets on sale for dates in Bristol, Leeds, and Manchester, the latter featuring KRS going toe to toe with another legendary figure in hip-hop, Immortal technique. We’ll leave you with our personal favourite KRS jam, which showcases his live energy as well.

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