Today in Hip-Hop — November 3: Two Years Without Quincy Jones, the Jazz Giant Who Won Rap’s First Group Grammy

November 3, 2024. Quincy Jones dies at home in Bel Air at 91. Two years later, most obituaries still lead with Sinatra, Thriller and “We Are the World.” Here’s the jewel they skip. The first Grammy ever handed out for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group went to a 57-year-old jazz arranger and his crew: Big Daddy Kane, Ice-T, Kool Moe Dee, Melle Mel and his son Quincy D. III, for the title track of Back on the Block.

Back on the Block

Back on the Block dropped in 1989 and put three generations on one record. Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis are on it. So is Big Daddy Kane, who opens the album trading bars with Q himself on “Prologue (2Q’s Rap).” Then the title track hands the mic to four MCs who span rap’s whole first decade, from Melle Mel of the Furious Five to Kane of the Juice Crew. At the 1991 Grammys the album took seven awards, Album of the Year included. Q wasn’t visiting hip-hop. He was telling the room that rap belonged in the same lineage as bebop.

He kept proving it. In 1990 his company launched The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with Q as executive producer. In September 1993 he co-founded Vibe with David Salzman and Time Inc., and for two decades it was the magazine of record for hip-hop and R&B. The crates remember him too. The Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” is built on his version of “Summer in the City,” and the sample is credited right on the 1993 single. That’s the same record the whole Pharcyde crew still gets asked about.

How Ya Like Me Now, 39 Years Today

One of those four MCs has his own anniversary today. Kool Moe Dee released How Ya Like Me Now on November 3, 1987, on Jive. He cut it at Battery Studios in London with a young Teddy Riley on the boards. The beef receipt is the cover itself. Moe Dee poses on 4th Street in Alphabet City while the front wheel of a Jeep flattens a red Kangol, LL Cool J’s trademark hat. The album went platinum in November 1988. Two years after that cover, Moe Dee was rapping on Quincy’s title track, and in 1991 it won him a Grammy.

Self-Worth

We made a Quincy Jones “My Self-Worth” tee for the heads who know Q’s credits run from arranging for Count Basie to a Grammy shared with Melle Mel. It carries his words, not a logo. If Kane’s verse is the one you rewind, there’s also the Big Daddy Kane It’s a Big Daddy Thing tee. Rest easy, Q.

Also Today in Hip-Hop

• 1998: Juvenile’s 400 Degreez (28 years). Mannie Fresh produced the whole thing, start to finish. It carried “Ha” and “Back That Azz Up” out of the Magnolia Projects and onto every dance floor in America, and it went quadruple platinum for Cash Money.
• 1973: Sticky Fingaz is born (turns 53). Born in Brooklyn and repping Queens, he brought the growl to Onyx. Their 1993 debut Bacdafucup went multi-platinum on the back of “Slam.” That’s mosh-pit rap before anybody called it that.
• 2023: Tupac Shakur Way (3 years). Oakland renamed a stretch of MacArthur Boulevard, near where ‘Pac once lived, in his honor.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team

Jon Jones