He was born of Jamaican heritage as his father and mother were both Jamaican citizens and credited his domineering father for forcing him into boxing.
Coming was released through the Dame Dash Music Group.A post shared by HolyGrailBoxing in East Dulwich, London but raised in Queens, Micahel Bentt enjoyed a victorious amateur boxing career before turning pro in the late 1980s. Jay became CEO and president of Def Jam Recordings and Island Def Jam Music Group and brought a majority portion of Roc-A-Fella with him, causing a fissure in State Property, too - everyone but Sigel stayed with the Roc.
“I had legal issues, and we fell apart,” says Sigel.Īround this same time, Jay-Z and Dame Dash split up Roc-A-Fella. What changed, however, by 2004, was Sigel’s yearlong incarceration after being convicted on a 2002 federal weapons charges. Philadelphia didn’t have anything underground, from the street … we became that group … individually and together.” “We were different from what had come from Philly and gone into the mainstream. “It was surreal, and yet it felt natural,” says Sigel. They made another film together, State Property 2 (eventually retitled Blood on the Streets), in 2005, and launched their own clothing line. 2 followed, featuring the single “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” by the Young Gunz.
Their first collaboration was the movie soundtrack, an eponymous album that featured the hit “Roc the Mic” by Sigel and Freeway. “Man, I was 15, so you can imagine how I felt, especially since I got to cut class to be in a movie,” Young Chris says with a laugh. “We just took our name from there - it fit - and we were united by that film,” says Freeway. “Jay gave us the opportunity to star in the movie and do the soundtrack,” says Sigel. It was a movie script that truly united the friendly but disparate Philly rappers, a story from Abdul Malik Abbott and Ernest Anderson called Get Down or Lay Down that was eventually changed to State Property once Dame Dash and Jay-Z got involved in its creation and brought their new Philly signees to to the film. “That’s what we saw,” says West Philly native Omillio Sparks. All of that music, individually and together, had to do with what the rappers experienced - drugs, violence, poverty, love - during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The better our relationship, the better the music,” says Young Chris. “I was underage at that time, so I was happy just to follow in their footsteps … Cool to play point guard. There was genuine energy there among us.” We just fell into who we were to the group,” says Freeway. “It was not as if anyone of us had assigned roles. Always.”Īfter Sigel mentions how all members had to be in the studio for a State Property track (“no one staggering in separate or late”) each expresses the “stronger together" ideal. We had so many guys, friends, who were recording tracks and had individual deals there.
Then I called Free and asked him to come with me. “Omillio came up next, and Roc-A-Fella was wheeling, dealing. “I was the first one signed there … but other locals were coming up, like Young Chris and Neef, who were like 15, 16 years old,” says Sigel, the streetwise, observational MC whose debut album, The Truth, dropped in 2000. “Jay-Z took a real liking to us, to Philly,” says West Philly’s Neef Buck, who along with Young Chris formed Young Gunz. That starts with South Philly’s Sigel signing with Roc-A-Fella Records in 1999, a label then connected to Def Jam and founded by Jay-Z, Damon “Dame” Dash, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke in 1995. You have to go backward, to the history of State Property, before you race ahead. It’s their first show in Philadelphia since 2005, and the area has had only a one-off gig - in 2011 in Atlantic City - after that. The group’s tour brings them to the Fillmore on Sunday, Dec. “We’re in each other’s business, or on the phone with each other every day,” said Sigel. Getting Philadelphia rappers Beanie Sigel, Freeway, Peedi Peedi, Omillio Sparks, Young Chris, and Neef Buck together for a reunion of the 2002-05-era hit-making supergroup State Property was easy.