New Orleans rap legend, Mystikal mentor and one time Rap-A-Lot artist Tim Smooth passed away this morning after a battle with Cancer.

This is sort of devastating. I spoke to Tim Smooth on the phone once and very briefly a couple years ago, in an attempt to orchestrate a New Orleans Local Product conversation between him and Jay Electronica. I don’t think Tim had heard of Jay at the time, but he seemed pretty enthusiastic when I sent him his music. Jay (or whoever was pretending to be his management at that time) inevitably Jay Electronica’d and the interview never happened. But I do think it’s worth noting that, of all the more prominent New Orleans rappers, he chose Tim as his favorite local rapper.

On Youtube there’s a very low budget commercial for Tim’s Invisible Man LP that features testimonies from other New Orleans rappers and hip hop personalities. In it fellow under-heralded New Orleans pioneer Bust Down freaks out over Tim’s ”complicated sentence structures.” I think that played a part in Tim’s appeal, but maybe more than that it was a matter of presence. His biggest hit, 1991’s ”I Don’t Give A Damn About Your Boyfriend” is one of those underground rap records thats influence resonates well beyond its popularity by way of samples and interpolations (think a smaller scale “Shook Ones” or “TROY” in up north parlance). In particular its opening – ”ya’ ole man really don’t mean shit to me” – and fragments thereof became a staple of the Memphis/NO cultural exchange that was going on at the time. That happened because he starts that verse off right. I mean if he never spit another bar after that he’d still be a legend. This is an underrated skill amongst rappers – knowing how to start a rhyme with just enough bombast and the exact word choice to make it stick directly to the brain of listeners. Chuck D knew how to do this, Biggie knew how to do this and so did Tim Smooth. I just wish more people knew Tim Smooth. (via spaceagehustle)