Outside the Lines With Rap Genius
Big Daddy Kane Excerpt #4 - Production Disputes
SameOldShawn: You've kind of hinted at that before, that maybe you did a little more production work on your early stuff than is commonly thought

BDK: Yeah. It's the type of thing where at that time I was young, so I didn't know. I was just going by what I was told. "Raw," "Ain't No Half Steppin'" -- pretty much everything off the first album except for "Set It Off." "Set It Off" was actually done by Mark 45 King, and Marley did "I'll Take You There"

But other than that, pretty much all that stuff is me

SOS: Really?

BDK: Yeah. "Half Steppin'," "Long Live the Kane," "Raw," all that stuff is me. I mean, "Just Rhymin' With Biz," we didn't even really do that at Marley's house. I did that at my man Shemshawn house in L.G., Lafayette Gardens, and just brought it to Marley's house

SOS: And then somehow the credits ended up saying something a little different

BDK: Yeah. See, what I was told was, "We got the deal with Warner Brothers because they look at Mr. Magic as the air personality that's gonna play any of our songs because he's on the radio, and they look at Marley as the super-producer. If they thought that Marley wasn't the super-producer, we all lose the deal, and none of us would have no label. So it needs to say, 'Produced by Marley Marl.' I mean, don't worry, you gonna get your money." And my dumb ass, like 18, 19 years old, I believed that -- oh, okay