After more than a decade in the game, fire-tongued Brooklyn cult rapper Ill Bill is returning with his most ambitious album to date, The Grimy Awards (due February 26 via his own Uncle Howie). "The album is me paying tribute to things that inspired me throughout my life," Bill says in a Toronto hotel room, shortly before a gig. Fans of '90s hip-hop will see those influences plain as day in the album's boast-worthy lineup of boom-bap legends from the stage (Cormega, OC, Lil Fame of M.O.P., Q-Unique of the Arsonists) and behind the boards (Pete Rock, Large Professor, Muggs, El-P, DJ Premier) alike. But followers of Bill know that before he was chewing up rhymes, he was a teenage metalhead, and first Grimy single "Paul Baloff" is loving tribute to the singer of thrash-metal band Exodus.
In 1985, Bill turned 13, the perfect age to be obsessed with the thrash metal's alpha bands, like Slayer and Metallica. That same year, Exodus released their debut, Bonded by Blood, a sloppy, angry mess of aggression, full of adrenaline-pumping ragers like "A Lesson in Violence" and "Strike of the Beast." At the time, the group was gaining notoriety for their sweaty concerts and intense frontman, Baloff, who would prowl the pit for posers, stripping them of their shirts, and tying them to his wrists as trophies. But it wouldn't last long, as Baloff's bandmates kicked him out in 1986 and his legend diffused over the years as Metallica became Metallica and thrash-metal bands like Anthrax and Megadeth hit critical mass in the late '80s.
Baloff died in 2002 and Ill Bill never saw him in action, but pays homage with this song. "The vibe, lyrically, is the same vibe I had when I was 13, 14, 15, when I was getting into the crazier, heavier thrash-metal stuff like Slayer and Exodus," he says. And the song is appropriately X-rated and full of rhymes that have the speed and trickiness of thrash ("Call me acid-tongue/Hit hard like Black Sabbath drums"). It even ends with a recording of a young Bill calling into a radio show to ask Baloff a question.
Source: SPIN
