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50 Cent Feature for BLAZE (June 2000)

November 9th, 2010 | Feature Style, Things I Wrote | ncb | 1 Comment

Change-N-The-Game

50 Cent goes for broke with his debut, Power of the Dollar. Noah Callahan-Bever counts the change.

“He’s dead,” says rapper 50 Cent, as his finger darts across a creased photo. The wrinkled relic—which an old friend recently found and shoved quite unexpectedly into his hand here on the corner of Guy R. Brewer Boulevard while 50 is giving a tour of his Jamaica, Queens haunts—depicts a semicircle of grown men dressed in tuxedos, with champagne glasses raised in a toast. In the middle of this Godfather-esque image is the beaming face of 50 Cent. He looks to be about 17. But in a weird way, due to his confident smile and relaxed body language, the man-child fits into the scene more than he doesn’t. 50 continues, revealing the desperate fates that those in the photo succumbed to. “Him, too. That nigga in jail. He on the run.” He chuckles, “I don’t even know what happened to that nigga!”

Beanie Sigel Cover Story for XXL (August 2001)

November 7th, 2010 | Feature Style, Things I Wrote | ncb | 4 Comments

My Mind Spray

He’s a true thug armed with 1,000 bars and two itchy trigger fingers. Buckin’ down wack MCs is Beanie Sigel’s daily operation. Don’t get too close or else you might get shot. By Noah Callahan-Bever.

“Alright, everybody! Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves,” instructs Lanky Al, who wears his polo shirt tucked neatly into his Levi’s, which are just a hair too tight to be fashionable. The room fills with groans at his request, but Al’s in charge, and as soon as the order is given a portly, dark-skinned man at the front raises his hand. Clad in a fresh white T, shiny black jeans and white-one-white Air Force Ones, the big man turns to the lanky one without expression and announces, “Sigel, here.”

Nas & Large Professor Cover Story for Mass Appeal (September 2002)

August 30th, 2010 | Q&A, Things I Wrote | ncb | 3 Comments

Back to the grill again…again

For the first time, Nas and Large Professor sit down to discuss their similarities and, more importantly, their differences—and how what once drove them apart has now brought them back together. By Noah Callahan-Bever.

Friends. How many of us have them? Real friends. Not the origami-type that fold under pressure. I’m talking about the kind that’ll stand by you no matter what happens. Whether you’re on top or on the bottom, gassed or humble, riding or dying. Nas—rap’s most profound yet conflicted voice—has a real friend in rappin’ producer Large Professor. Large has watched Nas bloom right under his wing—from teenaged apprentice to MTV superstar. Though the friends took opposite roads in the lat ‘90s—Nas desperately reaching for mass appeal while LP shunned even his underground audience—Large maintains that he’s quietly stood behind God’s son the whole while. And vice versa.

Large Professor Feature for XXL (March 2002)

August 30th, 2010 | Feature Style, Things I Wrote | ncb | 8 Comments

Always On Time

Every rapper talks that stay-true-to-the-hood, I’ll-never-sell-out crap. But only one has truly stuck to this guns. He’s LARGE PROFESSOR. Back with Nas and finally, that’s right, finally ready to drop his solo album. By Noah Callahan-Bever

Ask a dumb question and you’ll usually get a dumb answer. Ask “What’s the deal with large Professor?” and you’ll always get the same answer: “Large…um, he’s an artist.” Ask peers like DJ Premier, or protégés like Nas or industry A&Rs who’ve dealt with the rapper-slash-producer, and you always get the same elusive answer: Artist.

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