Lyricist Lounge: An Oral History

45 Orchard Street is a seven-story structure on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. These days the surrounding area is a gentrification hub, peppered with galleries, boutiques and luxury apartments. But back in 1991 a small studio space in the building housed the first night of what would become a New York City hip hop institution – the Lyricist Lounge.

Founded by Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall, two teenagers who at the time were hitting the club scene as hip hop dancers, the event became an MC incubator: Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Saul Williams would all graduate from its ranks, while future phenomenons like The Notorious BIG and Eminem would also grace its stage. This is the story of hip hop’s most revered open mic movement.

The Genesis

The Lyricist Lounge would quickly become known as a stage for MCs to showcase their fiercest flows and most creative wordplay – but the night originally emerged against the backdrop of New York City’s upbeat club scene.

Anthony Marshall

I met Danny in 1991. We were in high school and going to clubs like Heartthrobs and then Studio 54.

Danny Castro

We were only like 15, going out to nightclubs in New York with fake IDs – this was before Giuliani came into office, so it was Mayor Dinkins and New York nightlife was totally different. It was all about fashion and dancing. I remember that’s when I started getting into Ralph Lauren, but before that a lot of heads were into house music and there was this whole new era of b-boys / house heads. It was around the hip-house time.

Anthony Marshall

This is why hip-house was introduced – we were the hip hop kids going to the house clubs and making the crossover.

Danny Castro

You had DJs like Little Louie Vega playing everything – hip hop, house music and freestyle. Then you had clubs like The Tunnel and the Sound Factory that a lot of house heads would go to. The fashion was a fusion of rocking Ralph Lauren and rocking Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica. Then we were also dressed kinda like hippies in a way, like we’d rock polka dot shirts and shoes with big soles on them.

Anthony Marshall

Groups like De La Soul definitely helped. We were open-minded about how we dressed. It was very earthy.

Danny Castro

Ant started rhyming and he was in a group called Figures of Speech with Chauncey Lover, this cat we knew from back in the days. Ant went to high school at Julia Richman and he met some friends over there and they happened to be in a group called Zhiggie. It was a dance crew from Harlem.

Anthony Marshall

We were dancers at the time. But dancers were always behind the MCs, and we were looking at the money we were making and then looking at the money the rappers were making. We were all trying to get in the music videos and find a rapper to dance for and then eventually it was, “Let’s do this shit ourselves and step up front.” This is really how Lyricist Lounge came about.

The Session

The very first Lyricist Lounge event took place during the winter of 1991 in a studio apartment that was being used as a rehearsal space. Back then it was promoted as The Session. Word soon spread about a new night populated by upcoming artists, old school legends, and a sprinkling of industry figures.

Anthony Marshall

We had a mentor who was really the third founder of Lyricist Lounge, this older gentleman called Charles Thompson. He had an organization that was helping young people get into the music business and Danny happened to go to school with his son. He was like, “Look, I have a rehearsal space and I’m not using it. You invite some young people and I’ll invite some industry people and let’s see where this goes.”

Danny Castro

The space was located in this place on the Lower East Side, 45 Orchard Street. It was a small studio apartment and we had to bring everything ourselves, but it did have three microphones, mic stands, a busted drum kit, some bass amps and stuff like that. For the first night we brought in cassette tapes that had beats on them, so we’d throw on the cassette tapes and invite some friends of ours because it was kinda like an evolution, folks that used to dance getting into rhyming. We just knew a few friends who happened to be those kinda guys – they were dancers turning into rappers.

Anthony Marshall

Mos Def went to the same school as me, Big L went to that school, and Danny knew Talib Kweli from around the neighborhood so eventually we started inviting those folks. Somebody was a dancer in a video for Doug E Fresh so he was able to pull Doug E Fresh in, then The Educated Rapper was someone who was known. The first three months, we had a lot of people that were either already legendary or were going to become legendary.

The Educated Rapper

They had a little system in the back and they’d throw on instrumental tracks from up-and-coming producers. Musicians had jam sessions and what we had going on was similar – we were just doing it with lyrics and vocals.

Danny Castro

It was actually like a boys and girls club for rappers. There was really no audience in the beginning. It was folks that came to get on the mic and it was like their therapy – they just wanted to express themselves and they felt good when they got on the mic.

The Lyricist Lounge

As the ’90s progressed, the Lyricist Lounge moved around different venues in New York City, including the classic jazz spot The Village Gate. As the event’s popularity increased, the format shifted from being a straight-up open mic night to a showcase for upcoming talent, complete with headlining hosts.

Danny Castro

We saw the momentum growing and saw it go from like five people to 40 people within a couple of months. It started to attract industry folks coming to see what was going on. So there were times when P Diddy used to come on the low, on the humble, just to check out what talent was there.

Anthony Marshall

It was about ten percent A&Rs in the crowd.

Danny Castro

Jamalski used to come all the time, and folks that were unsigned and then got a record deal like Da Bush Babees, of course Mos Def, Agallah who was known as 8-Off the Assassin then. We even had A&Rs who’d come and get on the mic, like Schott Free at Loud Records who was responsible for signing Mobb Deep and Cella Dwellas.

Anthony Marshall

This was after we moved from the small space to a venue called The Muse. We decided we needed a host ‘cause we can’t just have chaos going down on stage, so that’s when we got Mos Def to host. So our second or third showcase was Mos Def hosting and he introduced this girl and her name was Queen Nefertiti and she was 14. She turned out to be Foxy Brown.

Danny Castro

Her crew was called Rotten Candy at the time.

Anthony Marshall

She was incredible.

Danny Castro

Mos was great as a host. It was during a time when it was hard to get people to get on stage.

Anthony Marshall

Mos always made it feel like it was a family: “Yo, what’s up the Lounge? I love this shit. Come on y’all, get on stage, come closer.”

Danny Castro

He was funny, he used to crack jokes and try to get people on the mic.

Anthony Marshall

The format was after 20 scheduled performances, then there would be a 40 person open mic. It was very long. They would wait until the show is over – it would be just those 40 people left, like, “Okay, it’s my turn, I’m not going home until I get on.” But that was our marketing tool – we were an open mic night, so a big part of the audience were people who wanted to perform.

Danny Castro

That’s when we decided to have celebrity hosts come in. The first person we got was Doug E Fresh. Mobb Deep performed – they were like 16 years-old at the time.

Dru Ha

Smiff-n-Wessun were invited to host a night. Back then, the set up was that they would invite someone who was established – or at least had some buzz about them – to host the night and then have a lot of unsigned and upcoming talent perform.

Tek

For me, hosting was fun ‘cause it was a brand new experience. We was still fresh kids in the game coming out with Black Moon. It was a whole new world to be around your peers and see what was going on and listen to the words of somebody else telling a story and you’re like, “Damn, I wish I’d said that.”

STIC

One of the locations that they had the parties in was called The Wastelands, which is a good name for the environment ‘cause it was a lot of hungry MCs.

Da Cipher

With the Lyricist Lounge becoming a bustling hip hop playground, it’s no surprise that future superstars passed through the event, including The Notorious BIG and Eminem. For aspiring artists, the showcases also offered an opportunity to make connections with their idols and industry players.

Danny Castro

I remember one night when Biggie Smalls hosted with P Diddy and he performed “Party and Bullshit.” That’s when I realized he was gonna be a star. There was something about him that stood out from everyone else and that’s when you know. It was an incredible performance. He staged a pretend fight in the background and he’s like, “A fucking fight broke out…” Then he goes, “Chill, man, chill, can’t we all get along?” And everybody starts jumping. It was incredible.

KA

Biggie murdered it, he bodied the shit! Then at the end Puffy was there and he kinda challenged everybody like, "Anyone wanna battle my man?" We all raised our hands. I remember they picked some dude out of the crowd and he came up on stage to battle Big and Big ate this fool, man. It was disgusting. I was like in hindsight I'm glad they ain't picked me.

Wordsworth

Me and Punchline performed at Tramps and Biz Markie was supposed to host but Q-Tip wound up hosting and that’s how we wound up being on A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement. We did a version of EPMD’s “Strictly Business,” just going back and forth rapping, and then we did another song called “The Cipher.” We was kinda just doing songs that we had demos of at the time, plus a lot of freestyles. And Q-Tip saw us perform and wound up calling the Lounge asking about us.

Danny Castro

I did hear that at one of the shows we did with Q-Tip – I think it was at Tramps – somebody brought Diddy to the show to try and get Diddy to sign Mos at our show. I don’t think we knew about it – it was some backstage shit – ‘cause Q-Tip was working with Mos. We had The Roots as our backup band, Mos was performing with Kweli, and it was this whole secret meeting going on that we didn’t even know about.

STIC

I seen Mos, I seen Common, I seen The Roots – I seen so many at the Lyricist Lounge. But honestly, I feel like Dead Prez had some of our best performances in that time at the Lyricist Lounge. I remember when we were first pulling out dollar bills was at Lyricist Lounge and we’d set the dollar bill on fire. We’d bring apples and oranges when everybody was trying to drink Henny and all types of unhealthy shit, so we’d come and give everybody fruit. We’d have 30 soldiers from the Bronx and Brooklyn with us, all camouflaged down and performing songs from our demo at the time and we’d shut the house down with people like Brand Nubian. We ended up headlining a lot of nights even before we had a record release.

Anthony Marshall

My favorite performance is this one show at the Latin Quarter and it was hosted by Fat Joe and had performances by Big Pun, M.O.P., Eminem came out for one of the first times in New York.

Steele

I remember hosting a Lyricist Lounge and that particular night one of the guest performers was Eminem. Nobody had heard of him – maybe on the super underground circuit – but nobody was really exposed to him. Not only that, but he was a white guy and that particular night it was like all kinds of MCs out. New York at that year was very rough, so for this white kid to come out and basically kill it… We introduced him and it’s like this white kid sucks, like the crowd ain’t boo but they weren’t convinced. All I remember was he definitely won the favor of the crowd. I think that was one of the nights where Dru Ha was like, “You need to get that kid’s number!”

Dru Ha

The crowd were sort of angsty, like it was a serious mood and there were a lot of acts on the bill. This kid called Eminem came out. Back then everyone would perform off a DAT, but his would not start playing. So he’s standing there and it’s like this 8 Mile scene. I don’t want to play the race card, but he was this white kid and the crowd were not booing but there was a rumble, like, “Yo, come on, spit something.” Suddenly the DAT starts working and he destroyed it. There’s Em standing there rapping with his stoic look on his face, like the same classic Em you’ll see to this day, with the same intensity in his face.

Anthony Marshall

There’s always the story about how the intern brought [Interscope’s] Jimmy Iovine this tape and that’s how he heard about Eminem. But what everyone doesn’t know is the intern got the tape from being at our show. It was in LA and apparently while Eminem was performing Busta Rhymes was in the audience losing his mind. The intern kinda saw his reaction and that confirmed it.

Lyricist Lounge, Volume One

Capitalizing on the buzz of the Lyricist Lounge, a compilation spotlighting the night was released in 1998 on Rawkus Records. Mirroring the format and vibe of a showcase event, the 27-track double album included De La Soul and Kool Keith acting as hosts, plus impromptu cipher sessions intended to sound like they were taking place outside the club and in the bathroom.

Danny Castro

The first album came about because at the time we had an office over at the New Yorker Hotel on 34th Street and 8th Avenue and right next door John Forte had a studio. He used to come to the Lyricist Lounge. Even before that we met up with Marc Ecko and he was a big fan of what we were doing and he asked us to executive produce these promotional mixtapes he was giving away with every t-shirt he sold. So we did the mixtapes called Underground Airplay and being that John used to come and was familiar with the mixtapes, he told us about this new label called Rawkus.

Anthony Marshall

One of the owners was Rupert Murdoch’s son. That did it for me. There were so many different record labels back then, and if you were just a regular record label and you didn’t have any money, it was kinda pointless. We weren’t rappers, so it wasn’t like us trying to get a deal – we needed a partner who understood what we had and could complement what we had by giving us support financially to do the things we wanted to do.

Danny Castro

Rawkus trusted us one hundred percent with the creative side. We had total control of who we put on the album and how we were putting the album together.

Anthony Marshall

It is a long album!

Danny Castro

We had so many artists and submissions.

Anthony Marshall

The album mirrored our sensibility when it came to doing showcases. We were used to doing shows with 15 artists and then an open mic. It felt kinda perfect ‘cause it was like one of our shows – it was long and mixed with a lot of talent and you never knew who was coming up. Although to this day we have people ask us, “Yo, how did you guys get Shea Stadium to let you do that?” It wasn’t Shea Stadium – it was the studio with laugh tracks and clap tracks and layers of effects!

Dave

Lyricist Lounge was just about to make that first album and I started to hear about their movements, but I’d never been to any of the nights before the recording session for the album. They reached out to us and asked us to host the project. I think it actually started out by De La doing a track for the project, but we were a bit too busy to write to the music and actually create something, so from that point it became a hosting situation.

88 Keys

I was asked to submit beats, so I just came through and gave them a few joints I thought was my best material at that time. Then I got another call asking for me to come in. This whole time I was living with my parents, I was probably like 18, so I went in to lay some beats down, and much to my surprise De La Soul was right there. I was just like, “Wow!”

Wordsworth

I remember sitting in Firehouse Studios and it being like beyond capacity in there with MCs. I’d say more so than maybe any other moment that I’ve been around other artists, I could say that everyone there was talented. Even if you made a skit at the time, you were excited to have made a skit. It was an honorary thing to be a part of the project, period.

Steele

When they had their deal with Rawkus, they reached back. This is one thing I’ll always respect about those brothers – they reached to the artists and you could tell their love for the culture.

Mr. Metaphor

The concept of the ciphers on the album was created by the Lyricist Lounge themselves. A lot of people don’t know I’m doing the beatbox at the beginning of “Outside the Cipher.” We recorded that all together in the studio – Kweli, Shabaam Sahdeeq, Wiseguy, Lil Sci, Block – and I’m also in the group Word A’ Mouth so we had the “Famous Last Words” track too. The day of the session we also had a cipher that was made right outside of the studio. It was created naturally with me, Wordsworth, AL Skills, Thirstin Howl III, Block McCloud, and some other cats. Wordsworth was like the teacher of the cipher – everyone was rhyming back and forth and raising their hands and he was kinda moderating.

Saul Williams

I recorded “Ohm” for the compilation. At the moment it felt right ‘cause I’d already done quite a few Lyricist Lounge shows and there were cats that were doing what I was doing. And to have the song go into Kool Keith hosting, that was an honor. Kool Keith had been a hero of mine since the late ’80s and he’s really the godfather of that style of throwing around the craziest references.

88 Keys

On the cover for the album, there’s the kid standing there holding the flyer with the hat and that was me. I was asked to pose for that on stage. I want to say it was probably at Tramps. [pauses] I felt like it didn’t look anything like me! It wasn’t dressed anything like me! I think they just needed someone to stand against it for depth perception and scaling. I definitely did not wear those clothes – I was straight Polo down.

Brian Brater

At the end of the day, how many units did it move? It probably got up in the six figure units, 100,000-ish, and it was a double album too. It was a pretty serious collector’s item, like the packaging was out of control, we put a book inside, it was a beautiful double gatefold.

Expansion Team

Following the release of Lyricist Lounge, Volume One, things kicked into overdrive: Tours to promote the project were set up, MTV signed on for two seasons of a rapping comedy sketch show, while a second compilation album titled Lyricist Lounge 2 was being readied for a release with Rawkus in 2000. Then came the classic kicker: More money, more problems.

Anthony Marshall

After the TV show got picked up by MTV, half of us were in LA while the other half were planning the tour. We had so much on our plate and that’s when Rawkus was like, “We need a second album now because the TV show is going to be out and we need to capitalize on that.” So the album was rushed. There is a big difference in sound between the two.

Danny Castro

The funny this is, it always trips me out how people say it was more commercial when you look at the album and the credits – we had J Dilla with Royce. That’s not commercial to me! I could understand why people say it – it was definitely more commercial than the first album – but it’s about evolving and growing and we wanted to get more recognition from a broader audience.

Brian Brater

On “Oh No” we had Nate Dogg in his prime, and Pharoahe Monch and Mos Def just spitting fire and an incredible video. Everyone really got elevated there: Lyricist Lounge, Rawkus, the artists, basically the whole underground movement got a little lift there. People refer to it being more commercial than the intent of the first one, but it depends on your point of view.

Pharoahe Monch

The label was thinking me and Mos should do a joint together. I remember I spoke to Mos on the phone about what beat from Rockwilder I liked. The next time we spoke he spit a 32 bar verse of pure flames to me over the phone. I wrote my verse in a hotel room in LA and recorded it back in New York with Rock in the studio. Rock’s mouth was open the entire time. I nailed it in one take but decided to retake some parts. I remember I learned so much from Nate Dogg about choruses and professionalism. He didn’t bullshit in the studio and his work ethic was impeccable. He demanded his money in cash before recording – that was hilarious to me.

Tek

For “Get Up” the session was cool but, honestly, personally, I didn’t really like that song myself, but Rawkus liked it and my partners liked it so I’m here to work and do what we got to do and I’m gonna make it happen and keep my personal feelings to myself. Although the video was dope – we did that out in LA, that was a fun-ass time.

STIC

For the song “Sharp Shooters” I remember being in the studio with Talib Kweli – he’s smart, funny, and he was just kinda like, “Spit something, give me something raw.” My particular verse was something I had written over ten years before that date. We were talking about weapons and the mind as a weapon and also our spirit being on point and protecting yourself and some of the codes and the jewels. Kweli was like, “Damn, just give it to me. Whatever you spit, it’s a go. Man, I just want you on the song.”

Danny Castro

It’s always hard to satisfy your core fans ‘cause they already have an expectation, so of course they were expecting the same type of feel as the first album – and then they got something different.

Anthony Marshall

And then at the same time they got a television show that looked nothing like what the underground Tramps type of shows looked like. It was this evolution of the brand, but not because it was where we wanted to go, but because this was how it was unfolding. We’d go in the streets and hear, “Yo, that’s fucked up what MTV did with your brand.” No, we actually created that show. “Oh, you created that? Okay.” People didn’t even know. They just thought MTV robbed us for our name.

Jordan Black

The premise of the show was you had two sets of cast members, so the comedians and actors who do the comedy sketches, and then the rappers who did the rap skits. It was like two separate shows being shot together.

Wordsworth

It was a whole bunch of artists living in a house together, so me, Master Fuol, Babee Power, the writing staff and then you had Def Jef come by occasionally because he produced all the beats for the show. We would normally just sit in that house and stay up at night coming up with ideas and trying to formulate stuff that’s clever but easy to digest. You can’t be overly clever because some people won’t catch it, so we wanted to make sure we could relay something that no matter what age or demographic you could recognize the wittiness and the word play but also keep the integrity of hip hop.

Jordan Black

I remember one sketch that I thought was really funny that I later put on my demo reel, and it was me and Tracee Ellis Ross and my character was a pimp and he was being really inappropriate to this sophisticated lady. I also played this hobo at a bus stop harassing people, which was really fun for me to play.

Wordsworth

I remember me and Mos Def on the ledge of a building with Tracee Ellis Ross [in an attempted suicide skit]. A lot of people to this day bring up Saving Private Rhymin’ which was an army skit, and they also bring up the bank heist where we’re rhyming over a Mobb Deep beat and it was actually the first skit we ever wrote for the show. Listening now, the rhymes are still crazy. And the process to get to that point – it was the first time it was ever done. We were trying to formulate how it could be done and we kinda cracked the code when it came to rhyming through those scenes.

Jordan Black

You know, I don’t think the show’s concept really worked which is why I don’t think it’s been done since! I was hoping it would work and I thought it was interesting because I love musicals and I love rap music, but I feel like the mistake was doing both of those concepts in one show. If you’re gonna do a rap sketch show, do a rap sketch show. And there were two different casts, so I feel maybe it confused the audience a little.

Danny Castro

We had all this going on – the second album, the TV show, and the tours – and then the thing to understand is we never went to school for this. We were learning everything as we went along – it was all trial and error. Whenever there were errors, there were major errors; things like managing the tours, because we never did any tour management. We were on the road with the artists – that was like a nightmare.

Anthony Marshall

I remember the first year, instead of getting a tour bus we booked flights for everybody. We didn’t even know what a tour bus was! We went from Philadelphia to New York on like the smallest plane. I remember Kweli and De La turning around and looking at everybody like, “Are we about to do this shit?”

Danny Castro

As we did tours there were certain characters that all of a sudden became divas and all of a sudden we had to deal with their shit and their manager’s shit and all the unrealistic requests. Ant put a lot of that on his shoulders.

Anthony Marshall

I still have post-traumatic stress.

Danny Castro

The whole idea was to have a record label, a studio which we had at the time to develop some artists, and then we wanted to start the film and TV department and the tour department. It was too much going on at the same time. We went from doing open mics in a studio apartment to this multimedia company with big dreams, but the folks we were doing it with wasn’t the right folks and we just created a lot of tension and bad blood. After we parted ways [with them], we needed to take a hiatus. Ant moved to Cali, I stayed in New York, we were dealing with our own personal lives and not really dealing with Lyricist Lounge. We needed a break. [pauses] That’s pretty much what happened.

After The Show

Since taking a hiatus in 2003, Lyricist Lounge events have still popped up from time to time. For diehard fans and the artists who lived and performed through the times, memories of the movement’s heyday remain strong.

Saul Williams

The Lyricist Lounge was the age of the cipher. You’d have the artists on stage but you had a bunch of cats outside in non-stop ciphers. In New York City history, it probably had the feeling of what it had been with the jazz scene in the 1950s. It was a stage full of MCs delivering to an audience full of MCs.

Wordsworth

Nothing compared to the Lyricist Lounge because it always felt more star-studded. You’d see those people you just heard on the radio. You went to other open mics to get your name known in different parts of the city, but Lyricist Lounge was an event you went to ‘cause you knew it was going to be something else.

88 Keys

Nowadays, whether artists are coming up or established, it’s all about branding and some sort of visual gimmick that will set them apart. People are so concerned with building the brand that the music comes last, whereas back then it was only about the music. If you happened to look different, that was just like a byproduct of who a person was. It was always about the music and the skill level of the talent.

STIC

It was an investment in our culture – Danny and Anthony were investing in the qualities of lyricism in our community. It wasn’t like an anti-mainstream vibe, it just was like whoever you are, where your skills at?

Anthony Marshall

There’s our perspective on the Lyricist Lounge and then there’s the perspective of other people who came to the events, and I’m constantly learning through other people what they thought about it. After the early days, a lot of the showcases and the club experiences were stressful, but I learned from Mos Def talking about that time period and he said that as soon as he heard it was a cipher taking place indoors, that was it for him. We created a space to express hip hop and I always appreciated that perspective.

KA

It was hip-hop in the '90s, it was the essence. We were all hoodied-out with baggy jeans and spitting in ciphers. It was dangerous, it was beautiful, it was love, it was hate, it was everything.