Once upon a time during my college days, in the crisp late fall of 1999, I found myself with my first gig as a legal adult working on the radio. It was the awesome sauce of life being a personality, surrounded by the greatest music ever and being paid for it. Though WEIU-FM 88.9 was in the middle of nowhere Illinois, broadcasting to no more than two counties but it was the best source of good music south of Chambama. Joe Heumann, our radio director, was cool enough to let Saturday nights be hip-hop and rap in a six hour block until we signed out for the late night. Being a radio jock, I would sit in on all the shows I loved, having full access as a radio personality, so I would come and slide by the hip-hop show; one of the members of Phi Beta Sigma hosted the show, which was cool because we could leave and hear his show at every Black frat party on campus.
We got record shipments almost every week. Jazz, blues, soul, rock, indie, you name it we got it from the record labels trying to get promo to college kids. During one of these shipments we got a lot of hip-hop, enough to be buried in for a few weeks. The next hip-hop show is when I stumbled into the Kollage of Bahamadia, and on vinyl to boot. Granted, I discovered this gem of an album three years after its release, but better late than never. From the giddy up I had no idea who this statuesque chick was, sporting a modern shape Afro in a shaft leather coat, looking off to the side like she was daring somebody to bring her some bad news. The cover alone had my curiosity to want to hear what this chick was bringing, since I didn’t know if Bahamadia was a singer, poet, rapper, or what.
True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit) was debuted shortly after on the hip-hop show. I was hooked.
Bahamadia’s debut album was correctly named. Kollage is a fifteen track ensemble of wordplay, telling stories from small little corners of Philadelphia. This album was an entire new world for me, since I definitely didn’t know anything about Gang Starr (which I had just discovered Guru as a solo artist with his acclaimed Jazzmatazz Volume Three: Streetsoul and didn’t even know he was in a group) nor did I know much of anything about Philly hip-hop outside of The Roots (who I had just discovered at the time with Things Fall Apart). Masterfully produced by Gang Starr and mentored by Guru, Bahamadia combines slick jazz fusion type beats to smooth eloquent wordplay that solidifies her place as once of the nice nastiest lyricists ever in the game.
There are not many albums that stick in my mind as to my reaction listening to it for the first time, but listening to Kollage for the first time is like seeing an Ernie Barnes painting in person for the first time – it is an experience that can only be told in nonverbal excitement and a lot of positive hand gestures you would give if your favorite home team won the championship game.
The most beautiful thing about Kollage is that Bahamadia delivers each and every song with a even tempo flow that is action packed with enough vocabulary that could tongue twist Bone Thugs N Harmony or Twista in the cypher, with enough tea spilling for the gossip folks and enough hard core facts to satisfy the militants. Between running fire on the dangers of going out like Adina Howard or her selectivity finding cats that give her chills in her magnetic fields to calling out whack MCs with her flow that puts the real ones at ease like methenamines, Kollage is that older sister or young auntie pulling your coat to the ways of the world on that social tip without a filter. Bahamadia’s influences are evident as her delivery is definitely old school Big Daddy Kane style on steroids, but the hardcore content backed by smooth jazz licks made popular by mentor Guru (most notably in the Gang Starr song My Advice 2 You) comes shining through at a master level like Bahamadia is a forty year vet in the game.
Kollage highlights the hits True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit) and Uknowhowwedu, but cuts like Spontaneity, 3 The Hard Way, Wordplay, and Innovation are the crown jewels in the cap of the album. This isn’t a concept album with a gimmick; this is an old school hip-hop album where every song can stand alone, but brings a good collection of consistent cuts that keep you engaged and focused on the smooth rhythm to the sample rhyme. I cannot believe that, for the most part, the album lays grossly overlooked and underrated since its debut, more of a collector item find than a celebrated piece of music and one of Gang Starr’s best productions.
Easily dismissed as bohemian or intelligent hip-hop (which ain’t a bad thing and sorely missed) I would argue that Bahamadia was ahead of her time with Kollage; this is an album that would have done very well in the resurgence days of hip-hop via Lupe Fiasco and not in its own time. Commercial audiences could not be distracted with good music to take a break from the violence and viciousness the East Coast West Coast rap battles permeated into the airwaves. As a female rapper post 1996 sex was part and parcel of the deal, and Bahamadia, while sensuous and very self-aware and self-empowering in her feminine wahs, did not nor should not have had to desperately sell sex on parade like Lil Kim or Foxy Brown did with their debut albums.
I don’t know what the hell went down that Gang Starr and Bahamadia parted ways after this album on the production tip, because it was a loss for both camps like Kool losing the Gang. I also don’t know why Chrysalis Records dropped her either, but if Arrested Development is any indication I think I have a clue – she didn’t sell out and produce enough commerciality to be popular on their imprint. Of course that is purely speculation based on things that have happened to other groups on their imprint when it came to sales, but it is blatantly obvious that no hardcore media machine got behind Kollage and put it on people’s radio radar at the very least. The two music videos produced for the album, 3 The Hard Way and True Honey Buns (Dat Freak Shit) were aired with the rate of a unicorn sighting.
Do yourself a favor and listen to the album. It has earned its place as a classic.
