The Big Ced Chronicles
Posted by bigced on January 8, 2009
He
mentions it often, but honestly I never really paid it much
attention – that is, until I saw it up close and personal on cable late
one night. Sure, the signs were everywhere – like that time his image
showed up magically alongside some hip hop greats in a D-Nice clipped
gallery, or how he strangely knows every ol’ skool rapper within a 25
mile radius of Manhattan – but who really reads signs?
Of course I’m talking about Big
Ced of The Industry Cosign,
and a former editor for hip hop titles like Blaze
and The Source.
The dude’s been telling me (and anyone within earshot) he’s hip hop
royalty for years, but in NYC every third person screams some title or
another, so it’s hard to know when to believe.
One late night tryst with VH1-Soul yielded something
otherworldly -
a familiar face as Mc Lyte’s man in her classic clip for the single
“Paper Thin.” Upon close inspection it was Ced starring as Lyte’s
trifling lover that she finds hugged up with two other chicks on the
subway somewhere in 80’s NYC. When it clicked that Ced was the
visualization of the tragic mack Lyte’s rapping about, I was stuck.
By the end of the vid, I was
on the phone calling head’s about the clip, browsers all over Brooklyn
were searching
youtube. But it wasn’t until someone pointed me in the direction of a
video I’d seen countless times as a teenager, that the true conversion
occurred – Monie Love’s, “Monie In The Middle.”
Yup, that’s him, all up in
the middle with Monie – the dude with the nerd glasses. It turns out
Ced actually is hip hop, the evidence was
glaring. He was a pivotal part of a musical
iconoclast – the female rapper which doesn’t even exist today.
But what makes Ced’s contribution truly noteworthy is that
he’s
actually America’s first male video ho – and that’s truly gangsta.
