Party people in the place to be, KRS-One attack
You got dropped off MCA cause the rhymes you wrote was wack
So you think that hip-hop had its start out in Queensbridge
If you pop that junk up in the Bronx you might not live
from Boogie Down Productions – South Bronx Lyrics on Rap Genius
The attack-ee here is the Juice Crew’s MC Shan. Shan released the song “The Bridge” in late 1985 (this song was released the following year). BDP mistakenly thought that Shan was claiming the Queensbridge projects in Queens as hip-hop’s birthplace on that tune, though Shan has always claimed that he only meant that Queens was his own birthplace, not that of the genre
Regardless, Bronx native KRS took the lines as an insult and also saw an opportunity to get even with Shan’s fellow Juice Crew member Mr. Magic, who had rejected some of BDP’s earlier recordings
Right from the beginning, KRS is vicious, referencing Shan’s getting dropped from his record label after releasing one under-performing single. For the record, here’s Shan’s take on the MCA situation from a a 2013 interview:
…they didn’t know what hip-hop was about at MCA. They didn’t know how to market it, so that relationship kinda soured between me and MCA, so we just started going independent.
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