Starting out dating Kool G. Rap, Karrine “Superhead” Steffans quickly became one of rap’s most-popular “video vixens”, appearing in hits by Jay-Z, Mystikal, R. Kelly, and more. See a bunch of them here.

In 2005 her first book Confessions of a Video Vixen got published and since then she has released 4 more books, until 2013. The first three of her books about being a vixen have all made The New York Times Best Seller list.

Rapper Kurtis Blow had a good run in hip-hop until the mid-80’s, being one of the most popular hip-hop artists from that period with memorable hits like “Basketball”, “If I Ruled the World”, “Christmas Rappin'” and the all-time classic “The Breaks”. Even though “Basketball” was a pretty big song, the 2002 remake for the Like Mike soundtrack may have been even more successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_shxzlTRK44

Humpty Hump, also known as Shock G, is the leader of the Bay Area hip-hop group known as Digital Underground. Rapper 2Pac started out as a back-up dancer in the group but quickly found his place as a rapper and went on to have a lot of mainstream success.

Truth Hurts is a female rapper who was signed to Dr. Dre. In 2002 she released the hit “Addictive” featuring the legendary Rakim. The song was produced by DJ Quik and heavily sampled the Indian song “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai” by Lata Mangeshkar. R.A. should be considered lucky, because Truth Hurts' label Aftermath was sued over the sample and because of that the album flopped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfdvpIwEfg

The D.O.C. is a N.W.A affiliate known for his classic No One Can Do It Better album and ghostwriting for N.W.A. members. Five years after the release of that album, The D.O.C. almost died in a car crash, in which he damaged his vocal chords. After surgery D.O.C. had a raspier voice.

KRS-ONE, a founding member of Boogie Down Productions, started the Stop the Violence Movement in 1989. It was a response to fan dying at a show of his, and possibly also the Blocka La Flame, another founding member of BDP, who passed away shortly before that.

The song “Self Destruction” was recorded by a number of East Coast rappers who had success at the time, like BDP, Stetsasonic, Kool Moe Dee, Heavy D and Public Enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmX5TgWsfEQ

Quite ironic, considering the past line, but KRS-ONE and PM Dawn actually had a short-lived feud (if you could even call it that). KRS-One and his crew stormed the stage of a P.M. Dawn show and performed three Boogie Down Productions songs.

This all is because of P.M. Dawn member Prince Be saying “KRS-One wants to be a teacher, but a teacher of what?” in an interview with Details magazine, after the bum-rush KRS responded with “I answered his question. ‘A teacher of what?’ I’m a teacher of respect.”

Rapper Kool Kim from The UMC’s’s comment on the night, where he was also at, here. While you can find Dres from Black Sheep’s comment here or below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qJDCrslllw

The opening line is from the movie Harlem Nights. Eddie Murphy was named Quick, in the film. Quik also uses many other soundbites from the movie throughout the album.

Sonny Bono is a politician who passed away in a skiing accident when he hit a tree, back in 1998. Ras also swiftly plays with skiing metaphors to indicate that “these faggot MCs” were actually having a nice run (be on skis), but that everything was simply going downhill, and that they were going through difficulties (hitting trees).

Parliament-Funkadelic is the amazing collective known as the originators of the P-funk music, which Del sampled a lot on I Wish My Brother George Was Here. Del also referred to the sound on this album as “D-funk”, which of course is a play on P-funk