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From the cover of Girls I Got 'Em Locked (Elektra / DNA, 1988)

Locked and Loaded: Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud Discuss Their Classic 1988 Hip-Hop Debut

Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud’s Girls I Got ‘Em Locked exuded the right amount of urban flair, boyishly sly humour, and club appeal in 1988.

There’s much to lament about the album’s lack of visibility. Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud, respectively, articulated a delivery that was fresh, walking a fine line between machismo and pop-smart – a balance they held admirably in 1988, when they first hit the scene. Judiciously combining a number of well-chosen ingredients, Girls I’ve Got ‘Em Locked is a sharp mix of gritty turntablist funk, hustling and bustling street rhymes, and a touch of bubblegum pop. It exudes the right amount of urban flair, boyishly sly humour and club appeal to satiate any vinyl-pimping junkie’s appetite, despite its 30 plus years of (albeit minimal) circulation.

Produced in turn by Casanova Rud (born Erik Rudnicki), Super Lover Cee (Calente Fredrick) and the late and legendary hip-hop producer Paul C. McKasty, Girls I’ve Got ‘Em Locked covers all the hip-hop prerequisites; boastful narratives, propulsive rhythms, and clever samples. But it also pushes for a little something more that gives it its distinctive quality. Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud generate, between them, a roguish charm that owes much to their underground rearing. Unlike, say, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, who hit pop-market paydirt with their inoffensive, suburban pop-rap, Rud and Cee took their chaffed, rough-hewn grooves and stealthily slid them under pop music’s door with a few well-chosen hooks.

The first half of the album is all bare-bones simplicity: beats, voice and just a few spare snatches of melody. From the screeching brass cuts of the opening track “I’m Back” to the horny rhymes on the gummy groove of “Girls Act Stupid-Aly”, Cee and Rud manage much mileage from the minimal sources of which they pull together their tunes. Most of the rhymes come courtesy of Cee, who radiates a cold, brash confidence, flipping lines coolly over the grinding beats with booming clarity. Rud’s vocal contributions are rather scant on the album, but he remains a complementary element to his other half, a raging spark to the lively explosions that Cee spits. When Rud does get the entire stage, as on “All You MC’s”, his rhymes ribbon over the pumped funk with sucka-shouldering charisma.

Exploring the full concave of influences that hip-hop had to offer at the time, Girls I Got ‘Em Locked employs a host of rhythms and sonic tonalities to round out the album. The descending bass stomps of “Gets No Deeper” momentarily sober the album’s party atmosphere to further reveal the kind of chest-puffing lyricism that the duo is best appreciated for. “Pump it Back” is Brill Building hip-hop pushing along a breathless blast of lyrical bravado, the chugging rhythms circling around the rhymes of sexploit. It closes out Side A of the album on a remarkable note, pointing a sure finger toward the ghettoblasting delights to be found on Side B.

The album’s second half is considerably more beefed up in its production, leaning less on the pop exploits of the first half and more on hip-hop’s boombox designs. The cavernous snare hits of the title-track remain at once locked in its frame of nostalgic posterity and iridescently fresh and timeless. McKasty, whose golden hand has twisted knobs on many classic hip-hop productions, lends that hand on the album’s tightest track “I Gotta Good Thing”; over a satisfyingly chunky groove and bluesy, melodic riffs, Cee flows smoothly and assuredly, at once shaping and establishing his lyrical craft to even higher plateaus.

“Come and Get Some”, a scratching cacophony of DJ cuts, overlaid funk samples and relentlessly driving beats, returns the listener to the graffiti-plastered Bronx warehouses where such jams were born. There’s the regal, self-congratulatory nod of “Super-Casanova”, full of sing-along refrains and turntablist percussion, before the album’s climactic and gratifying sign-off, “Do the James”. Stamping their John Hancock all over hip-hop’s legacy with this number, Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud offer the best of their synergistic unison here. A loping, seductive groove that swings down to bassy depths and back up to hi-hat highs, “Do the James” is a top-rocking paean to the Godfather of Soul; a b-boy callout blaring from the back lots of ’80s Seabury Place. The song’s loop has since become widely recognized in hip-hop history, utilized in countless hip-hop productions as well as pop-rock ones, most notably and recently on J. Cole’s “Wet Dreamz”.

An unfortunate legal wrangling following the untimely death of McKasty caused a delay in the release of new material for the two rappers. Dropped from their parent label Elektra and without management, the duo struggled to find a new home base. A deal with Wild Pitch Records resulted in the thunderously booming follow-up Blow Up the Spot in 1993, a seven-track EP of harder-edged, jazz-inflected hip-hop that not only upped the ante for the pair, but finally allotted more mic-time for Rud to show off his slash-and-burn spit-game. Every bit as juicy, dynamic and swaggering as its predecessor, Blow Up the Spot should have reinstated the duo into the constantly growing hip-hop scene. Instead, with the little attention it received and the aborted promotional attempts, it disappeared from the radar quickly and soon the two rappers turned their interests elsewhere.

More than 30 years on, Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud are still getting name-checked as influential figureheads of hip-hop’s golden years. Members of Digable Planets and Eminem are reportedly fans, as well as Nas, who favourably namedrops them on one of his tracks.

Girls I Got ‘Em Locked is currently and lamentably out-of-print in physical format, only having been recently reissued digitally. Both Cee and Rud continue to write and record separately (though they remain friends), while tending to family responsibilities. Rud can be heard trading rhymes with his young son, also a rapper, who records as Tom Savage, on a number of tracks. Cee has turned his hand to radio-hosting and web design, whilst still writing new material on the side.

Both rappers discuss with PopMatters their early years in hip-hop culture and the success of their watershed debut, Girls I Got ‘Em Locked.

Where did you grow up and what was life like for you then?

Casanova Rud: I was born on August 5th, 1968 in Manhattan in the Lower East Side, by product of multiracial parents (mother of color and father was Polish) at a time when society wasn’t ready for that type of relationship.

I remember at a young age, around seven or eight, listening to my parents playing music in the living room, from jazz, blues, to the Doobie Brothers, which undoubtedly influenced and propelled my passion for music. I can’t say that life was good growing up then, recalling how my parents weren’t getting along, which affected my behavior in a negative way; I lashed out often, rebelling against people, school and my father.

My parents separated and I moved with my grandparents in Jamaica, Queens, which was a culture shock. I was a city kid used to living in an apartment building with fire escapes and people yelling and screaming out the window. [Then I moved] to a neighborhood with houses with backyards, two cars in the driveway, grass and trees. It was like moving to the country.

Church played a part in my upbringing with my grandparents, while my mother was raising my sister in Astoria Queens. I can say each piece played a major part in my development, education and current conscious state of awakening.

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