Grand Puba

Grand Puba entered the world as Maxwell Dixon and earned his reputation as the thoughtful lead MC of Brand Nubian on the crew’s landmark debut One for All (1990) as well as its warmly received 1998 follow-up Foundation. Raised in New Rochelle, New York, Dixon first reached the marketplace a few years prior as a member of Masters of Ceremony, whose early recordings appeared on M-Low, Strong City, and the bigger 4th & Broadway imprint. After parting ways with Brand Nubian amid internal friction, he stepped out on his own with the 1992 Elektra set Reel to Reel. That major-label debut, issued on the same imprint that had backed Brand Nubian, spotlighted the strong singles “360 Degrees (What Goes Around)” and “Check It Out” featuring Mary J. Blige and climbed to number 28 on the Billboard 200. Never especially prolific, Dixon waited several years before delivering his second Elektra project, 2000 (1995), then surfaced only sporadically on a series of smaller labels. The Brand Nubian reunion helped restore some commercial traction, yet his third solo effort, Understand This (2001), did not surface until three years later. Retroactive, released in 2009 on Babygrande, carried beats from Q-Tip and Large Professor alongside guest appearances by Brand Nubian colleagues Sadat X and Lord Jamar. The follow-up Babygrande album, Black from the Future (2016), contained his own production on “UDK” and the PHD collaboration “It’s Been a While.”