Smoothe Da Hustler

Brooklyn rapper Smoothe first drew notice the way countless other aspiring MCs did, by circulating tracks on underground mix tapes across the New York metropolitan region. Once his name had begun circulating and a local buzz had formed, he made his decisive move in 1995 with the release of “Broken Language,” a display of thug-life phrasing whose abrupt delivery helped shape an emerging approach to MCing. The cut appeared as the B-side to his debut single “Hustlin’” on Profile Records; while the A-side offered competent but unexceptional hip-hop, the flip side quickly became Smoothe’s signature recording. Its free-verse structure, built from short, jagged phrases and unresolved rhymes, stood out sharply when paired with younger brother Trigga Tha Gambler, whose presence heightened the track’s tension. The resulting barrage of syllables evoked automatic gunfire committed to wax.

Nearly a year after the single’s impact, Smoothe chose the title of a classic Sergio Leone gangster picture for his first full-length project, Once Upon a Time in America. Although the album contained solid material overall, nothing else approached the inventive spark of “Broken Language.” The decision to sample Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddie’s Dead” for “Hustler’s Theme,” for instance, felt especially derivative. Together the siblings brought a confident execution to East Coast crime-themed rap, yet Smoothe’s verbal agility and considerable skill ultimately failed to shield him from the mid-’90s wave of one-hit-wonder artists that swept through hip-hop.