Sworn Enemies, was headed in. When we last spoke to the group, they were preparing for the release of their debut album No Really…Don’t Date Black Girls. But as early as this past January, rumors began to circulate that dissension in the group was causing them to miss appearances and cancel tour dates. The cause of this rift was a mystery until an all out dis track ping-pong match broke out between its divided members. Apparent from the lyrics of these tracks was that Timothy McPaid had left the group, and the remaining members, DJ Dow Jones and Killa Josh, branched out on their own, while retaining the Sworn Enemies name. The Sworn Enemies had become just that: sworn enemies.
The first of the dis tracks, “McPlayed (You f***in Suck),” came from Killa Josh, who shared his feelings on McPaid’s then impending departure:
Tiny Tim McPlayed, came back from Frisco all gayed
Don’t be biting the hand that fed ya
Like you biting the dick that led ya
To your new juicy fruitcake lifestyle
Dyke style
I’m gonna bring it to ya trife style
You were nothing but a Number 2
Phife style
Now I’m snatching your dough like a Jew
Kike style
Never the sharpest of the Sworn Enemies, Killa Josh nonetheless was able to poignantly express the resentment the remaining members felt toward McPaid. Not surprisingly, McPaid has a different view of the events leading to the breakup.
“I knew we were going in the wrong direction when Fritz tha Cat gave us props,” says McPaid, finally reached by AOL instant messenger, using the pseudonym ‘c***hunter69.’ “In Vice, he bigged up the holiday 12” we put out called ‘I’m Dreaming of a Racially Pure Christmas.’ I think he also called one of Buck 65’s records ‘mad hot.’ So, you know.”
The rest of the hip-hop nation did not receive the Sworn Enemies’ holiday release as warmly as the discerning Cat. Lost on them was the subtext of the song: the commentary on race and cla** structure in America. This was probably due to the fact that the song contained no such subtext. It was simply some ign’ant a** honkey shit.
“We got a little tired of some of these black rappers we’d never heard of getting our money,” McPaid explains, digging the hole deeper. “Like, um, Defari, or MURS, and motherf***ers like that. It’s like, I don’t see them on BET or anything. Or Direct Effect, none of that shit. That lazy-eyed La La bitch isn’t playing their shit. But look all up on Sandbox or some of these other underground hip-hop retail internet stores, and they’re everywhere! That’s our target market! White people. They’re on our turf. They’re taking our money, so we made the track about that. We were looking for that white privilege to take effect, but you got these guys stealing our opportunity. Our culture too, really.”
Speaking of white people, Sworn Enemies was scheduled to perform at the upcoming Scribble Jam event in August. The remaining members of the group have indicated that they will fulfill the engagement. They can hardly be blamed, as Scribble Jam is the perfect forum to establish themselves as major players in Caucasian rap, and would undoubtedly result in skyrocketing internet record sales/file downloads for the Sworn Enemies album.
No Really…Don’t Date Black Girls, while available on Wi-Fi, was never released on a medium that people actually used. Despite that, the album was a hot topic of discussion among hip-hop commentators and critics, even receiving a review in the Village Voice by girly first-named rock and roller with a hip-hop twist Sasha Frere-Jones. But for those interested in the actual music of Sworn Enemies, the review proved to be fruitless. While it began with a brief discussion of the group, the remaining 1,000 words consisted of musings on underground vs. overground hip-hop; the greatness of Chad Hugo; and the squandered opportunity for the Beastie Boys to stop the war in Iraq.
With all the press and hype surrounding the group during this period, the Sworn Enemies made like Fred and Young City from MTV’s Making the Band 2 and headed straight to the jewry shop to spend money they expected to have.
“We knew a guy from back in our professional days, Ya**ar Cublerman,” McPaid recalls. “Now, to the majority of those who come to his offices he is known as one of the premier financial advisors in the northeast. But to rappers he’s something different. Yes, at the first sign of a ridiculously oversized baseball cap or throwback jersey, or any of that other shit that makes grown men look like children, he opens up a false wall in the back, revealing a vast array of the finest, most precious rocks with names in the world. The rappers don’t know anything about any Ya**ar Cublerman. Nah, to these guys he’s known as Yacub the Jeweler.”
It was at Yacub the Jeweler’s where the Swornies, despite being all too aware of the trappings of fiscal irresponsibility, proceeded to blow everything they had and a whole lot they didn’t have on the shiniest of pretty things. Killa Josh purchased a Jesus piece, molded to look like John Caviezel. DJ DJ bought himself and his girl matching diamond bracelets, a request that even disgusted Yacub. Even McPaid was not above this vanity driven spending. He purchased platinum fingernail fronts, diamond encrusted shoelaces, and a gold bar (“Just to carry around and shit, on some Goldfinger shit.”). They walked into Yacub’s store on the verge of financial and artistic success; they left insolvent.
The unpromising financial status of Sworn Enemies is just one of the topics McPaid examines on his forthcoming mixtape release Lone Wolf McPaid. It is mixed in equal 1/5 parts by DJ’s Whookid, Vlad, Lt. Dan, Green Lantern, and G Brown. McPaid has also made the unconventional, if not completely baffling choice of hiring David Ruprecht of TV’s Supermarket Sweep to act as the tape’s host.
“I just thought I needed a professional,” McPaid explains. “This shit about getting some famous rapper to host your mixtape is mad dumb. Why let some other dude steal your shine? It’s not like I didn’t have offers. A lot of people got at me about filling the position – Troy Walsh, U-God, the one girl worth doing in Northern State, Dylan [formerly of Da Band, currently of Da Salvation Army], Biggie’s mom – but, I wanted a professional. Someone who wasn’t just gonna blather on about how ‘hot’ everything was. Now there’s a word with no meaning anymore, ‘hot.’ Anyway, I thought a seasoned game show host like D. Rup would be perfect for the job. And I was right, as usual. It came out pretty hot, I must say.”
On the tape, McPaid brings the heat to his former groupmates on tracks such as, “You Guys Rocked Cinderella in 6th Grade.” The track, rhymed over a loop of Poison’s “Unskinny Bop” deals with the long-haired past of Killa Josh and DJ DJ:
Don’t front, you were all about neon green before I came on the scene
Mean don’t describe the transcribed bullshitted you submitted but never admitted
That Dow used to boombox Trixter before he discovered mixers
Decade later, vinyl hipster, smoothies and Urban Outfitters
Josh Kosh B’Gosh, gotta put you on blast
Quiet as it’s kept, dropping secrets from the past
Your little sister Lil’ Kimmy blow popped the jimmy
Think back, she borrowed your Def Leppard shirt in ‘89
Never got it back? I schplunked on the 2 p’s of the design
Y’all toys was Bullet Boys, now drinking soy
From hairspray to super tight T-shirt gay
Would people find it abhorrent that you listened to Warrant?
Like an 80´s daughter, flying to the angels with Slaughter?
Yes, I’m the owner of your lonely hearts
Made you hip-hop upstarts
Now you’re just children crying like White Lion
Well, Enuff Z’nuff
Like a "Girls, Girls, Girls" video ho
I’ll leave you Cheap Tricks on Skid Row
The slapping and scratching of this sissy fight is sure not to end anytime soon, so the GBs will continue to document the whole bloody mess for you as it transpires. Not that you would be especially interested, but we kind of feel sorry for these guys, and want to throw a little charity shine their way just for the f*** of it.
