8Ball And MJG Biography
US rap duo 8Ball aka Eightball (Premro Smith, Memphis, Tennessee, USA) and MJG (b. Marlon Jermaine Goodwin, Memphis, Tennessee, USA) emerged from Memphis in the early 90s. One of the first "Dirty South" rap acts to achieve a consistent level of commercial success throughout the southern states, the duo initially failed to make the national breakthrough fellow Dirty South acts such as Outkast and Goodie Mob achieved in the late 90s, although by the start of the new century their music had begun to make an impact on the mainstream charts.
8Ball and MJG grew up in the Orange Mound district of Memphis, Tennessee, a deprived area that afforded young black men little opportunity to progress. The duo's love of hip-hop prompted them to launch their own recording career on the southern underground circuit, and they succeeding in building a large audience with a series of self-released recordings, including their first big hit "Listen To The Lyrics'. In a bid to promote their music to a wider audience they helped launch Suave House Records with Tony Draper, and released Comin" Out Hard in 1993. That album's underground hit "Armed Robbery' and two further releases attracted the attention of Universal Records. The first fruits of Suave House's new distribution contract were two solo albums, 8Ball's Lost and MJG's No Glory. The duo reunited to record 1999"s classic In Our Lifetime, but despite critical plaudits the album failed to establish 8Ball And MJG as a commercial force. The duo severed ties with Draper and Suave House and recorded a strong album for JCOR, Space Age 4 Eva, but the record went largely unheard. A new recording contract with P. Diddy's Bad Boy label was testament to the duo's enduring status in the rap world. Their first album for Bad Boy, 2004's Living Legends, provided the duo with their national breakthrough, debuting in the US Top 5 in its first week of release. The belated follow-up Ridin High (2007) was also a chart hit.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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