Funkdafied

by Da Brat

Product Description:

Personnel: Da Brat (vocals), Manuel Seal (keyboards, background vocals), Jermaine Dupri (background vocals).

Recorded at Kross Wire Studio, Atlanta, Georgia.

All songs written or co-written by Jermaine Dupri. Samples include "Under The Bridge" (as performed by The Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Deeper" (as performed by Boss), "Between The Sheets" (written by Isley Brothers and Chris Jasper) and "Fear" (written by Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet).

Until recently, New York- and California-based rap artists have dominated the market, making it difficult for outside talent to break big in the industry. However, with the release of her debut, FUNKDAFIED, Chicago's teen-aged female rapper Da Brat has been able to put the Windy City on the hip-hop map.

Writer/producer Jermaine Dupri, who has shepherded bar-mitzvah-aged rappers Kris Kross and vocal prodigies Xscape up the pop charts, has once again come through with a superior production. On "Come And Get Some" Dupri turns a single Lenny Kravitz guitar chord into a mind-blowing, psychedelic soul loop. And on "Funkdafied," which leaped right over the heads of hip-hop listeners onto the Hot Singles chart, he connects Da Brat with funk across the ages by sampling the Isley Brothers' "Between The Sheets."

Far from L.A.'s gangsta scene but decidedly of it, Da Brat delivers her Snoop Dog-influenced rhymes with streetwise bravado, in a coarse Ice Cube-esque lingo that is free of any feminine attributes.