rap's real grateful dead: a guide to andre nickatina
so originally this was going to run at bandcamp daily, and then literally the day before the piece was scheduled to run andre’s discography vanished from bandcamp. not sure if it was an unsanctioned upload or what. this is sadly the second time this has happened to me with writing about a 90s rap release on bandcamp… my piece about gangsta pat’s underground memphis classic Deadly Verses was also taken down because the album had been removed. hopefully i’ll post that one soon… i still haven’t really done anything for the paid tier but will try to put some more content here soon if you’d consider throwing a girl some coin
(i found this side-by-side of andre nickatina and bob dylan and it cracked me up)
California has always had a distinct flavor to its rap music, probably something to do with the sunshine and the water and (more recently) the legal weed, but it's in the Bay Area that the West Coast sound reaches its most inventive, almost appropriately psychedelic extremes. Maybe more than any other regional rap scene, the Bay is home to cartoonish stylists, colorful personalities, and endlessly clever wordsmiths. The likes of E-40 and Keak da Sneak have never been afraid to stretch the limits of the human voice, spinning lengthy strings of gold from 26 letters and using more words in a few minutes than many rappers do on entire mixtapes. In an entire state filled with characters, there’s none more distinctive—and also probably nobody more prolific—than Andre Nickatina, who's been grinding non-stop since the release of his first project in 1993.
Jay-Z may have once called himself “Rap’s Grateful Dead,” but Nickatina probably has more reason to claim that title: like the Dead, he’s a true San Francisco original with a long career, a committed cult following, and a playfulness to his music. Not to mention he’s also a gleeful composer of the soundtracks to drug experiences, selling out hometown 4/20 celebrations regularly. Andre first emerged in the early 1990s as Dre Dog, the name that appears on what are probably his best two albums: The New Jim Jones and I Hate You With A Passion, which are as much spoken-word sample-delia as classic West Coast rap. Nickatina oozes a distinctive charisma from the opening moments of his debut, which opens with an echo-heavy spoken word intro over Wendy Carlos’s Moog score to The Shining. A name change was almost inevitable, given the success of similarly-named artists like Dr. Dre, Mac Dre, and Snoop Dogg, and with 1997’s Cocaine Raps he’d reboot himself as the one and only Andre Nickatina, the self-described “Killa Whale,” equal parts court jester and cut-throat coke dealer.
Nickatina’s never been the top dog; most of his albums have been independent, with extremely limited physical releases that are now highly sought-after and top-shelf price. You’re more likely to hear his music in skate videos than on the radio, but sometimes the alpha of the pack is all bark and no bite. Like so many rappers of a certain age, Nickatina’s audience might be smaller, but he knows who his fans are and knows that they’re loyal; he’s built his career on something durable and direct, rather than chasing trends or crossover success. Unfortunately, that kind of unwillingness to change brings its downsides too; Nickatina’s lyrics and skits often cross the line into blatant misogyny, racism, whorephobia, and homophobia, and even as other rappers of his generation worked on their regressive tendencies and moved past certain words or subject matter, Andre has remained problematically old school. As with so much rap of a certain age and era, your mileage with his work will definitely vary—but he’s an artist whose discography is so inventive and interesting it’s well worth diving into.
Nickatina’s second release as Dre Dog is maybe his most playful and inventive—the track that gave him his nickname, “Killa Whale,” quite literally slaps, with hard-hitting drum and bass that needs to be blasted, but it’s also peppered with ocean sounds and whale noises, a truly kaleidoscopic sound experience that’s as comfortable in car speakers as headphones.“Straight 2 The Point” features an absolutely iconic sample, an improvised shout-out track over the shuffling jazz leitmotif from Twin Peaks. David Lynch isn’t a bad reference point for Nickatina; his music isn’t overtly surrealist or science-fictional, but it’s almost like magical realism, as he blends tales from his own life with inventive language and references to astrology.
With his rebrand to Andre Nickatina, the artist formerly known as Dre Dog reinvented his persona, embracing the grimmer aspects of his lyricism and asserting himself as a cocaine kingpin, something like the Pusha T of the so-called “Yay Area.” Andre gets in your face on forceful tracks like “Crack Raider” and “I’m a Pisces,” but jingle bells and Al Green samples give even his most intense tracks an unexpected melody. The whole experience is a touch moodier, like a blaxploitation soundtrack playing over a horror movie—“Diamonds and Carats” doesn’t sound too far off from vintage Insane Clown Posse—but the score comes equipped with built-in smoke breaks, with the Fillmoe Coleman Records house band offering the top-back instrumental respite of “Scent of a Woman” and “Cadillac.”
Midnight Machine Gun Rhymes & Alibis
Nickatina joined up with fellow San Francisco rapper Equipto in 2002 for his first official full-length collaboration with another MC. Instrumentally, the album is Nickatina in classic form, distorting a deep crate of soul samples into up-tempo but introspective slices of rap—“Jungle” borrows the iconic chorus of Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” and glues it to a delightful, almost house-like flip of jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby. Equipto could not diverge more from Nickatina in his flow—razor sharp where Nickatina is jagged and rough, more East Coast backpack in his roots, while Nickatina is a West Coast wizard in the tradition of E-40 and Suga Free through-and-through. Equipto has found a second calling as a community organizer and activist, and Midnight Machine Gun Rhymes & Alibis unsurprisingly has a more exacting and intentional sense of social commentary than most of Andre’s solo releases.
Even into the 2000s, there’s an old-school patter to Nickatina’s flow that’s never-changing: “My name is Nicky, but you can call me Dre/ I party through L.A., now baby what you gotta say/ I live and lay like Sugar Ray, I listen to Sade.” Nickatina’s beats are his own completely, apart from other West Coast styles like g-funk and hyphy, with clear drum loops, dubby samples, and a touch of turntablism. There’s a classic flavor without being nostalgic or a self-conscious throwback. When Nickatina grooves to a funky bassline on “Fly Like a Bird,” there’s still an eerie organ line that keeps him off-kilter and on his toes. The Spanish guitar of “Ayo for Yayo” gives it a distinctly California almost indie-pop flavor that predicts the Best Coast-style surf rock of future Bay Area cult favorite Lil B’s “California Boy,” while “Soul of a Coke Dealer” sounds as much like early-aughts R&B and Sonic the Hedgehog menu music. “Dice of Life (The Battle)” is hardly a beat at all, but more a MIDI symphony, with Renaissance Fair harpsichord, synthesized strings, and shuffling percussion. But as the title implies, there’s a true intimacy and honesty to the songwriting: “Rise and Fall of a Rap Cat” sees Nickatina going full quiet storm, a self-hating love letter to the drug game over blues guitar and twinkling piano. Years before 808s & Heartbreak, Nickatina was bleeding out with a voice that’s raw and untamed, almost more evocative because he sounds a little broken.
Following Mac Dre’s tragic passing, a bootleg began circulating of Mac Dre and Andre Nickatina verses. In response to the half-finished tape, Andre Nickatina embarked on his own collaborative tribute to the Bay’s other legendary Dre, reaching out to Mac Dre’s family and estate for any unused verses. It’s a Bay Area devotee’s dream, and all-too-unfortunate that it couldn’t happen more organically while Mac was still alive, but unlike so many posthumous rap albums assembled from leftover vocal stems, it’s surprisingly fluid and seamless. This isn’t an awkward generation-gap crossover, like Drake and Aaliyah, or a cross-genre mash-up like DMX and U2, but a meeting of two veterans of similar stature, skill level, and sound. Beats like “U Beezy” and “Neva Seen” feel more in line with Mac’s solo work, colorful and futuristic with just a little bit of club-appropriate hyphy bounce. It’s a tag team pairing that was simply meant to be, up there with Method Man & Redman and the Road Warriors. If we lived in a fairer timeline, there’d be more than one tale from the two Andres.