Sean Price remains one of rap’s most entertaining spitters, even two years after his death. The Brownsville, Brooklyn emcee who inspired actor Ryan Phillippe to get a tattoo of his face as a tribute and who appears on MF DOOM’s latest, Adult Swim-backed single, “Negus,” was working on his fourth album, Imperius Rex, at the time of his death, and Duck Down Records made sure his work wouldn’t go unreleased.
They’ve even supported it with two singles so far: “Dead Or Alive,” a chest-beating, menacing street thumper, and “Imperius Rex,” titled after the album itself, a flag-planting, rival-blasting bout of seething battle rap for fans of bars about beating up P’s enemies. Given the Heltah Skeltah rapper’s penchant for penning gorilla-themed rhymes casting himself as the silver-backed alpha, both videos get ape-themed videos that play on pop culture. In “Dead Or Alive,” a group of Brownsville residents runs a “zoo” out of their backyard, consisting of one gorilla with a habit for smoking cigs and drinking Hennessy straight.
When a guest gets a little too familiar with the precocious primate (actually just a man in a monkey suit, don’t call PETA), chaos ensues and actor (and friend of Price’s) Michael Rapaport gets called to the scene as a reporter who says, “They’re gonna shoot the gorilla. I guess it’ll make for good ratings.” Sounds familiar, right? Only this time, the ape escapes, leaving Rapaport to ponder, “All things are safe in Brooklyn.” Check it out above
