Although the Internet would have us believe that rapper Bahamadia released her underrated 1996 debut album Kollage (Chrysalis/EMI Records) on March 23, the Philly-based beat-box poet insists that the disc actually dropped on April 2. No matter when it came out, 20 years later, the gritty poet’s first long-playing joint remains one of the best rap albums of that era. Coming in the pivotal year of ’96 during the boom-bap and bling bling era of Bad Boy, Death Row and Wu-Tang (as well as Foxy Brown and Lil Kim), hip-hop culture was once again changing.

While some rappers’ sole purpose of engaging in hip-hop was simply to outdo their profiteering peers as they rhymed about designers and diamonds, others were more concerned with preserving the genuineness of pure rap skills that give the art form heft and resonance. Kollage still serves as solid evidence that not everyone was swayed by the glitter of platinum dreams and streetwise drug schemes.

Kollage’s fierce combination of stiletto-sharp samples and grimy grammar that carried over from the wonderful first track “Wordplay” to the dreamy “Biggest Part of Me,” its closing song, a testimony to the love she has for her children. Bahamadia’s words, like my other favorite MCs who all recorded with with Rza, resonated with weed heads, boho b-boys & girls, and old school folks who respected a young sista who knew how to spit textual jewels.

Bahamadia, whose book knowledge meets streetwise style won scores of fans that follow her on Facebook and Twitter, came up at a time when “social media” meant leaving your house and actually doing something. Having started out as teenage DJ who spun boogie down singles at neighborhood jams with her West Philly Sound Crew, she also wrote also poetry in her journals. “My mom was my first creative teacher,” Bahamadia says. “She always encouraged me and my sister to express ourselves. There are also a lot of visual artists in the family.”

By the time Bahamadia was discovered by rapper Guru from Gang Starr in 1993, she was a fully formed artist who could bring it to both the stage and the studio. After displaying her skills on the track “Respect the Architect” from Guru’s own Jazzmatazz Vol. II and the Big Kap posse cut “Da Ladies in the House” alongside Jersey-girl rapper Lauryn Hill, Bahamadia began planning concepts for her own album.


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Who or what is a Bahamadia, she, he it sounds like a very angry person or an exotic drink.

That album really holds up.