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*Oh Bay-bee! He’s been flying below the national radar for a couple of years. After 2004’s, Best of E-40: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, with the South on his side and the Bay on his back, E-40 seems ready to spearhead not just the Hyphy movement, but a northern California uprising.
“The Bay area is the West Coast also, but right now it’s a Bay area sound … L.A., San Diego, everywhere, they all embrace it. They embrace our sound. We’re all in it together, you know? … We’ve just been going through it for so long. … It’s just our time,” states 40.
“Even though it was a drought on the West Coast, especially in the Bay for a good 10 years, ever since Tupac passed away, I held on like a hubcap in the fast lane and kept carrying the Bay on my back. And now that I’m seeing we’re getting our shine again, and I’m being the battering ram kicking in the door for us, I’m trying to make it easier for all my Bay partners to come on in and display their skills, ’cause we do it all in the Bay, man. … We some of the coldest, man.”
The 12th time seems to be the charm in the case of Earl “E-40” Stevens. Not that his previous records were failures by any means. He’s hit gold three times and gained platinum status with his musical family, The Click, with 1995’s In A Major Way. Though he has tasted platinum, the term “regional” is one that 40 has never made a clean break with. Heavy radio and video support should make the breakup painless and amicable once and for all.
“I’m in it for the long run. It’s gon’ be a grind, and I’m just breaking in this new Hyphy movement to the world.”
With his latest opus, “My Ghetto Report Card,” debuting at #1 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip Hop chart and #3 on its Top 200, he’s off to his best-ever start. “The reason I named it that was, because in my soil, in the ghetto my report card is straight A’s across the board. I just wanted to touch all angles of the game with my album. I got a mixture of a little bit of everything.” After 10 years with Jive Records, 40 released My Ghetto Report Card via Warner/BME/Sik Wid It/Reprise on March 14, exactly 11 years—to the day—after releasing his only RIAA-certified platinum album. Coincidence? Maybe. Ironic? Sure; and who doesn’t love irony?
E-40 has always been known to be an original Hip hop artist, which is somewhat of an oxymoron in today’s game. It’s as if everybody was in line waiting to receive their Hip Hop manuals, and somehow he received a different copy. His style, wordplay and countless slang concoctions/contributions have always been deemed ahead of the rest. Some of it earned him a cult following. Some of it turned folks off.
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