Knowledge Is Born: Producer Ron Lawrence Drops Science On A Long Lost Hip Hop Gem By Sheldon Taylor

                      
Best known to the world as a member of the prolific Bad Boy Hitman production team that crafted hits dominating 90s radio, Ron "Amen-Ra" Lawrence enjoyed an earlier life as one-half of rap duo Two Kings In A Cipher (TKO). 

Creating the beats and sharing microphone duties with partner Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, TKO's debut album From Pyramids to Projects introduced metaphysical and Egyptology/Kemetic concepts to rap music. Lost in the shuffle of like-minded releases for Brand Nubian, X-Clan, Public Enemy and KRS-One, Pyramids received a brief write-up in an October 1991 issue of  The Source but came and went without fanfare. 

As Souls of Black Notes explores the era of conscious rhyme, Lawrence goes back in time. Quick to give credit to those who came before--he also makes a clear distinction between what separates TKO from the rest of the rap Black pack.                                 

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's The Message is hailed as conscious rap's  jump-off  but Brother D and The Collective's 1980 How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise? is the true genesis. Containing Rastafarianism, Nation of Islam and Garveyite asides along with  lyrical references to politics, social issues, race and religion, Brother D and his crew state their case to a replayed version of Cheryl Lynn's 1978  Got To Be Real: "the people call me Brother D and I 'm here to shed some light  to bring the truth back down to earth where it was once outta sight"

                                                                       

Party rhymes, lyrical supremacy declarations and DJ shout outs were dominant themes in rap records. When the waters of creativity opened up like the Red Sea, no inspirational stone was left unturned. Previously recorded songs with hit formulas (The Show, The Message and Walk This Way) were mined for conceptual gold and recycled. 

From '82 to '86, most rap records bounced between "tenement and skyscraper" references, human beatbox/vocal hybrids and answer records set to rock guitars, TV and movie themes.   

When a thirtyish Sugar Hill house musician named Duke Bootee offered up a concept idea that would become The Message, The Furious Five passed on it. Almost a decade younger than Bootee, the group was more into party-rocking rhymes than a soliloquy about the problems of the world.

In all fairness making a social commentary song in 1982 was the equivalent of a DJ throwing on a wack record in the middle of a hot playlist. 

When lead rapper Melle Mele stepped up to do the song with Bootee, the rest was history. Sugar Hill would go on to release a slew of follow-ups featuring Mel---now recast in the role as hip hop soothsayer. Songs like Survival (The Message II), White Lines and Beat Street Breakdown cemented his status as dominant rap god.

 Tuning into Mr. Magic's Rap Attack radio show on WHBI along with the rest of New York City's super listeners, Amen-Ra followed the parade of Message-style records that were hitting the airwaves. He'd even make his one of his own with his Super Lovers crew.

Lawrence: Back then it was about following trends. Whatever was hot. There were a lotta those records. Planet Rock. The Message. It's Like That. What People Do For Money. I made one too. We called it Lover's Law. Those kinds of records were popular at the time but I wouldn't call them conscious records. Everyone was just following a formula that was out at the time."

                                                                

 Some rappers like Doug E. Fresh weaved messages of progressiveness and spirituality in their rhymes. Others like LL Cool J avoided it all together. Heavy-handed content was the exception instead of the rule. As the crack epidemic held New York in a death grip, anti-drug references began to surface more and more in emcees' rhymes. 

In '86 the arrival of an 18-year-old emcee with a deep baritone from Wyandanch, Long Island re-set the hip hop switch and changed everything forever.  In a November '87 piece Writer Harry Allen rolled out the literary welcome mat: meet Rakim, the world's deffest rapper. And people wonder why he calls himself GOD"

                                                                

Lawrence is still in awe as he remembers how one William Michael Griffin aroused hip hop from its superficial slumber. "He really took rhyming to the next level."  

Griffin's rhymes were potent like grape cyanide at a Jonestown congregation.  A pair of Spin Magazine interview pieces signaled the arrival ("Soul Power" and "The Five Percent Solution"). of the young rap prodigy who broke down Five Percenter jewels informing his rhymes while revealing the science behind his name---taken from the Egyptian Sun God deity hailing from an ancient land of the burnt-faced people: Rakim.

                                                                      

Neighbor Eric B provided a Lawrence with a glimpse of Rakim's greatness early on as he watched Eric make his come-up in the rap game, trooping along with him to Queensbridge Projects to connect with future super-producer Marley Marl. After Eric B and Rakim recorded a couple of songs in Marley's apartment. Lawrence received copies before they hit the streets. 

 Amen Ra: ''Eric B gave me a couple of promos before the records even came out. When I heard Eric B is President for the first time, I was like, this guy (Rakim) can really rhyme. Not long after, I heard'em in the Latin Quarter and felt the same reaction. I went to Eric's brother Ant Live---they weren't speaking at the time---I told him; your brother has a hit. He couldn't believe it. I watched Eric go from driving an ice cream truck to having the hottest records in the streets to pushing a Rolls Royce! It was that fast!"  

 Rakim's lyrical references contained references curated from the ideology of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths---the offshoot of the Nation of Islam occupying spiritual real estate across the five boroughs. Two Five Percent components would find their way into rap culture. Lawrence explains:

 "When I heard My Melody, I picked up on the Five Percent lyrics right away. I was familiar with the lessons from hanging out in Queens and Harlem. Rakim wasn't teaching but he was letting you know where he was coming from. When I heard him, I knew he either was Five Percent or hanging out people who were. If you were familiar with the lessons you could pick it up real quick. When he said "my wisdom is swift " I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Phrases like "I'm letting knowledge be born" or "I'm measured by the heat that's made by sun" or "I bless the mic for the gods"---you never heard that in hip hop before. Before Rakim's album came out, I heard him do a radio freestyle that would later become I Ain't No Joke. In that song he had more 5% quotes like "guide you outta triple-stage darkness," That meant Ra was gonna educate the "dumb, deaf and blind" who didn't have knowledge of self.---the 85%.  His album was full of 5% quotes. "Residence" (from Paid In Full) was something else the gods used to say---they wouldn't say I left home, they'd say "I'm leaving the residence." 

Later on, Ra would say stuff like "your knowledge is took."  and "guide you out of triple-stage darkness" that meant that Black people were robbed of their true knowledge. He was the first rapper to say "peace." That's where that line "I can take a phrase that's rarely heard---flip it now it's a daily word." Rakim was great at using metaphors to get those lessons across."

                                                                             

                       "Planet earth was my place of birth/born to be the sole controller of the universe"                         

                                  

 "Two years ago, black kids used to think that saying nothing was alright; getting a gold chain, a dookie rope, was dope, the dope shit; its alright to sniff a little coke; get nice for the moment, get in my fly ride and do anything to get it; even if it means stomping the next man; cause I got to look out for number one. It’s alright for a drug  dealer to be making money, its alright to sell drugs; its aright cause he's making money. 1988, its a different thought. Because consciousness has been raised where people are saying that the gold rope don't mean shit."

                               
              ---Chuck D: Spin Magazine:(September 1988)

There's a pivotal scene in Spike Lee's Malcolm X that captures the energy of the Sixties black nationalism. Various speakers are lined up along 125th Street in black liberation mode competing for the attention of an attentive audience. That's what a segment of late eighties/early nineties rap was like: an endless parade of emcees---post-civil rights era babies attempting to speak truth to power in the era of R&B: Reagan and Bush. Swaddled in the blanket of blackness before it became pop culture, they came of age as Black assimilation and social mobility collapsed like a house of cards.

                                                                          

"Everytime I'm lookin' at a Blackman I'm looking at God:" Brand Nubian (1993)

                                                                      
                                                          

                                                     

Ronald Lawrence was part of this generation of future movers and shakers. When the Lawrence family arrived in NYC from Dominica in the early 70s, a striver aunt pointed them toward the  East Elmhurst-Corona section of Queens to put down roots. Known as the Black Gold Coast, it was home to everyone from Louis Armstrong to Harry Belafonte to Malcolm X.

                                                                         

Front and center for East Elmhurst's early hip hop days, Lawrence absorbed Queens founding fathers like brother Dony Dancemaster and Nu Sounds. Moving from spectator to participant, he linked up with local rap crews running in the same circles of future legends living in and around his neighborhood before their fame: Eric B, Salt N Pepa, LL, Kool G Rap Dana Dane, Hurby Luv Bug and Kid N Play---Lawrence made his first record at sixteen. By twenty-one, he'd spent seven long years traveling along rap's long and winding road and nearly another nine wandering in the wilderness before eventually finding success in hip hop's promised land. Until then---Lawrence experienced false starts and near misses. His career seemed to stall just as his crew's stars were rising:

"Hurby Luv Bug's empire was blowing up with Salt N Pepa and Dana Dane. Eric B was doing his thing with Ra. Kid N Play were making their first records together. I saw LL go from being a hungry emcee rhyming in a basement to signing with Def Jam. I knew these guys before they were famous. I felt kinda left out. I'd been doing this a long time. Back then, it wasn't like it is now. Success in hip-hop wasn't guaranteed. I needed a backup plan. I left college in Brooklyn and transferred to Howard."

                                                             

"I learned to relax in my room/ and escape from New York and return to the world as a physical thought: "The Ghetto (1990)

When Lawrence stepped out of the Amtrak station on Massachusetts Avenue in the summer of '86, he stumbled into a strange world that marched to the beat of its own go-go drum. Soaking in the terrain of DC, Maryland, and Virginia with its "upsouth" accents and slang, his experiences seemed like a reboot of the 1984 film Brother From Another Planet; Lawrence remembers the shock:

 "Howard was in the middle of hood! I could look outside my dorm room on 13th Street and see the prostitutes! They had pimps from Detroit with the jheri curls on the street. I had a basement apartment in Logan Circle---this was before gentrification---when I walked out my door, the prostitutes were in my face. When I rode the bus, young cats pointed guns at me. I even got arrested once. The police thought I had robbed a post office. 

 As far as music was concerned it, the only rappers they liked were Kool Moe Dee and Doug E. Fresh. Songs like All The Way To Heaven and Do You Know What Time It Is sounded like go-go. They were feeling club records by Colonel Abrams. You didn't hear much rap music!"

In his book Growing Up Hip Hop, Lawrence paints a vivid picture of the mid-80s pre-gentrified DC riddled by gunshots that raised the city's murder rate to a fever pitch thanks to an imported drug trade: "In the daytime, the city was an attractive face of opportunity that was alluring. At night, the makeup came off, and blemishes were everywhere."

  "With knowledge of self/there's nothing I can't solve/ cause 360 degrees I revolve" 

      ---Move The Crowd (1987)

While hanging out at a bookstore on Georgia Avenue, Lawrence delved into Malcolm X and great Black scholars of African history like Ivan Sertima, Tony Browder, and Yosef Ben Jochannan. Inspired by their teachings, Lawrence underwent a spiritual transformation:

  "Biblical scripture stated that the Word be made flesh. The Gods and Earths proclaimed to let knowledge be born. Rakim constructed his God-Body pyramid brick by brick, and it came out in his lyrics: Self-esteem makes me super, superb supreme. My spiritual travels said it all.

As I passed through the turnstile of definition, I shed my old names like a second skin. First, I was Ronnie Tuff, the young emcee who loved to rock with his crew. Then I became Ron Juan, the debonair and fly emcee with the hip-hop pedigree. Now I was Amen-Ra; I wore the name proudly like a precious jewel or amulet. I promised myself never to forsake it. In return, it gave me the buoyancy I would need to survive the treacherous waters of the music industry"

 Lawrence injected what he had been studying into music." I wanted to take it step further from what everyone else was doing. I wanted to speak about metaphysics and topics never discussed in rap music. I didn't look to other rappers for inspiration." Instead, Lawrence took his cues from Earth Wind and Fire. "I liked how Maurice White had Kemetic images in his album cover art. I loved the spiritual messages he put in the music. Songs like In The Stone and Serpentine Fire were right in alignment with what I was studying in DC. "

 

   In 2021 he explained what set TKO apart from the rest of his rap peers: Those other groups were an important piece of the puzzle. They were great at what they did. When we came out, there was no one saying or talking about the things we were. Remember, this is before the internet and the information wasn't as readily available. It flew over a lotta people's heads. We might have been too deep. Everyone else was coming from a Black history or street knowledge perspective. We were coming from a more conscious place.

                                                                  
              "When I say born/I mean life
                Cuz when you're born/ you come into a new life
                And if this definition of king is too rough 
                    Pick up a book and look it up!"
                     ----Definition Of A King (1991)

In a December 1992 issue of Spin Magazine, director Spike Lee credited rappers Chuck D and KRS-One for introducing a whole new generation of Black people to Malcolm X. Journalist Playthell Benjamin offers a different opinion:

   "And rapper Chuck D whose rap vocals conjure up the oratorical style of Malcolm X is regarded as a revolutionary intellectual rapper cut form the same cloth as Malcolm X. Unfortunately Chuck D who says he rarely reads books is a far cry from Malcolm who read so voraciously he ruined his eyesight."

KRS-One was cast by Benjamin as a "misguided educator" whose "knowledge rap' is filled with contradictions. Benjamin revealed that KRS dodged questions inquiring whether he actually read The Autobiography of Malcolm X by responding that he preferred to watch Malcolm's videotapes instead. While Benjamin acknowledged hip hop's effort but expressed his wish that "their interpretations were a little more informed." 

If Benjamin had heard TKO's album, he might have changed his mind about the current crop of conscious rappers. From Pyramids To Projects found the duo playing off each other like Poitier and Cosby. DOP was the quick-tongued B-Boy with the rich baritone.  Clad in African garb and a fez---Amen-Ra's quiet confidence was steeped in a spiritual-minded rap delivery. From TKO recording sessions, sprang material had an Afrocentric bent.

On the surface, these songs were in the same vein as what was already on the scene. TKO took it a step further. Instead of mere recitation (Brand Nubian and Big Daddy Kane), metaphoric prose (Rakim), condensed Afrocentric theories and concepts converted into ticker-tape soundbites (Public Enemy), TKO explored concepts that even the most conscious rappers had yet to venture:

      "By daybreak the pineal gland gains power

       I feed off the earth and grow just like of flower" 

        Movin' On 'Em (1991)

The conceptual album cut Daffy Was A Black Man explores Hollywood's use of animation to propagate subliminal racial imagery. Dissecting the European colonialism angle between Elmer Fudd ("the great white hunter") and Daffy Duck ("he got paid off through explanation of a brother so to speak whose lips resembled a beak") whose "beak and feathers" stand-in for "sheeps and leather”—- metaphors for the sheepskin rancher coats and leather jackets that were transitional black male cold weather outerwear.

Thanks to the song's serious content, it one-ups early rap compositions crafted in the same vein (UTFO's "Fairytale Lover," Run-DMC's "Peter Piper"). Cleverly sliding in Five Percent lingo and historical asides----Amen-Ra and DOP's insert Fudd's speech impediment in the final verse elevates the song from creative filler to strong Afrocentric political statement:

        "From New York City to down South in Selma 

          Be vewy vewy quiet/ we huntin' Elmer

         Your days are up, your time's are numbered

        Right and exact and----Daffy was a Blackman!"  

The album opens with the sweeping esoteric flair of "The Creator Has A Master Plan" (a title cleverly lifted from Pharoah Saunders/Leon Thomas composition of the same name) Powered by by pounding drums, Kool and Gang's "Jungle Boogie"(1973) and Run-D.M.C.'s "Rock the House" (1985)----Definition of a King is From Pyramids to Projects' centerpiece. 

The song marks the first time the term cipher is featured in rap song. Amen-Ra and DOP's lyrical blend of metaphysics and numerology is nothing short of masterful. Trading verses that move at the speed of light, they don't rhyme for the sake of riddling. This isn't just righteous rap----it's Maa't Music.

Amen-Ra:

"I'm the star the one, they call the Noble Amen-Ra 

 the message in my music spans far 

so it'll reach ya, enlighten the pupils of the eye 

and all the PUPILS who are PEOPLE!

DOP:

"First let's observe a square, four lines are connected 

All sides are measured equal, trust me, great minds have checked it

There's four right angles  in a square, ninety degrees in every corner 

And by using multiplication you simply 

multiply ninety by four you get three sixty

And like I mentioned in the first line of the rap 

A cipher is three sixty  and three sixty is complete......"

Lest you think he's done DOP 's wisdom continues to build like a skycraper:

"To show and prove you that I'm not  stiff like a cucumber 

On to the circle three hundered sixty is a born a number 

When I say born I mean life 

Cause when you are born  you come into a new light

ain't that right 

Like nine month of pregnancy a new birth 

I'm gonna explain further but first...."

Through TKO's management connections the group would travel to Philadelphia, recording their album at 309 Studios---home base to legendary producers Gamble and Huff. Besides soaking up mentorship from the iconic duo, TKO would have a chance to dip into the Philly Soul catalog. Decades before Kanye West tapped Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' 1972 "I Miss You" for Jay-Z's 2000 "This Can't Be Life," The group's lone ballad was constructed around the Philly quintet's 1975 "You Know How To Make Me Feel Good." 

On "You Know How To Make," DOP launches into monologue (sounding uncannily like Harold Melvin), similar to the 70s spoken-word love raps. He also serenades his lady with a silky delivery ('as my heart beats faster/the blood rushes through my vein/ its like I'm slave/ and you're the master")  that foreshadows rapper CL Smooth's similar future seductive approach for 1992's "Lots of Lovin':" 

"I thank god for a woman like you 

And I feel so proud to say that I love you

Girl, I know you don't hear these words often

But I had to give my heart time to soften......

Pledging his own love and devotion to own woman Amen-RA celebrates her attributes ("your like a lambswool/you're chocolate and beautiful") with verses that recalls Earth, Wind and Fire and a future Nas---- all wrapped up in a cloak of ancestral adulation:

"Together, forever 

  We represent one 

  A descendant  from Kemet 

  Were children of the sun

  "I'll respect you hourly

   And put you on top 

   I'll kiss your feet, move up and we'll stop

   You are the first and always be my last

   I know your history because I studied your past...."

Following a brief promo tour plagued with problems, limited label support, contractual woes, and an aborted record deal in the midst of recording their second album---TKO would part ways for a few years but their reunion would bear instant creative fruit solidifying their place in hip hop forever. 

More than just a hip-hop footnote, Pyramids to Projects' conscious creativity serves as a musical signpost marking the rap genre's intellectual exploration beyond basic beats and rhymes.