Though I seem to rattle on and on about the old days of rap's Golden Era, the nostalgia seems to wear off any time my "used to be" favorite MC's commit an epic blow to their own legacy by trying to be way too relevant (ex: Busta Rhymes on Young Money) or embarrassing themselves on some Jose Canseco levels.
Canibus is what I like to call the Joe Charboneau of the rap world. For those of you who don't know who that is, and I doubt anybody does, Joe was a "flash in the pan" rookie for the Cleveland Indians in 1980. He led the team in home runs, had a good batting average, and showed lots of promise. He played for 2 more years and puttered out with miserable stats and wisely left baseball after realizing he wasn't cut out for the majors.
If only Canibus could learn this lesson. I have to admit that back in 1997, I thought he was going to blow up all over the rap game, after being heavily vetted by Wyclef, Common, Lost Boyz and other reputable MC's. After releasing a poorly received album, Can-i-bus, Canibus started to blame everyone around him for the lack of quality on the record. By the time he released the record, his hype was boiling over after making a diss record against LL Cool J called "2nd Round KO". He made an epic song with an intro from Mike Tyson which will forever go down as one of the best battle records of all time. However, this manner of biting the hand that fed him, LL offered him a verse of his song first, Canibus' facade started to crack.
Pretty soon, he was "box office posion" and nobody wanted to help him out, for what I can only imagine was fear of burning bridges with the rap establishment. A few remix features later and Canibus had to go underground forever. He kept releasing albums, even linking with Nottz at one point, but stories of his childish behavior, over-reactions, jealousy and anger started to be the only thing I ever heard about him.
I always checked for his stuff, but was never excited after listening to each new record as it was released. I remember him being interviewed on Conspiracy Worldwide Radio from the UK a few years ago and listening to him scream angrily about bloggers and critics not liking his music and sounded like he was having a nervous breakdown. Flash forward this last year, and he bitched about J. Cole then made a long, rambling apology on Youtube, further making him seem hopelessly, mentally unstable.
The latest news is of course his live battle rap meltdown on streaming pay per view this past week. In a battle rap main event, Canibus started stumbling over his own words, pulled out a legal pad to read "30 pages of rhymes" and started yelling at the crowd for booing him and his amateur antics and attitude (seen below).
I really was hoping that at some point in his career, Canibus would have make some good choices and redeemed his once talented self, but this last debacle will undoubtedly put the proverbial nail in his coffin. Perhaps one day, he will wise up, have someone else pick all of his beats for him, never let him appear in public unless doing a show and try to resurrect a respectable ending for this dude. Until then, he will forever be clowned as the dude who had it, lost it, tried to earn it back and blew it in the rap game.
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