BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " RED MAN " WAS NONE THE LESS ONE OF THE MOST OFF THE WALL BELOVED AND ENDURING RAPPER OF THE 90's : GOES INTO TH

                                      BLACK                        SOCIAL                    HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Never quite a superstar, Red man was nonetheless one of the most off-the-wall, beloved, and enduring rappers of the '90's and 2000s. Born Reginald Noble in Newark, NJ, he made his initial impact on EPMD's 1990 album Business as Usual and stepped out as a solo artist with 1992's Whut? Thee Album, one of the year's best debuts, rap or otherwise. He blended Ereggae and funk influences with topical commentary and displayed a terse though fluid vocal style

that was sometimes satirical, sometimes silly, and always tough -- an approach that rarely wavered throughout the remainder of his career. Each of Red man's successive releases during the '90's, including Dare Iz a Darkside (1994), Muddy Waters (1996), and Doc's da Name(1999), went gold in the U.S. He was also established as a member of the EPMD-led Def Squad (initially known as the Hit Squad), which put together El Niño (another gold-seller) in 1998.Blackout!, issued a year later, solidified a long time partnership with Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man. The duo went on to star in the 2001 movie How High, a comedy made for weed smokers, as well as a less successful and short-lived television show (Method & Red) that aired nine episodes on Fox in 2004. Red man released only two solo albums,Malpractice (2001) and Red Gone Wild (2007) during the first decade of the 2000s, but he did close it out with Method Man via Blackout! 2 (2009). The MC's seventh solo album, Reggie, appeared in 2010.