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Spice 1 Reveals His Job Before Hip-Hop

Published Fri, October 28, 2022 at 5:13 PM EDT

Legendary Bay Area rapper Spice 1 spoke recently to ROCK THE BELLS for Rock The Bells Radio's All City Day: Bay Area, which dedicates an entire day to Hip-Hop from the Bay Area. The "East Bay Gangster" spoke about what he did to pay the bills before he started making records.

"My first ever job was I used to work at UPS at the airport," the "Trigger Gots No Heart" rapper said. "I used to put the luggage in the airplanes and that was cool and fun you know, after they heard that '187 Proof,' they was askin' why I was even working there!"

"187 Proof" is a single from his album his 1992 debut self-titled album, a gangster tale that substitutes popular alcoholic beverages for the name of persons. Spice spits:

And that's how the shit was handled first name Jack, last name Daniels had two boys named E and J, E had the nine and J the AK clocked on a street called Hennessey, robs with a motherfucker named O.E.,E had a bitch and her name was Gin, had a nigga named Juice doin' time in the pen."

Del The Funky Homosapien of Hieroglyphics shared with Rock The Bells some early Bay history with Spice-1, specifically, the Oakland rapper/producer recalled his first performance back in the day in San Leandro at a skating rink.

"The first local venue I performed out here was a roller skating rink in San Leandro," he remembered. "That skating rink ain't there anymore, this was hella far back. Rodney O and Joe Cooley had a show there and I used to fool with this dude Pierre
The Beat Fixer — he used to make beats for Too $hort. Somehow I got hooked up with him. And Spice-1 was running around with us at that time. That was the first venue I did."

All City Day: Bay Area premieres 10/28 at 8 a.m. ET on Rock The Bells Radio, Sirius XM Ch. 43. Listen to Rock The Bells Radio on @SiriusXM free for 3 months. Learn more: http://www.siriusxm.com/RTB3.