UG Rap Community

Recently, the Louisiana State police issued an all points bulletin for the rap duo known as Partners N Crime. They are charged with being one of the hottest up and coming rap acts on the streets and, like the legendary Geto Boys, they can’t be stop. The two were last seen in a studio with Juvenile’s UTP in New Orleans cooking up dope beats and fat rhymes and are planning to serve the world with their UTP/Crime Lab heater entitled Club Banger.

Partners ‘N Crime are one of the Crescent City’s most popular rap groups who helped pioneer the Cities thriving hip hop scene back in the back in the 90s. Composed of the notorious Walter Williams (alias: Kangol) and the infamous Michael Patterson who known on the streets as Mr. Meana, two childhood friends from New Orleans 17th Ward who have been rocking the Southern underground for well over ten years.

Meana and Kangol first met through a mutual friend who attended their high school & suggested that they meet each other. “I used to go to this high school called Sarah T. Reed,” explains Meana. “He was known for being hot on the mic. He was known at the school for the same thing I was known for. And my friends always used to tell me man Kangol’s hot you need to come check him out. I went and checked him out and he was nice and ended up doing Gong Shows together.” In fact, it was at one of these local talent shows that the two came up with name Partner ‘N Crime and through their consistent victories they soon built a solid reputation as one of the Big Easy’s best acts.

Their buzz soon had local rap labels like Cash Money vying for their services. While the two were seriously thinking of inking a deal with the fledging local label, they decided to go with another local label called Big Boy, the former home of Mystikal, Fiend and the Ghetto Twins. But their decision to go with Big Boy also kicked off a bitter rivalry with another N.O. rap act by the name of UNLV.

“Before we was going to sign with Cash Money UNLV invited us to one of them little shows at the same place we had been winning the Gong Shows at,” recalls Kangol. “We opened up for UNLV and rocked it better than they did. After we performed with them, they came out with a song called “Everybody Jockin’ UNLV Style” where they were like dissin’ us. That led us to go home that night and making up a song where we changed the definition of their name. We changed the definition from Uptown Niggas Living Violently to Unknown No Life Visions or something like that. We had the whole city saying that about them. That’s where our birth really came from.”

Eventually the two groups squashed their beef and PNC went on to record a bevy of regional hits like “Pump the Party” and “N.O. Block Party.” But even though they were selling thousand of records independently they still found their careers hitting a glass ceiling. “A lotta those labels that we’ve been on never put a lot of money in our projects,” says Meana. “We were making hits but because the label wouldn’t spend no money on videos or publicity it would be like people would know our music but they wouldn’t know that it was us doing the music.”

But all of that changed when they got a chance to record with Juve who sat down and talked to them about their career. They told him that they weren’t happy with the way things were going and wanted to start their own label, Crime Lab Entertainment. Juve, knowing the duos struggle first hand, offered them a split label deal with his label UTP shortly after inking his deal with Rap-a-Lot Records. They accepted and quickly started working on their new album Club Banger. As the name suggest, Club Banger has its share of rowdy, club-friendly jams like the Juvenile produced reggae tinged “Pooh Shooter,” designed to set the party off right.

“This album is real universal,” says Meana. “I mean you can listen to this album anywhere and it’ll be banging. You can put us on the West Coast, the East Coast, the Mid West or the South and believe me there’s gonna be something on there that they gonna love. This is our best effort to date. And it’s gonna get even better on the next one.”

Klar, ich lass alles so wie es ist