Bio

When Big Scoob raps about surviving the gritty streets of Kansas City’s ghetto life, he’s not just telling a story meant strictly for entertainment purposes.

He’s got a powerful message about the hard realities of street life and the price one pays for getting caught up in that game.

“I’ve done it. I’ve seen it.,” Scoob says. “I overachieved at it.”

During his teenage years and early 20s, Scoob lived life as a gangbanger — the result of a faction of the Crips and Bloods feud that spread to KC from California in the 1980s — while growing up on 56th and Highland. He now considers himself fortunate to have survived. Friends were murdered. Others are serving consecutive life sentences for homicide.

In making it through, the 35-year-old learned several important lessons that impacted his rap career.

“That’s what I fuel my music on,” he says. “I’m speaking about the past, and I can still understand what the young cats are doing now because I’ve been through it.

“Everything I write about has 100 percent truth to it. Did it happen today, did it happen yesterday? No. But has it happened in my lifetime? Yes.”

Now, Big Scoob hopes to communicate that drama with the April release of Monsterifik — his first album on the Kansas City-based Strange Music label, which features his good friend, Tech N9ne.

Scoob first met Tech N9ne when the two squared off in a beatboxing competition during their junior high days at Bingham Middle School. Tech, whose talents for beatboxing had earned him the nickname “Shockbox,” beat Scoob in that first battle.

But the two quickly became friends, particularly when Scoob learned that Tech lived in his same neighborhood. When they met, Tech would help Scoob work on different beatboxing styles.

The two lost touch soon after graduating from Southwest High in 1991. Tech moved on to work on his rap career, while Scoob was still running the streets.

It wasn’t until a few years later in the mid ‘90s — after Scoob had cleaned up his act and began pursuing music — that the two would cross paths again.

They met up at a music expo in Minnesota. Scoob was looking at starting his own group, while Tech was in between labels. The two helped form the successful local rap group, 57th Street Rogue Dog Villains, which released four albums under Midwestside Records, including the popular single, “Let’s Get Fucked Up.”

In 2002, Tech left to help form Strange Music. Meanwhile, Scoob’s distribution label filed for bankruptcy.

Fed up with the music game, Scoob left it entirely to help raise his four daughters.

“I went home and did the family thing for six, seven years,” Scoob says. “I’ve just been laying low out of people’s eyesight, regrouping.”

But it was Tech who helped coax Scoob back, particularly within the past year. Tech asked Scoob to perform a series of collaborations, rekindling the magic the two experienced while with 57th Street RDVs and fueling Scoob’s desire to return to the rap game. Now, Scoob is ready to make his grand reappearance.

“The train got derailed,” Scoob said of his relationship with Tech. “I feel like we’ve got unfinished business.”

That unfinished business renews itself with a message that Big Scoob believes will resonate with others.

“In every city, every state, there’s ghettos,” Scoob says. “I believe when I tell my story, there’s millions of niggas who share the same story. I believe if I can get them to just listen to the music, it’s about to be something big, man.”