Smoke Some Kill is the third album by rapper Schoolly D. The album was released in 1988 for Jive Records and was produced by Schoolly D.

Release

Though the album was not as successful as Saturday Night! – The Album, it did manage to make it to #180 on the Billboard 200 and #50 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop album charts.

"Signifying Rapper"

The song "Signifying Rapper" was based upon the "signifying monkey" character of African-American folklore. A version of this story was performed by Rudy Ray Moore. Schoolly D's adaptation of the story is recited over the rhythm guitar figure from Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir". The song was featured in the film Bad Lieutenant, and inspired the title of (and is discussed in) the book Signifying Rappers: Rap and Race in the Urban Present. "Signifying Rapper" was the target of several lawsuits following its use in the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant, in multiple scenes. In 1994, Live Home Video and distributor Aries Film Releasing were ordered to destroy any unsold copies of Bad Lieutenant as part of a copyright infringement ruling. Director Abel Ferrara was angered by the incident, which he felt "ruined the movie": ""Signifying Rapper" was out for five years, and there wasn't a problem. Then the film had already been out for two years and they start bitching about it. [...] It cost Schoolly like $50,000. It was a nightmare. And meanwhile, "Signifying Rapper" is 50 million times better than "Kashmir" ever thought of being. [...] Why sue? You should be happy that somebody is paying homage to your work."

• Abel Ferrara

Critical reception

The album received generally mixed reviews from most music critics. The Los Angeles Daily News gave the album a B. Rolling Stone reviewer Cary Darling panned the album, writing "With its images of gun-toting bluster, mushrooming genitals and rampant drug use – backed by thuddingly dull beats – Smoke Some Kill should be played for every prospective rapper so he'll know what not to do." Allmusic reviewer Ron Wynn called the album "more chaotic than creative". In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave the album a B− rating, calling Schoolly D "the white audience's paranoid-to-masochistic fantasy of a B-boy" and commending him for "realizing the fantasy so scarily, and for commanding his own tough-guy sound".

Track listing

Personnel