Mistah F.A.B.

One of the most prominent and colorful figures of the San Francisco Bay Area hyphy movement (sometimes hailed as the scene's "crown prince"), North Oakland-based rapper Mistah F.A.B. presents a somewhat exceptional combination of street credibility, social consciousness, astute introspection, and irrepressible goofiness. Born Stanley P. Cox in 1982 and raised by his mother and grandmother, he stresses the positivity of hyphy's party-happy, irreverent, but inspirational "go dumb" mentality and manifests a dedication to inner-city social issues, which doesn't mean he's immune to a certain amount of mainstream rap's flamboyant materialism: his handle is supposedly an acronym for "Money Is Something to Always Have -- FaEva After Bread." F.A.B., who also goes by Fabby Davis, Jr., titled his second album Son of a Pimp in bluntly literal reference to his pimp father, who was incarcerated for much of F.A.B.'s childhood and died of AIDS-related complications when his son was 12, around the time he started writing rhymes. That album, F.A.B.'s first for hyphy forerunner Mac Dre's Thizz label (following his 2003 debut, Nig-Latin), featured collaborations with many noted Bay Area rappers including Dre, E-40, Turf Talk, and G-Stack of Oakland heroes the Delinquents -- as well as Kanye West -- and boasted one of the biggest hits of the resurgent hyphy scene, "Super Sic wit' It."

From 🇺🇸 United States