Big Daddy Kane

Antonio Hardy
BORN: Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn-ite Big Daddy Kane (born Antonio Hardy, KANE is an acronym for King Asiatic Nobody's Equal) has nicely been able to balance his image as the ultimate hipster with the requisite solemnity and air of indignation and anger necessary to creditably deliver messages of Afrocentric awareness and Muslim reverence. He's done alternately inspirational, prophetical, ridiculous, and scandalous raps over his career, and has also managed to include duets with the maestro of love Barry White and legendary comedian Rudy Ray Moore, aka Dolemite, who laid waste to Kane in a dozens (insult-swapping) classic. Big Daddy Kane has been a high profile figure the past couple of years. Not only has he appeared in such films as Posse and Gunmen, but he also posed in Madonna's controversial photo book Sex, and issued a defiant disc Looks like a Job for Big Daddy Kane that offered no apologies for past actions and ridiculed unnamed individuals he claimed were fronting as gangsters. After 1994's Daddy's Home, he was absent from the studio for four years prior to releasing Veteranz Day.

~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide