Toddy Tee

b. Compton, Los Angeles, California, USA. One of the Los Angeles old school, Toddy Tee is as significant to the development of west coast rap as Afrika Bambaataa is to the New York scene, though he rarely receives the credit. This probably has a great deal to do with the lack of musical archive his career has produced. One important such document was the Batteram tape, a live outing circulated in similar fashion to the Zulu Nation’s ‘throwdowns’. It was later revisited in Ice-T’s ‘Six’, and documented the LAPD’s new weapon in the war against crack houses, an armoured car that they could drive straight into suspect’s houses. The tape was one of a sequence traded between Toddy Tee and fellow rhymer Mixmaster Spade, but proved much more popular than anything which had gone before. In the wake of its success it was eventually released as a single on Evejim in 1986, which would add ‘Just Say No’ to Tee’s discography two years later. However, this provides scant testimony to the man’s influence.
© TiVo