Throwback Thursday: "2nd Round KO" — Canibus

This song blew up overnight. Most people (beyond the underground scene) had barely ever heard of Canibus when he appeared on LL's "4, 3, 2, 1" (where the virtual-unknown stole the show). Then a few weeks after that track hit the airwaves, "2nd Round KO" came out of nowhere like an assassin in the night to wipe Cool James's days as a feared emcee off the planet. From the the coup of getting Iron Mike Tyson to cameo, to the line-for-line lethal lyrics—many of which call out LL on everything people were afraid (at the time) to say about him in public, this track was like a audio guerrilla warfare, polarizing and downright brutal. LL tried to respond with "The Ripper Strikes Back," a god awful attempt at flexing lyrical muscle he just didn't have at that point in his career.

At the time of this song's release, I actually had some people tell me—speaking from some kind of ridiculous slave mentality—that Canibus, no matter how badly LL had wronged him, was wrong for challenging LL, simply because he was a hall of fame emcee. Fuck. That. LL deserved everything he got. Like Chris Rock said, "ain't no one above an ass-whoopin'."