CLARENCE REID was just 20 years old when, basically, he recorded the first ever rap song. It was 1965, and the song was called “Rap Dirty.” But Reid didn’t want his career as the man who wrote and produced songs for “serious” R&B artists like Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave—and later, disco acts like KC & the Sunshine Band—to be compromised. He had also had the hit “Nobody but You Babe” under his real name. So he came up with the alter-ego Blowfly, supposedly after his grandmother heard his X-rated rapping and told him, “You’re the nastiest thing I ever met, you’re no better than a blowfly.” “I’m known around the world as the nasty rapper,” he proudly declared.
His debut album, 1971’s The Weird World of Blowfly, is just bizarre. It features two songs about farting, one of them a spoof of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and the other of Curtis Mayfield’s “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um.” It’s not hard to figure out which song “Hole Man” is parodying. Everything else is either about scat or sex, or both. It’s funny, but a lot like the X-rated party records of the time. More original is 1978’s Porno Freak, and his best album, 1980’s Blowfly’s Party. Besides possibly inventing the genre of rap, Blowfly also laid the groundwork for graphic gangstas like the Geto Boys and Eminem, and was a direct inspiration for sex-crazed hip-hop freaks like Kool Keith. Interestingly, “Rap Dirty” also touched on the same theme of police racism that Ice Cube would blow up years later—and even sounds a little like “Fuck Tha Police.”
BLOWFLY performs Thursday (April 1) at 8:30pm at the VooDoo Lounge, 14 S. Second St., San Jose. Tickets are $8. (408.286.8636)
