Suge Knight Gets Back in the Game With New Players

Four years in prison did little to diminish the legacy of Marion “Suge” Knight, whose Death Row Records label was ground zero for West Coast rap in the ‘90s. It was home to Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and 2Pac as they shaped a generation of urban music.

One year after being released from prison, Knight is officially putting that legacy on the line with the first album from his new label, Tha Row. “Say Hi to the Bad Guy,” the debut album by Long Beach rapper Crooked I, is due Sept. 24, and Knight has a roster of other acts ready to roll out, including a posthumous album from TLC member Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes in October.

Leading off is a pressure position for new artist Crooked I.

“Some artists may not have wanted to be the first,” says the rapper, 26. “2Pac alone sold something like 30 million albums on Death Row. Some people are scared of that. But I’m ready to step into the pressure. If I was Kobe [Bryant], I want to hit that last shot to win the game. I’m up to the challenge.”

Crooked I and Knight started work on the album when Knight was released last August from Sheridan Federal Correctional Institution in Oregon. He was there for violation of probation for previous assault charges. From the start, they had a mission.

“We wanted to restore the feeling that was missing from West Coast rap,” Crooked says. “It’s like our sound was locked up with Suge.”

One song, “So Damn Hood,” is already getting a lot of play at hip-hop station KPWR-FM (105.9) and shows roots in the classic West Coast sound, with a hard beat and stern attitude. But it also displays the artist’s distinctive flair for rhyme and structure.

Knight says that it’s not just a matter of a sound, but an attitude that he feels is missing in the current climate.

“No one’s having fun in the music business,” he says. “You can hear it in the tracks. You get an album with just one or two good songs now. There’s so much tension. We’re having fun, we’re happy. We’re not doing this album just to make money, but doing it for the community--get a new artist and take over, keep the little kids’ hopes alive so they say, ‘I can do it.’ It’s not the same guy doing the same rap for the last 10 years.”

At the very least, Tha Row comes with street credibility, says Alan Light, former editor in chief of Vibe magazine and rock monthly Spin.

“It’s enough to get you noticed,” Light says, but adds, “It’s been a long time since Suge was releasing hits with notable frequency. There’s no arguing that whether it was Suge or Dre or the combination that they identified a feel and sound for that time. The question is can they do that over longer stretches of time.” A more delicate matter may be the Lopes album, under the project name N.I.N.A. (A TLC album she had been working on at the time of her death last April is expected to come later from Arista Records.)

“There’s a whole lot of emotion involved with it,” Knight says. “When the tragedy first happened, I didn’t want to put the record out. I didn’t want to be looked at as just trying to make money.”

But Knight says he consulted with Lopes’ family and is making plans to donate some of the proceeds to community projects in the Honduras tha Lopes supported. “I know the one thing she wanted was the solo album,” Knight says.

CASTING CALL: Many rock fans know about Cynthia Plaster Caster, the former groupie who with a few cohorts is responsible for one of rock’s most intriguing and notorious memorabilia collections--images of rock stars’ anatomy cast in, well, plaster. KISS even did a song about it in the ‘70s.

But starting today, rock fans will have the opportunity to own pieces of this history. Drawing on her collection of more than 50 casts of male genitalia (subjects ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Jello Biafra) and a recent series of female breasts (Peaches, Stereolab’s Letitia Sadier), the artist will be selling limited-edition reproductions and related drawings on a new Web site, www.cynthia pcaster.org. Most of the proceeds will go to her Cynthia Plaster Caster Foundation, a not-for-profit venture.

“My motivation is to help needy artists, musicians and filmmakers like myself, people who have great ideas for projects but not the bucks,” says Chicagoan Plaster Caster, whose real name is Cynthia Albritton.

The replicas will be sold individually (starting at $750) and in groupings, such as guitarists.

Plaster Caster had been looking for a suitable way to sell reproductions since winning possession of the collection in a 1994 lawsuit against former Frank Zappa manager Herb Cohen, who had custody since the early ‘70s. Now she’s recruiting new “castees” to help with the venture.

“I will never retire,” she says. “As long as there are talented people who have appendages, I’m there.”

SPECTOR VECTOR: When English band Starsailor played at the Palace in Hollywood last fall, the group went home with a surprising souvenir--an invitation to work with producer Phil Spector, who attended the show and liked what he heard. But given that the notoriously reclusive creator of the ‘60s “wall of sound” style hasn’t produced a full album since the Ramones’ 1980 “End of the Century,” the band was not counting on anything happening.

A few weeks ago, though, Spector flew to England at his own cost and spent five days with the band, producing two new songs. And now, with the band holding London’s Abbey Road Studios for November to finish its second album, Spector is in discussions to possibly produce the whole project.

SMALL FACES: Christina Aguilera, ‘N Sync, Usher, Aaron Carter, the Baha Men, Smash Mouth, Jessica Simpson and the A*Teens have all contributed to “Disneymania,” an album of Disney songs due Sept. 17 from Walt Disney Records. A TV special is being planned for the fall.... On a similar note, “For the Kids,” an album benefiting VH1’s Save the Music education and equipment efforts, is due Oct. 22 from Nettwerk Records. Among those performing children’s songs are Tom Waits, Sarah McLachlan, Five for Fighting and Remy Zero ....

English band Idlewild scored a coup with director Wim Wenders signing on to direct a video for the song “Live in a Hiding Place” from the album “The Remote Part,” just released in the U.K. and due here in early 2003. The video was being shot last week in a western setting at the Melody Ranch in Newhall. Wenders, whose film credits include “Paris, Texas” and the documentary “The Buena Vista Social Club,” has directed just a handful of rock videos, including clips for U2 and the Eels.

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Steve Hochman is a regular contributor to Calendar.