Hip-Hop Albums of the Year

18 August, 2022

Nini X — She's Dangerous


Rajni "Nini X" Faulks, rapper native of Steubenville, Ohio, raised in Compton, Los Angeles, debuts in 1992 as the main guest on Tweedy Bird Loc's first album, "187 Ride By", then Bird Loc introduces her in a project which unites several friends (all Crips if I'm not mistaken) in the Underground Connection (aka The Underworld Connection aka Tha Underworld) together with Blue Rag, Do or Die, Sin Loc, Att Will, Big D Mark and Bird Loc himself, then he takes Nini X to Ronnie Phillips: only after insisting, she manages to become part of the album "Bangin on Wax" by the Bloods & Crips project, choosing the name Bloody Mary and taking part in four tracks, "Rip a Crab in Half", "Piru Love", "No Way Out" and "C-K Ride".

Affiliated with the Bloods, the Compton emcee achieved good notoriety by participating in the song and music video of "Piru Love", one of the main hits of the project and one of the most remembered tracks in the history of the collective. In 1994, after also participating in the Young Soldierz album, Nini X made her solo debut with her own CD.

Production is handled by Ronnie Phillips along with J. Stank, Duke-E Fingaz, Lil Stretch, DJ Noise, Jerome Evans and Leroy Dukes. J. Stank plays bass and keyboards, DJ Noise aka Geek Noise and Nini X play keyboards, Duke-E Fingaz plays guitar, Leroy Dukes plays bass and strings. Ronnie Phillips, Pimper Jackson and J. Stank take care of mixing. DJ Battle Kat and DJ Noise provide scratches. The guests are AWOL, Big Wy, James Carter, Lil Stretch, Red Rum, Shades, Quiet Storm, Big Stretch, Gin, Tweedy Bird Loc, Joker, Flip, Key Low G, Keystone, Lunatic, Don Dadda Freeze, J-Ill , Wanted Niggas and Tammi Holt. The cover features the artist in the center, the emcee's name on the left in black on an orange background. The title is on the right, always in black.

The music draws inspiration from Los Angeles g-funk and the lyrics are the same as the Bloods & Crips songs. There are some strong moments with the introductory posse ("Straight Regulatin' Shit") and the solo cut "Gangsta Props", for the rest of these 70 minutes the project goes back and forth between being average and just above of the average. Almost all the guests are Bloods, guys you may have heard on Bloods & Crips or Young Soldierz records, alternatively you will almost certainly have never heard of them. Among the few Crips present, there are AWOL, Tweedy Bird Loc and DJ Battlecat.

Released by Ronnie Phillips' Dangerous Records and distributed by Warlock, the album doesn't sell as much as Bloods & Crips, but it grinds out enough copies to make Nini X realize that something isn't right in her finances: the girl turns to Phillips for explanations of the case, which don't arrive. The Compton emcee leaves the label and breaks ties with Phillips, immediately ceasing to collaborate with Bloods & Crips and not being part of the collective's second album.

In the following years, Nini X aka Bloody Mary forms a duo together with C-Note, female rapper from Long Beach, member of the Crips who participated with her in the album "Bangin on Wax", albeit on different tracks. The collaborative album "Livin Da Thug Life" was born from the duo Reality Check, which received no response from public and critics.

She later participated in the albums of Assassin (1997), C-Funk (1999) and RBX (2005); in 2002 Dangerous Records decided to collect part of Nini X's catalog and publish it without her authorization in a compilation ("Day of Resurrection") under the moniker Bloody Mary. Probably at some point Nini X signed with Death Row Records, without being able to release material. She's in a compilation of unreleased tracks from the label released in 2012 in which she appears twice, in "Untouchable" with Lady of Rage and Storm and in "When Nina's Gone" (which the back cover mistakenly credits to the group OFTB).

Nini X died in November 2006 in an accident while riding her motorcycle in Compton.

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