Clarence "Terry" Ronnie Keaton aka "T La Rock" was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, he developed a passion for hip-hop, making his way as a break dancer, DJ and rapper. He's the older brother of Special K, rapper of the group the Treacherous Three, and of T.O.N.E.-z, another rapper. Special K and Rick Rubin are schoolmates and should make a track together, but the emcee is already busy with his group (also composed of LA Sunshine and Kool Moe Dee), so Special K introduces Rubin to his brother T La Rock.
To record the song at Rubin's, T La Rock brings his own DJ Louie Lou, Special K is also there. The boys record the piece but they only have one cassette available and they argue about who should take it home between T La Rock and Louie Lou, who doesn't give up and is excluded from the song. Back at Rubin's, a new DJ is needed to make scratches, the producer calls DJ Jazzy Jay, a member of Soulsonic Force, Afrika Bambaataa's group.
In 1984, his single "It's Yours" was released: the song is both the first produced by Rick Rubin, released a few months before Rubin was joined on the label by Russell Simmons, and the first released by Def Jam Recordings. In fact, the single is the first to boast the Def Jam logo printed on CD, preceding LL Cool J's "I Need a Beat", often considered the label's first release, although "It's Yours" has never been part of the label's master collection, since it was released by Partytime Records, the hip-hop division of Arthur Baker's dance music label Streetwise Records.
On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of its release, the song was licensed to Def Jam (Universal), which pressed it on vinyl. The music is by Rick Rubin, who takes a sample from Uncle Louie's "I Like Funky Music" to create the background sound of the piece, the scratches are by Jazzy Jay, in the background in the chorus there are the Beastie Boys, uncredited together with Special K. T La Rock overwhelms the rhythm with a fresh rapping and an unusual vocabulary for the time, later copied in part by LL. The song was a hit and also managed to get considerable radio airplay for the time, greatly influencing subsequent artists, being sampled by Public Enemy ("Louder than a Bomb") and Nas ("The World is Yours"). The hit allowed T La Rock to sign with the newly formed Fresh Records, a subsidiary of Sleeping Bag Records founded by William Socolov with Kurtis Mantronik of Mantronix as A&R.
After releasing other singles that failed to gain the same following as his debut, in 1987 T La Rock released his debut studio album, "Lyrical King (From the Boogie Down Bronx)". Consisting of ten tracks and three-quarters of an hour of material, the album is almost entirely produced and mixed by Louie Lou and T La Rock, Kurtis Mantronik of Mantronix produces a couple of tracks, Greg Nice beatboxes on three tracks and MC Serch is present (uncredited) on "Tudy Fruity Judy".
With the notable exception of "Back to Burn", the other singles released by the Bronx emcee aren't included on the album: this track, one of the few produced by Mantronik, boasts the best rhythm of the edition and is among the most successful tracks. The rest of the effort does not present any choices that deserve to be particularly remembered among some beatbox and hardcore rap cuts of quality, since the production does not adequately support the lyrical scope of the author, indeed, there are annoying missteps such as "Having Fun", a sort of skit in which the boy unsuccessfully tries a series of senseless and quite useless attempts at comedy and the similar and exhausting "Live Drummin' with the Country Boy" that ends the album after ten minutes.
Released by Fresh Records, T La Rock presents himself for the cover with an Adidas French Football Federation uniform won against the French rapper Akhenaton of IAM in a streetball game when the group arrived in New York in 1986, he also puts the names of his producer DJ Louie Lou and Greg Nice on the cover and appears with them on the back cover. The album enters the rnb chart (#64) supported by four singles ("Back to Burn", "Tudy Fruity Judy", "It's Time to Chill", "Big Beat in London"; the latter for UK market only). In 2005 Traffic publishes it adding five tracks, the hit "It's Yours", "Breakdown" and "He's Incredible" from an EP released in 1984, and the singles produced by Mantronix "Breaking Bells" and "Bass Machine", giving quantity and above all a lot of quality to the project. Not recommended, 5/10.
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