Legend Has It\u2026<\/a> series, which saw seven legendary acts crafting new projects with guidance from Nas. The idea for Victory was spearheaded by actor and DJ Idris Elba, who ran into Slick Rick at a 2021 party and suggested he work on an album. Rick credits his British brethren for tapping Black Is King co-director Meji Alaba for the album\u2019s sleek visuals. The full Victory visual, which Rick\u2019s wife and manager Mandy Aragones helped craft alongside Alaba, was shown at SXSW London as well as the Tribeca Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Rick, Victory was the anchor of what he deems a successful 2025. \u201c[We gave] the public something to entertain themselves, something to drive around in,\u201d he says. \u201cGive that festive vibe, good vibe, a nice cocoa fireplace atmosphere. Each song takes you in a different direction.\u201d His first project in more than a quarter-century came at the right time, as he had been looking to fill a creative urge that he\u2019d felt for the previous three years or so. \u201cIf you got a void within yourself, you got to feed your void,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I fed the void within myself and my wife brought it to the marketplace, everybody was like, \u2018Yes, you\u2019re feeding the void that\u2019s within our soul, our spirits.\u2019\u201d These days, Rick is still pursuing creativity in other mediums, such as designing a window for the famous Saks Fifth Avenue storefront in Manhattan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tVictory was recorded over the course of a year in the U.K., France, and America, typified by sessions consisting of \u201ca little bubbly, laughing, giggling\u201d among Rick and his friends. He says overall, the project\u2019s conception felt more like fun than any kind of pressure to prove himself after a long absence. While the average rapper with a two-decade gap between music might face the wrath of thirsty fans, he says he\u2019s never experienced his fanbase \u201ccrying\u201d for new music. That ease allowed him to reapproach his craft as easily as when he first honed it during after-work cipher sessions with friends in New York, where he settled after emigrating from London in 1976.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tHe tells me that in the Eighties, while hip-hop pioneers like Afrika Bambaataa and Fab Five Freddy made cross-cultural inroads in the Lower East Side club scene, his hip-hop rearing took place in uptown New York. It was at the Bronx Armory where he first met Doug E. Fresh at a 1984 rap battle event. His rent back then was just $350, and it didn\u2019t take long for him to recoup that many times over after joining the Get Fresh Crew: \u201cWhen I met Doug, I was getting $300 a night. 28 days in a month, $300 every time you walk around with this cat \u2014 our rent is paid. You got enough money to start getting cute.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHe elevated from a humble ring and bracelet combo (\u201cYou could always play it off with a tie,\u201d he advises) into the gold truck jewelry and designer fashion that made him a style icon. His wife rattles off the names of artists who\u2019ve asked to wear his signature chains: French Montana, Alicia Keys, and Ghostface Killah (a moment captured in Jay-Z\u2019s Fade to Black documentary).<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the Eighties, Rick says, \u201cWe saw the drug dealers, and they had on the giant shit, not little corny nigga shit. They set the bar by accident.\u201d Today, he\u2019s keeping it cool, with a silver ring and watch, and a pair of necklaces tucked under a black shirt. He\u2019s also wearing Clark Wallabees, a brand he\u2019s long worn, even doing a Victory collaboration.<\/p>\n
\n\tReclining in his suite\u2019s cream sectional, he tells me that the album allowed him to exercise his passion not just for rhyming, but beatmaking. It seems like artists don\u2019t get recognized as rapper-producers unless they beat us over their head with it. But, like his contemporary Rakim, Slick Rick is a rap icon with an underappreciated production catalog. He contributed to the production of some of his biggest hits, and to this day, he has a vault of over 300 beats that he can cull through. The first time he got on a beat machine was at producer Teddy Riley\u2019s house, and the inspiration deepened from there. \u201cOnce I saw the impact [of \u2018La Di Da Di\u2019 and \u2018The Show\u2019], I knew there was a value for this,\u201d he says. \u201cThen you say, \u2018Well, if this made noise, imagine they make this shit right here.\u2019\u201d Trusting his own beats began to make more sense than working with outside producers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe industry didn\u2019t give me the quality that I gave myself. I gave myself \u2018Children\u2019s Story,\u2019 \u2018Mona Lisa,\u2019 \u2018Hey, Young World.\u2019 They gave me shit that didn\u2019t make a mark on society. You can\u2019t lie to yourself. My stuff was better than what you was giving me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe likens every song to \u201can adventure,\u201d where he sonically traverses the map: \u201cMaybe it took me to the Caribbean, maybe it took me to some Latin area.\u201d His musical exploits on Victory stretch across the diaspora, from the classic hip-hop vibes of \u201cStress\u201d and the surging house composition of \u201cCome On Let\u2019s Go\u201d to the sample of reggae greats Dave & Ansel Collins on \u201cForeign\u201d. The soundscape reflects his diverse cultural identity. On \u201cI Did That,\u201d he says, \u201cI am British, I am Jamaican, I am American.\u201d I ask him about the line, and how he thinks his worldview melds into the music.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe spirit can be from anywhere. Get to know a spirit,\u201d he implores. \u201cSometimes accents [are] like, \u2018Ooh, that\u2019s different. What kind of brown person is you?\u2019 Think of spirit as all over the place, and the effects of a spirit being in England, or in Jamaica, or in America or Africa.\u201d Unfortunately, America\u2019s current assault on immigrants is threatening to make cross-cultural connection harder. Rick was convicted of attempted murder in 1990, spending two years in prison for the charge, and another three fighting the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service over his residency. Upon his release from jail in 1997, Rick upheld his fight for American citizenship, being granted full status in 2016. He calls the prolonged battle one of the biggest challenges of his life, and laments the \u201cvery sad\u201d state of what\u2019s happening today with ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen I was growing up, nobody cared what Latins was doing like that,\u201d he says. \u201cThe West Coast practically is Mexico. I didn\u2019t hear no ruckus about all that stuff. Now it got crazy. It got very anti-Latin and anti-Arab. It wasn\u2019t like that when I was coming up. I see it on TV. I can\u2019t ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tToward the end of our conversation, a waiter comes into his room with a large tray containing toast and butter, hot chocolate, and an orange drink of some sort in a tall glass. Munching on his toast, he marvels at how hip-hop has elevated from a hobby into a full-on industry. \u201cIt\u2019s a vein that feeds, it\u2019s a melting pot now, and it\u2019s a vein that feeds once it\u2019s nurtured,\u201d he says. \u201cIt can be educational, informative. Could be like a president standing in front of a pulpit, talking to his people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T he Manhattan hotel where Slick Rick is staying has exactly the kind of opulence you\u2019d expect him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,483,216,180417],"class_list":{"0":"post-367293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hip-hop","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-slick-rick"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}