Canibus

Germaine Williams (born December 9, 1974), better known by his stage name Canibus, is a Jamaican-American rapper.

Williams was born on December 9, 1974, in Kingston, Jamaica.

He is of Jamaican descent.

His father, Basil Williams, was a Jamaican and West Indian cricketer.

The family moved frequently, living in The Bronx; Newark, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Miami; Buffalo; and London due to his mother's career requiring constant relocation.

Canibus stated that he was an introverted child growing up.

About.com placed him at number 32 on their list of the "Top 50 MCs of Our Time (1987–2007)", while in 2012 The Source placed him number 44 on their list of the Top 50 Lyricists of All Time.

He gained fame in the 1990s for his ability to freestyle, and released his debut album Can-I-Bus in 1998.

Canibus has released 13 solo studio albums, as well as multiple collaboration albums and EPs with other rappers as a member of the Four Horsemen, Refugee Camp All-Stars, Sharpshooterz, Cloak N Dagga, the Undergods and one-half of T.H.E.M.

He began rhyming in the early 1990s and by 1992 under the name Canibus Sativa, and formed a duo called T.H.E.M. (The Heralds of Extreme Metaphors) with Atlanta rapper Webb (now called C.I., also known as Central Intelligence).

After completing high school in 1992, he spent a year working for AT&T Corporation and another year as a data analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice.

He studied computer science at DeKalb College in Atlanta.

In 1996, T.H.E.M. split and Canibus teamed with businessman Charles Suitt.

That same year Charles Suitt introduced Canibus to platinum producer Frankie Cutlass and the two collaborated on a song.

Canibus also appeared on the Music Makes Me High remix by the Lost Boyz featuring Tha Dogg Pound making it Canibus' first official appearance on a record.

In December 1997, Canibus first publicly discussed a verbal confrontation with LL Cool J in an interview with Tourè for The Village Voice.

Also attending the interview was John Forté, DMX, Big Pun, Mos Def and Mic Geronimo.

The roundtable discussion was recorded by Kurt Nice and featured in Shades of Hip Hop compilation Hot 2 Def in 1998 and re-released in 2004 on Shades of Hip Hop: The Cypher.

Canibus' debut album Can-I-Bus was released on September 8, 1998.

The song "Second Round K.O.", produced by Wyclef Jean, was a success, with the video featuring Wyclef and a cameo appearance by boxer Mike Tyson.

The album contained a lot of socially-conscious material, such as corruption within the U.S. government, AIDS, and violence in modern America.

Canibus had a feud with LL Cool J over a verse that Canibus gave on LL's track "4,3,2,1" from his album Phenomenon.

The track featured Canibus, Method Man, Redman, and DMX.

Canibus's verse began with the line "Yo LL, is that a mic on your arm? Let me borrow that," referring to the microphone tattoo on LL Cool J's arm which LL Cool J interpreted as Canibus insulting him.

When the final cut of the song came out it featured LL Cool J's verse after Canibus's, mocking an unspecified person believed to be Canibus.

Because Wyclef produced the majority of the tracks on Can-I-Bus, Williams blamed him for the general dissatisfaction with Can-I-Bus and cut ties with him, going as far as to diss Wyclef on the title track of his second album 2000 B.C. ("You mad at the last album? I apologize for it / Yo, I can't call it, motherfucking Wyclef spoiled it!").

2000 B.C. featured the first collaboration between Canibus and Kurupt, Ras Kass and Killah Priest, a rap supergroup collectively known as the KKK Hrsmn (referring to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), on the track "Horsementality".

Though following 2000 B.C.'s release it had been announced that the group would be releasing an album, these plans never materialized, with only an EP of outtakes from 2001 entitled The Horsemen Project released by Killah Priest's management in 2003.

Since 2000, however, the members of the group have worked together on various songs and rumors of a full-length HRSMN album have persisted and include speculation about collaborations with Pharoahe Monch, Common and Rakim, among others.

Wyclef Jean would respond to Canibus's earlier remark on the track "However You Want It" from his album, The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book.

In 2001, Canibus released his third album, C True Hollywood Stories.

It was released on Archives Music, an independent label owned by Williams' future business partner, Louis Lombard III.

His fourth full-length album Mic Club: The Curriculum was released in 2002.

Although the production was handled almost entirely by little-known producers, some of them from Europe, the record proved to be a greater critical success than the previous year's release.

Mic Club also saw Canibus return to a more complex rapping style, with a number of concept tracks and few songs with a chorus.

The album was released on Mic Club Music, Canibus' own label, but failed to chart, selling relatively few copies.

Though much bitterness between Canibus and Wyclef Jean remained for a period of time, the two artists finally settled their differences at the end of 2004; they have since worked together on two remixes of the Machel Montano song "Carnival Survivors".

In an interview with HipHopsite.com conducted in November 2005, Williams claimed that he had recorded five songs with Wyclef and Jerry 'Wonder' Duplessis at Platinum Studios in New York for an upcoming Fugees reunion album.

In an interview conducted in 2005, Williams' former promoter, Pak-Man, who worked on over half of the album with the rapper, spoke on the record, with his explanation leaning toward the album being intended as satire: "At that time Canibus was in the studio recording a lot of songs and [I] mean a lot, but he didn't want to make the fans wait no more so he did C True Hollywood Stories and he wanted to have fun wit, so thats what we did we had fun wit".

In an interview on AllHipHop.com posted on April 8, 2005, Williams was asked what direction he was trying to take with that album; in his response, he stated "That album depicts the state of affairs in my life at the time – nothing more, nothing less".