Cage

• Genre: East Coast Underground
• Hometown: New York
• Cage Website

About

An underground favorite with a long, twisted history, Cage has one of the most tormented back stories in hip-hop. As a young child, his father was a dope fiend who shot up in front of him, abandoned the family and once held them at gunpoint. Turning to drugs and crime after bouncing around from relative to relative, Cage was institutionalized as a teenager, where he was subjected to a number of experimental treatments with various untested psych drugs. After 18 months, he came out and recorded a rap demo. He also appeared on Pete Nice's solo LP Dust To Dust in 1993. Hooking up with various figures in the New York scene (Bobbito, KMD, Kurious, etc.), he was on the verge of getting signed to his first label deal but was thwarted by drug addiction and a baby on the way. By '97 he had gotten himself together (relatively) and released "Agent Orange" on Fondle 'Em Records, which was nothing so much as a homage to A Clockwork Orange,finding him rapping exclusively about drugs, torture, murder and sadistic chaos. The record was a huge hit and led to him signing with Eastern Conference, where he released several LPs, including the Smut Peddlers project and Movies For The Blind. Cage's psycho-rap style struck a chord, especially with young Internet-savvy white kids, who embraced him as the underground version of Eminem. In 2005, he split from EC and signed to Def Jux, where he had recorded with the Weathermen earlier. There he released Hell's Winter, a far more personal, less shocking LP. It won praise from critics the world over and showed that Cage was more than just another "me-so-crazy" white rapper.

- Brolin Winning