No song from the early years of Chicago hip-hop occupies a place quite like Sugar Ray Dinke’s “Cabrini Green Rap.” It’s not the first Chicago rap record—depending on whose story you believe, that honor goes to Casper’s 1980 EP Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show (reputedly recorded by a New Yorker visiting Chicago) or Eye Beta Rock’s 1982 12-inch “Super Rock Body Shock.” Dinke’s single didn’t come out till 1986, but it can lay claim to another first: unlike the handful of local records that preceded it, “Cabrini Green Rap” combined Chicago-centric subject matter with modest success outside the city. For his debut recording, released on vinyl and cassette, Dinke strung together vivid anecdotes of the unpredictable violence and institutional neglect that afflicted Cabrini-Green’s public housing towers, rapping over thundering drum machine and a jagged, cut-up guitar melody. The year after the song’s release, Mute Records imprint Rhythm King included it on a 1987 dance and hip-hop compilation called Move . . . The Rhythm Kingdom.
Where were these battles?
We used to go out to the CopHerBox II; the Temptations would be out there, and different stars. We would always try to get in, so that we could try to get discovered. And then one day, it had a New York-versus-Chicago rap battle. It had Heavy D, some more guys out there from New York—they came to Chicago to battle us, not knowing how good we were. We won first place in that rap contest. But we didn’t go far—our name didn’t go far, as like a household name or nothing like that. We was local talent. We were local stars in the neighborhood.
“Cabrini Green Rap” took me about a week. Took me a week to write and learn it. Every day I had to try to read my rap on paper and get it memorized. So I memorized it well, and I had it so good that when I did say it, it made a lot of sense to people—poignant and important things to other people.
How’d you develop your craft from there?
What does it mean for you now to return to this song, to return to Chicago to play it? It’s an honor, man. Just the thought of somebody still thinking about me is shocking. This is, like, in 1986, and I was 23 years old back then. I’m 55 now, and they’re still talking about “Cabrini Green Rap”? Wow.
