Beanie Sigel Remembers His Elementary School Rap Group With Black Thought

Beanie Sigel fell in love with Hip Hop as a child growing up in Philly in the ’80s, and prior to the finding fame, he was actually in a rap group that included Black Thought.

Speaking to VLADTV, the former Roc-A-Fella rapper reflected on once being in the same crew as The Roots legend while they went to the same elementary school.

“Black Thought, that was my first rap partner,” he revealed. “Yeah, we were in a group in elementary school. Cousin Reek, yeah, Tyreek, we went to school together [and] everything.”

“We running around writing graffiti, breakdancing, we just hung out together. [Playing] hookey over school and listening to Sugar Hill Gang — major Scarface fan.”

While the Broad Street Bully didn’t expand much on the group, Black Thought previously provided more details in a 2020 interview with AllHipHop where he said the trio referred to themselves as The Crash Crew and won a school talent show.

“So the next year I came back with a rap group called The Crash Crew. It was me, Beanie Sigel, and another one my homies, this brother named Waleek,” he said.

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“We came and we had two break-dancers, my cousin’s doing graffiti on stage, and we had a human beatboxer, and just every element of Hip Hop culture, except the DJ. We didn’t have a DJ ’cause we performed to cassette, but all the elements were represented, and we wound up taking the title that year, and I sort of never looked back since then.”

Het continued: “Beanie Sigel is from the same neighborhood. He’s like a year younger than me. So I was in third grade. His older sister was my classmate. We are from the same part of South Philly, just a block or so apart. We’ve known each other since we were babies. So that was both of our first rap performances together.”

There’s no known footage of the performance from the neophyte rappers at the time, but Beanie Sigel and The Roots frontman’s paths would cross once again when they reached rap fame as they connected on hits such as 1999’s Scott Storch-produced “Adrenaline” and “Philly Live.”