MC Lyte has evolved from a ravenous MC rapping about “Poor Georgie” to a powerhouse brand behind media firm Sunni Gyrl Inc. and more. Lyte’s latest endeavor finds her back in front of the camera for a new sitcom called Partners In Rhyme.
Executive produced by Bentley Kyle White and MC Lyte, the ALLBLK original series tackles the generational gap between those who grew up during Hip Hop’s golden age and those who have only been privy to its current incarnation.
As described in a press release, “It’s old school versus new school in this comical look at the record industry through the eyes of a female Hip Hop icon and her young protégé,
“The light-hearted, half-hour sitcom follows the life of rap pioneer Lana Crawford [MC Lyte]. When Lana discovers she is being dropped as an artist from her label and in massive debt, the OG rap star is propositioned into managing her niece Lucious T [Precious Way from ABC’s Queens], an up and coming Instagram rapper.”
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Speaking to HipHopDX,MC Lyte says it didn’t take too much research for her to get up to speed on how the “kids” are interacting with social media and getting their music to a wider audience.
“I’ve definitely figured it out,” she says. “I’m a Libra and we’re into gadgets by nature. We’re always trying to figure out what’s the new thing that I can use that can make things easier for me. So 100 percent, I’m totally aware how stars are made today, but I also represent in the sitcom a bunch of people who don’t know, older folks who are much more accustomed to getting in their car and still listening to radio. I can’t tell you when was the last time I actually listened to radio. I listen to streaming services when I get in my car.”
Despite MC Lyte’s ever-expanding knowledge about Gen Z, she recognizes “there are a large group of people who are accustomed to doing things the way that they’ve always done them.” Still, the show represents both demographics in a comedic format.
MC Lyte’s career took off around the same age her protégé is in the show. In 1987, when Lyte was 16, she released her debut single, “I Cram to Understand U (Sam),” one of the first songs written about the crack era. Unbelievably, she was 12 years old when she wrote it. Lyte’s debut album, Lyte As A Rock, would follow in 1988, making history in the process as the first female solo rapper to drop an album. As someone with a deep past in Hip Hop culture, MC Lyte was easily able to apply her experiences to the show.
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“I just really did it in first person,” she explains. “Like, OK. So what would it feel like having a niece who the record label wanted to sign and not me? So what does that mean? Is there animosity?” They’re blood and they should get over it. All throughout the season, it was like, ‘Is this true school versus new school? Where, ‘We say it like this. No, we say it like that.’ Like, ‘What are you talking about? Well, that is how we say it now.’ You know, it’s us being able to have fun with what is clearly a distinction between two different generations.”
Precious Way and MC Lyte were tasked with doing some promo for the show and decided to do a TikTok video, but it was a struggle to find a song everyone knew. The common denominator wound up being Kanye West and his 2005 Late Registration song “Gold Digger.”
“We were gonna rap a song together, like Partners In Rhyme, that we both knew,” she says. “And there was nothing that she knew of my generation. And there was nothing I knew of her to the degree that we could sing it lyric to lyric. Guess who was the only artist that had a song that we both knew the first full verse of, but because it had profanity in it, we couldn’t do it? It was Kanye.
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“His music has spanned over the decades and somehow he ended up right in the middle of something I would know, and something she would know. But it was ‘Gold Digger,’ and the first verse is just too much, you couldn’t even do it, but that’s supposed to show this chasm, you know? This chasm that exists between generations, but we’re all being affected by this genre of Hip Hop that is completely taken over the globe. So it was really easy to be able to put all of that flavor into the show.”
There’s a moment in the show where MC Lyte’s expertise really shines. In a clip posted to TikTok, Lyte challenges her fictional niece to spit some bars off top. The aspiring rapper fires off several braggadocious bars about material items and money, to which Lyte says, “I don’t believe none of it. You have none of those things. You’re better off rapping about wanting a deal because that’s real.”
@watchallblkOkayyyy ??? ##PartnersInRhyme is streaming now on ##ALLBLK! ##MCLyte##PreciousWay##RonG##freestylerap♬ original sound – ALLBLK
Lyte has always kept it real throughout her career — whether she’s rapping about addiction on “Poor Georgie” or dissing Antoinette on “10% Dis.” Though Lil Yachty and other younger rappers have caught flak for not knowing their Hip Hop history, Lyte says it’s not because they’re not interested. She feels that’s a common misconception and appears to have more hope for the future of Hip Hop.
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“I run into people all the time who say, ‘My mom played this or my dad played this,'” she says. “I look on social media and see little kids in the back reciting rhymes to an old Arrested Development song. So I just think it’s the parents. I grew up listening to Carole King, Neil Diamond, James Taylor and Lionel Richie, when I thought his music was country. I didn’t even know.
“That it was like just some straight up, ‘Hello. Is it me you looking… [sings].’ Anyway, all of that to say, you begin to like what you hear as a child coming up. And so I listened to the O.J. and Al Green and all of those things, they were instilled within me by product of me being in the back of the vehicle or in the living room in the house.”
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She continues, “And I think these kids today, if their parents were true lovers of real deal Hip Hop, then automatically, they already know certain songs. They already know certain artists. I know when people come to me and say, ‘Oh my God, my father loved your song ‘Poor Georgie.’ He used to play it every morning on the way to school,’ it’s the education.
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Some of them go deep into studying. They want to know all about this obsession with the ’90s. They want to know what we were wearing, who was the hottest, what songs were out. It’s a whole crowd of them. If a DJ is coming to town and says he’s doing a ’90s set, it’s all young people coming to see what was it like. They want to live what we already have been through.”
MC Lyte has already committed to two seasons of Partners In Rhyme. The first episode premiered on November 18 and the next one airs Thursday (December 16) via the ALLBLK network.
