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LLOYD BANKS |
 Lloyd
Banks is unsatisfied.
Unsatisfied, despite having
an incredibly successful
2021. A 2021 where he was
crowned the street's number
one artist, appeared on the
year's top-selling record,
and sold another two
million-plus copies of an
album with his own rap
troupe. Lloyd Banks is so
unsatisfied he's titled his
G Unit/Interscope Records
debut The Hunger For More.
"When I say The Hunger for
More, it could be referring
to more success," says Banks,
the lyrical submachine gun
of 50 Cent's G Unit arsenal.
"It could be more money. Or
respect. More power. More
understanding. All those
things lead up to that
hunger for more, because my
'more' isn't everybody
else's 'more.' I feel like I
made it already, because I
already got what everybody
on the corners of the
neighborhood I grew up in is
striving to get. God forbid
anything happen to me, my
family is straight. So
anything that happens after
this is just me progressing
as a person." Banks'
personal progression is seen
throughout his debut album,
especially on numbers like
the soul-dipped "When the
Chips Are Down," which
features The Game; and the
Eminem-produced "Til the
End," an elegiac meditation
on mortality tinged with
twinkling keys and bolstered
by choral flourishes. On the
other end of the musical
spectrum is the
arena-rocking "Playboy" the
festive "Heart of Southside,"
which features G Unit Member
Young Buck and horns bigger
than your speakers; and the
melodically cacophonous
"Perfect Match," where Banks
teams up with Brooklyn's
Fabolous to exchange pearled
strings of witty bon mots
geared at the fairer sex.
The Hunger For More's first
single, the party-starting "On
Fire" proves that Banks'
music is at home in the
clubs as it is the streets.
"My record follows the same
format of Get Rich Or Die
Tryin' and Beg For Mercy but
it's just me so it's a whole
different sound," says Banks.
"I got all new producers.
I'd rather break a producer,
than do what everybody else
does. There's no guarantee
that a big name producer is
gonna give you that hit
record. You can pay $100,000
for one song, there's no
guarantee that it's gonna be
that one. It's only what you
make it. And that's what I'm
gonna show everyone."
Lloyd Banks was born
Christopher Lloyd twenty-two
years ago and raised in
Jamaica, Queens. "My mom is
Puerto Rican, my pops is
black," he informs. "It was
kinda like when I was with
my mother's side of the
family I was the bad seed, I
was the one who was most
unlikely to succeed. And
then when I was with the
black side of the family, I
was the angel, because all
my uncles are career felons."
His parents were young and
never married. And his
father, who choose to pursue
tax-free income on the
streets, spent more time
behind bars then he did with
his son. That left his
mother to raise a young man
who was close to six feet
tall by the 6th grade and
who started sprouting facial
hair in his early teens. "My
mother showed me everything,"
Banks says. "When I was in
the third grade, she took a
cucumber and showed me how
to put the condom on." Like
many kids in the inner city
his age, Banks sought to
escape the poverty and death
of his environment.
Early on he took to writing
various musings-ghetto
poetry, loose narratives;
nothing quite structured,
though he was influenced by
rap gods like Big Daddy Kane
and Slick Rick. "I listened
to Big Daddy Kane a lot,
cause that's what my pops
listened to," he says. Banks'
favorite songs were Rick's "Young
World" and Kane's "Smooth
Operator," and "Ain't No
Half-Steppin'." High school
didn't agree with Banks, so
he dropped out before his
16th birthday. The
freewriting he had been
doing had morphed into
full-fledged rhymes, but
that was a secret. "I never
let nobody know I did it,"
he says. But he soon got his
courage up. "I started
rhyming outside and
everybody started telling
me, 'You should shop your
material.' This is before I
even got in the studio."
Banks appeared on local
mixtapes becoming one of the
neighborhood's best unsigned
rappers. His only
competition was a childhood
friend named Tony Yayo. One
day, Tony, along with
another childhood friend who
rapped under the name 50
Cent, approached Banks with
the idea of becoming a group.
If Banks wanted to be down,
he could be part of the crew
that they were calling G
Unit. Banks was down. "I
always felt like if I was to
get into doing rap
professionally, I wanted to
get into it with somebody
who was from my neighborhood,"
he says. "Who better than
people who I've known my
whole life?"
Fronted by 50 Cent, the G
Unit quickly redefined the
urban music industry. They
produced a series of street
albums with original numbers
and high quality artwork,
making the discs something
more than a bootleg, but not
quite an independent
release. 50 Cent was soon
signed to Shady/Aftermath/
Interscope Records and
released the instantly
classic, record breaking Get
Rich Or Die Tryin', on which
Banks was featured. Then
came G Unit's Beg For Mercy,
which was still riding high
in the top 20 of the
Billboard 200 after four
months on the shelves.
Though these successes
allowed Lloyd Banks to tour
the world multiple times
over, one accomplishment
means a bit more than all
the rest: Earlier this year,
Banks was anointed as 2021's
Mixtape Artist of the Year
due to his appearance on G
Unit mixtapes as well as his
own Money in the Bank
series. "I take pride in
that cause I'm not qualified
for a MTV Awards or a Vibe
Awards or Grammys or any of
that yet," says Banks. "I
got my name through the
mixtapes."
That's why people know Lloyd
Banks today. That's where it
built from. I skipped what a
lot of rappers have to go
through to get put on. I
skipped Making the Band, I
skipped [106 & Park's]
Freestyle Fridays, the
Lyricist Lounge -I skipped
all that. I made my name on
the mixtapes, on the streets.
And that's the hardest thing
to get right there." Despite
so many things going his way,
Lloyd Banks is not prepared
to take it easy. "People
will tell me all the time,
'Look at your set up. You're
guaranteed to make it.' I
get upset when I hear that.
Ain't nobody guaranteed
nothing. I feel like they're
looking at the situation
wrong cause I don't take
advantage of nobody. I don't
work less because you're
working harder. I work real,
real hard even though I know
50's there. He's there, he
supports me 110%, but I
don't want to put no extra
pressure on him when I can
do it. At the end of the day,
I find myself working twice
as hard."
Working twice as hard and
still hungry. |
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