With a production and engineering whiz and two groove merchants as a rhythm section, the Dangerous Crew band was set. He was recruited into the mix by Shorty B. Rounding out the main players was Pee-Wee, a Richmond, California keyboard wizard who grew up playing in church and also eventually linked up with Digital Underground. Later, at the Acorn projects in Oakland, Shorty B ripped some P-funk for $hort and was invited to join the Shorty the Pimp sessions. And Shorty B wasn’t just a musical outlaw: When he met $hort he had a bookbag full of guns and heroin. He jammed on the bass with Funkadelic and fell in with Shock G and the revolving door of the supergroup of hip-hop outlaws Digital Underground. Next was Shorty B, a Washington, D.C.-bred multi-instrumentalist who cut his teeth in go-go bands before trouble made him relocate to Oakland. $hort ran into Banks at the cable company while they were paying their bills, and after exchanging numbers, Banks was brought on to take over the reins of Shorty the Pimp. The man behind the electro grooves of MC Ant’s The Great and the blunt mobb music force of Pooh-Man’s Life of a Criminal, he became an in-demand Bay Area beatmaker in the late ’80s. First up was the indispensable Ant Banks, the Funkadelic-minded East Oakland producer with a knack for trunk-rattling drums. They came together like a group of mercenaries in a men-on-a-mission movie.

In the early ’90s, $hort officially debuted the Dangerous Crew, a clique of rappers and, most crucially, producers and nomadic instrumentalists who provided the engine for $hort’s imperial era. And to get to Gettin’ It, he had to drop Eaton and surround himself with like-minded musicians operating on the same wavelength, just like his hero George Clinton would have done. He started his hot streak as a mid-20s trendsetter on 1992’s rebirth Shorty the Pimp and ended as a 30-year-old elder statesman who’d given more than half of his life to hip-hop on 1996’s mid-career triumph Gettin’ It (Album Number Ten). In the next five years, Too $hort cut four of the filthiest and most psyched-out albums in all of 1990s West Coast hip-hop. Giving in to Eaton by cleaning up the harsh realities, crude chronicles, and low-down funk of his music would have meant not only selling out but, worse, turning his back on Oakland. (Don’t forget his catchphrase “bitch,” said in a one-of-a-kind squeal.) His commercial breakout albums Born to Mack and Life is…Too Short are packed with X-rated tales and his own brand of social commentary, like when he imagines getting blown by Nancy Reagan on 1988’s “ CussWords.” His music got more textured at the tail end of the ’80s, with deeper bass and brooding synths forming the early sketches of mobb music, the funk-influenced sound that took over Northern California in the 1990s. He laid down anecdotes about local pimps and small-time drug dealers with vivid detail and outrageously dark humor in an unhurried flow, the way a teacher might read a story to their class. Schooled on New York imports like the long-winded narratives of “ Rapper’s Delight” and Spoonie Gee’s dirty player anthems of the 1980s, $hort was a slick and nasty rhymer from the jump.

He came of age in East Oakland, where pimp culture was unavoidable and crack was beginning to decimate the blocks as the Reagan administration left Black communities out to dry. Too $hort, born Todd Shaw, was raised primarily on three things: the violent, profanity-fueled thrills of Blaxploitation cinema, the outsider funk of George Clinton, and talking his shit at all costs.

“When I go do a show they pay way more than ever.” Blatant pop-rap songs have turned into relics Too $hort held onto his locality and his music became timeless. “I make more now than I did in 1989,” said Too $hort in 2021. From moving cassettes out of the trunk of his car in the early ’80s to swapping stories with E-40 in a particularly feel-good 2020 Verzuz showdown, $hort has almost always prioritized putting Bay Area culture on wax, uncut, and that is partially why he’s experienced the sort of longevity that’s uncommon in a genre where aging isn’t celebrated. But Eaton wouldn’t budge, stalling studio sessions for days hoping $hort would give in.Įaton had forgotten that hip-hop’s roots remained regional, even as the commercialization of the genre had already begun. “And he didn’t want to make any ‘ghetto’ music.” Too $hort flat-out rejected Eaton’s “corny wack-ass pop” pivot: That wasn’t him. “Al gave me a speech about how he didn’t want anyone to say the n-word in his house,” claimed Too $hort in a 2012 interview. Dre would release his blockbuster debut The Chronic down in Los Angeles, Too $hort pulled up to Eaton’s studio to get to work on his next album, Shorty the Pimp.

New york 80s hip hop fashion