Jacky Jasper | |
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Birth name | Sean Merrick |
Also known as |
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Born | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Origin | Hollywood, California |
Genres | |
Years active | 1990–2000s |
Labels |
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Sean Merrick, known professionally over his career by the pseudonyms Jacky Jasper, H-Bomb and HDV, [1] [2] is a Canadian-American rapper, record producer and celebrity gossip blogger.
Merrick is best known for his work with Kool Keith under the name H-Bomb as a part of rap groups KHM (later known as Clayborne Family) and 7th Veil, as well as for performing as Jacky Jasper on Kool Keith's album First Come, First Served and the Analog Brothers album Pimp To Eat .
In Canada he is also known as a major contributor to the country's early hip hop scene while performing as HDV, as well as for his 1990 single "Pimp of the Microphone". [1] [3] [4] [5]
Under the moniker Jacky Jasper, Merrick became co-founder of and major contributor to the tabloid news site Diary of a Hollywood Street King. [6] The blog was credited as having been the first to publish Charlie Sheen's HIV status in 2014. [7] [8]
Merrick, performing out of Toronto under the stage name HDV, released his first album Sex, Drugs + Violence through Canadian independent record label ISBA Records. [2] The album spawned his best known Canadian single "Pimp of the Microphone". [1] [3] That same year he also performed as a member of the Canadian hip-hop and dance music supergroup Dance Appeal. [5] The group was formed to protest CRTC decision 90-693 by which an FM station license was awarded to a country music station rather than a station featuring black and dance music oriented programming, which the city of Toronto had been lacking. [9] [10] The group released the single "CRTC (Can't Repress The Cause)" that went on to win the MuchMusic Video Award for Best Dance Music Video of the Year in 1991. [11]
In 1993 Merrick released his second solo album as HDV, Higher Deeper Values again on ISBA Records. HDV was known for pornographic lyrics and for dealing with subjects such as the life of black people in Canada's inner cities as well as racial-tension and politics. [12] Merrick also spent eight months in a Toronto jail after being convicted of living off the avails of prostitution. [2] [4]
Merrick moved to New York City, then on to California where he released the albums In Yo' Face in 1996 and Narcissism 1997 under the alias H-Bomb. Narcissism also gave rise to the single "Playa's Need No Love" with Roger Troutman, which peaked at number 33 on the Hot Rap Songs, making it Merrick's first charted single.
Merrick met Kool Keith and Ice-T and appeared on Keith's 1999 album First Come, First Served as well as the Analog Brothers' 2000 album Pimp to Eat under the moniker Jacky Jasper. Merrick, Kool Keith and rapper Marc Live formed the hip hop trio KHM and released their debut album in 2002 titled Game . From 2002 to 2004, Merrick released two more solo albums under the Jacky Jasper alias, Keep My Shit Clean and Jacky Who?. 2004 also saw the release of the sophomore KHM album titled Clayborne Family .
In 2005, Merrick served as a producer on Shade Sheist's sophomore album Before The Waitin' Before The Hatin' under the name H-Bomb. Merrick and Keith collaborated once again to form a rap duo 7th Veil. They released an album titled Stoned in 2008, featuring production from Chilly Chill and guest appearances from Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Ike Turner, Rick James, Silkk the Shocker and Flavor Flav among others.
In 2009 Merrick co-founded the tabloid news site Diary of a Hollywood Street King under his pseudonym Jacky Jasper. [6] Merrick would also become the main contributor to the site. [6] The site was the first to publish Charlie Sheen's HIV status in April 2014. [7]
On June 15, 2012, Jacky Jasper appeared on Dateline NBC for the featured investigation into 1990's rapper Timothy Blair, aka Tim Dog. [13] The two-part documentary-stye series titled "The Perfect Catch," credited the Diary of a Hollywood Street King blog platform for serving as a noted "message board" that connected a set of alleged online dating scam victims of Tim Dog. [14] [15]
August 2016, mainstream news outlets reported Jacky Jasper [16] had been impersonated by a noted celebrity stalker [17] in order to "get close" to the Kardashian family matriarch, Kris Jenner. [15] [18]
Year | Title | Peak chart positions | Notes | ||
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Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums [22] [23] | Independent Albums [24] [25] | Heatseekers Albums [26] | |||
1990 | Sex, Drugs + Violence
| — | — | — |
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1993 | Higher Deeper Values
| — | — | — |
|
1996 | In Yo' Face
| — | — | — |
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1997 | Narcissism
| — | — | — |
|
2002 | Keep My Shit Clean
| 60 | 24 | — |
|
Game
| 42 | 33 | 26 |
| |
2004 | Jacky Who?
| — | — | — |
|
Clayborne Family
| — | — | — |
| |
2008 | Stoned
| — | — | — |
|
Singles
Year | Song | Peak chart positions | Album |
---|---|---|---|
Hot Rap Songs [27] | |||
1990 | "Pimp Of The Microphone" | — | Sex, Drugs + Violence |
1990 | "Secret" | — | |
1992 | "Sex Drugs + Violence" | — | |
1993 | "Sindy" | — | Higher Deeper Values |
1999 | "Playaz Need No Love" (featuring Roger Troutman) | 33 | Narcissism |
2005 | "Whats Up Now" (featuring Kool Keith & Chilly Chill) | — | Collabs Tape |
Guest appearances
Title | Year | Other artist(s) | Album |
---|---|---|---|
"Neighbors Next Door" | 1999 | Kool Keith | First Come, First Served |
"Call the Cops" | |||
"War" | 2000 | Analog Brothers, DJ Cisco | Pimp to Eat |
"We Sleep Days" | Analog Brothers | ||
"Blackula" | 2001 | Kool Keith | Spankmaster |
"Mental Side Effects" | 2004 | Kool Keith, KutMasta Kurt, FatHed | Diesel Truckers and Collabs Tape |
"Bamboozled" | Kool Keith, KutMasta Kurt, Marc Live | ||
Analog Brothers were an experimental hip hop band featuring Tracy "Ice-T" Marrow on keyboards, drums and vocals, Keith "Kool Keith" Thornton on bass, strings and vocals, Marc Live on drums, violins and vocals, Christopher "Black Silver" Rodgers on synthesizer, lazar bell and vocals, and Rex Colonel "Pimpin' Rex" Doby Jr. on keyboards, vocals and production. Its album Pimp to Eat featured guest appearances by various members of Rhyme Syndicate, Odd Oberheim, Jacky Jasper, D.J. Cisco from S.M., Synth-A-Size Sisters and Teflon.
Keith Matthew Thornton, better known by his stage name Kool Keith, is an American rapper and record producer from The Bronx, New York City, known for his surreal, abstract and often profane or incomprehensible lyrics. Kool Keith has recorded prolifically both as a solo artist and in group collaborations. Kool Keith is generally considered to be one of hip-hop's most eccentric and unusual personalities.
Dream Warriors were a Canadian hip hop duo from Toronto, Ontario, comprising King Lou and Capital Q. Described as "a pair of deft, intelligent rappers" by John Bush of AllMusic, they were major contributors to the jazz rap movement of the early 1990s. Their 1991 debut album, And Now the Legacy Begins, was cited by Bush as one of the finest alternative hip hop records of the golden era. Before the release of their second album Subliminal Simulation in 1994, the duo became a group with the addition of rapper Spek and DJ Luv. In 1996, they released a third album, The Master Plan, before the two new members left the group a year later. Though their subsequent releases did not garner similar commercial success as their debut, the duo released a well-received greatest hits album in 1999. Their final album, The Legacy Continues..., was released in 2002.
Lorraine P. Segato is a Canadian pop singer-songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist for and a principal songwriter of new wave and pop rock group The Parachute Club, with which she continues to perform.
Wesley "Wes" Williams is a Canadian rapper, record producer, actor, and author. He is known professionally by his stage names Maestro Fresh Wes or Maestro as a musician, and is credited by his birth name as an actor. One of the earliest Canadian rappers to achieve mainstream success, he is credited as the "Godfather of Canadian hip hop". His debut album, Symphony in Effect (1989), was the first certified platinum album by a Black Canadian artist.
Devon Martin, better known mononymously as Devon, is a Canadian rapper who rose to prominence in 1990 for his song titled "Mr. Metro", a controversial single about police racism. "Mr. Metro" subsequently became an alias of the artist.
The Canadian hip hop scene was established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much slower than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s.
Michelle McCullock, better known by her stage name Michie Mee, is a Canadian rapper and actress. Canada's first notable female MC, she is considered a national hip-hop pioneer.
Pimp to Eat is the only studio album by American hip hop supergroup Analog Brothers, which consists of Ice-T as Ice Oscillator, Kool Keith as Keith Korg, Pimpin' Rex as Rex Roland JX3P, Marc Live as Marc Moog, and Black Silver as Silver Synth. It was released on August 15, 2000 via Ground Control Records and re-released on June 10, 2016 via Mello Music Group. The 16-track record featured guest appearances from Odd Oberheim, H-Bomb, Teflon, Rhymes Syndicate, Synth-A-Size Sisters, and DJ Cisco.
Lillian Allen is a Canadian dub poet, reggae musician, writer and Juno Award winner.
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music in a recording studio. While the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music creation, including recording the rapping of an MC, a turntablist or DJ providing a beat, playing samples and "scratching" using record players and the creation of a rhythmic backing track, using a drum machine or sequencer, it is most commonly used to refer to recording the instrumental, non-lyrical and non-vocal aspects of hip hop.
Dirty rap is a subgenre of hip hop music that contains lyrical content revolving mainly around sexually explicit subjects.
First Come, First Served is the third solo studio album by American recording artist Kool Keith, and the first he released under the alias Dr. Dooom. It was released on May 4, 1999, by Funky Ass Records. The album featured guest appearances from Jacky Jasper and Motion Man, and was produced entirely by KutMasta Kurt and Kool Keith. It peaked at number 48 on the Heatseekers Albums.
Spankmaster is the sixth solo studio album by American rapper and producer Kool Keith. It was released on June 5, 2001, through Overcore/Gothom with distribution via TVT Records. Recording sessions took place at Overture Recording in Michigan. Production was handled by Santos, Jacky Jasper, Esham, Marc Live, and Kool Keith himself, who also served as executive producer. It features guest appearances from Jacky Jasper, Esham, Brittany Hurd, Heather Hunter, Laura Ruby and Mary Santos.
Game is the debut studio album by KHM, an American rap group consisting of Kool Keith, H-Bomb and Marc Live. It was released on November 19, 2002 via Number 6 Records and was entirely produced by all the three members of the group. English trip hop artist Tricky made guest appearance on the track "Run Dem Red". The album peaked at number 42 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, number 33 on the Independent Albums, number 26 on the Heatseekers Albums.
Kool Keith, the American recording artist from The Bronx, has a discography by 2021 that consisted of 39 studio albums, of which 18 were solo projects, and 20 albums in collaboration with other artists. His most recent studio album, Keith's Salon was released in 2021. Kool Keith has collaborated with TomC3, 54–71, Denis Deft, Big Sche Eastwood, L'Orange, Ray West, Thetan, and was in the groups Ultramagnetic MCs, The Cenobites, Ultra, Analog Brothers, Masters of Illusion, KHM/Clayborne Family, Thee Undatakerz, The Diesel Truckers.
Eria Fachin was a Canadian dance pop singer, best known for her 1988 single "Savin' Myself".
Clayborne Family is the second studio album by KHM, an American rap group consisting of Kool Keith, Jacky Jasper and Marc Live. It was released on October 20, 2004 via Threshold Recordings and was produced by Crashman, DJ Junkaz Lou, and all the three members of the group. Tim Dog, Crash Man, Guerilla Black and Black Silver made their guest appearances on the record.
Keep My Shit Clean is the fifth studio album by American rapper and producer Sean Merrick and his first album under his alias Jacky Jasper. It was released on March 12, 2002 via Number 6 Records and was produced by Phil Cole, H-Bomb and Marc Live. The album featured guest appearances from Kool Keith, Ice-T, Chino XL, Roger Troutman, Dee Bombshell and Trigga tha Gambler. It peaked at number 60 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and number 24 on the Independent Albums chart.
Dance Appeal was a Canadian supergroup of dance, rhythm and blues, reggae and hip hop artists, who released the one-off single "Can't Repress the Cause" in 1990. The song, a plea for greater inclusion of these predominantly black music genres in the Canadian music industry, was released as a direct response to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's 1990 decision to deny an FM radio license to Milestone Radio for what would have become Canada's first urban music station; the single's title was intentionally chosen to result in the initialism "CRTC".
With any luck, we may even get a preview of his forthcoming 7th Veil project with H-Bomb, aka Jacky Jasper, aka Toronto's own "Pimp of the Microphone" HDV.
Known off stage as Sean Merrick, HDV calls it like it is, and he's seen it from the inside. Merrick spent eight months in a Toronto jail, convicted of living off the avails of prostitution. He was a pimp.
Sean Merrick (a.k.a. HDV) added his provocative 'gangsta rap' style to the mix in Toronto with songs such as 'Pimp of the Microphone', which aggressively challenged the prevailing myth that Canada has no ethnically marked underclass or any impoverished inner-city communities.
HDV is one rapper whose racial politics are more militant and definitely not integrationist. He addresses interracial marriage and racial tensions between blacks...HDV draws on his real-life experiences (he spent time in jail for his involvement with drug trafficking and prostitution) in his music and uses 'pimping' as a metaphor for all of the different levels of exploitation in society.
As our hip-hop royalty continues to perfect the "Toronto sound" blowing up worldwide, Toronto is truly ground zero for hip-hop innovation in 2016. It wasn't always so pervasive: Our first-generation rap artists fought to be recognized...Unsurprisingly, the song ["Let Your Backbone Slide" by Maestro Fresh Wes] kicked up a ton of controversy, but it went on to win a MuchMusic Video Award. Devon later joined forces with Maestro, Dream Warriors, Michie Mee, B-Kool, Lillian Allen, Eria Fachin, HDV, Messenjah, Jillian Mendez, Self Defense and Leroy Sibbles (and more) to form Toronto rap/ragga supergroup Dance Appeal, whose single "Can't Repress the Cause" railed against the Canadian music industry's lack of inclusion and acknowledgement of hip hop.
[Lorraine Segato] recently took part in the recording of Dance Appeal a song and video that takes aim at the CRTC and other interest groups that opposed a recent bid to establish a black/dance FM station in Toronto. The licence went to a country station instead.
Toronto black dance music groups, furious over a decision on Wednesday by the federal broadcast regulator to award an FM radio licence to a country music station, want to appeal the decision to the federal cabinet.
The strength of our support among artists was shown when some of the most talented hip hop music musicians joined the lobbying effort to the point of putting together a group they called Dance Appeal, which included artists such as Maestro Fresh-Wes, Michie mee, B-Kool, Lillian Allen, Leroy Sibbles, Lorraine Scott and Lorraine Segato from the Parachute Club. Dance Appeal recorded and performed a protest song called "CRTC (Can't Repress The Cause)," which demanded the government reverse the Rawlco decision. The song's video received blanket play on MuchMusic, and in 1991 it even won the MuchMusic Video Award for Best Dance Music Video of the Year.
In contrast, the provocative, pornographic rapper HDV (Sean Merrick, from Toronto), in tracks such as "Pimp and the Microphone", rapped about the harsh conditions in which black people were living in Canadian cities.