Harold Stallworth is a villain of sorts.
The year was 1995. Bobbito Garcia and DJ Stretch Armstrong took the airwaves just hours after the infamous Source Awards snafu. They interviewed several artists that witnessed the show first hand, including broken linguist Smoothe Da Hustler, and the missing link between park jams and dunn language, Tragedy Khadafi, alongside his newly paroled protégés, Capone-N-Noreaga, a full two years before the release of The War Report. There was no mention of Suge Knight’s dig at Bad Boy Records, Outkast’s southern proclamation, or the low-caliber pistol tucked inside Reakwon’s fake arm cast. The main takeaway here is that Tragedy drove a raggedy Nissan Maxima, Treach’s machine gun flow was already laughably dated by mid-’90s standards, and a 19-year-old Capone held liquor like a colander.
This is a historic episode from one of hip-hop’s greatest radio programs, even if the hosts didn’t approach it as such.
