DISGRACELAND - Big Lurch: Hip Hop Cannibal

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Big Lurch didn’t just rap about standard hip-hop culture; he rapped about serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and horror movie villains like Freddy Krueger. In the process, he contributed to a sub-genre of hip-hop called “horrorcore." He also smoked way too much PCP – so much that he could not separate his horrorcore lyrics and the horror movies he watched from reality. The result? Unspeakable. Not just murder. Cannibalism. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER   Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter)  Facebook Fan Group TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. Well, it's happened again. A story by a musician behaving so badly that said behavior warranted yet another disclaimer at the beginning of a disgraceland episode. Guys, I'm warning you, this story is more effed up than the Gigi Allen one. And speaking of effed up, I say the word fuck a lot, as you know.

But that's not the reason the story needs a disclaimer. This story deals with cannibalism and abuse that is saying, truly horrific and for whatever reason I spare zero gory details. Maybe because it's October and I'm feeling the Halloween vibe. And to paraphrase Ryan Adams, I've got a Halloween head,

head full of tricks and treats. It leads me through these Compton streets. What is wrong with me? Melotron! The story about Texas rapper, Big Lurch, is one, if not the most insane story you'll ever hear about a musician. Big Lurch didn't like to just get high.

He liked to smoke formaldehyde, the chemical used to embalm dead bodies. And Big Lurch didn't just rap about standard hip-hop culture. He rapped about serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and horror movie villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddie Kruger and in the process contributed to a growing new subgenre of hip-hop called Horrorcore. Big Lurch was 6'7 with deep-set eyes, a deep voice, and a deep hunger for PCP. An intimidating-looking dude who grew up in the East Dallas projects, but made his name on the West Coast, first up in Oakland, and then by infiltrating the Cali-G-Funk world of South Central Los Angeles. Lurch was paranoid, dangerous, and totally

out of his mind on drugs, to the point where he would disappear for weeks into PCP-induced comas and emerge with little to no memory of his time on the drug. It's no stretch to say that rapper Big Lurch was completely fucked up. But Big Lurch made some great music. Actually, no, he didn't. His music was pretty much total shit, just like the music I played you at the top of the show. And that was a preset loop from my Melochon

called Balero Woodwind Brass Low, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights for Ain't It Funny by Jennifer Lopez and Jail. And why would I play you that specific slice of remixed murder incorporated on the block cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 10th, 2002.

And that was the day that rapper and Texas boy, Big Lurch, ran down the street naked in the middle of the afternoon, covered in blood, chewing on his roommates' lung. On this episode, Murder on the Block, Brass Boleros, cannibalism, horrorcore, and Big Lurch. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgracely. Big Lurch depicted his life growing up in the East Dallas projects, slinging dope and gang-banging in his own songs, songs like Texas Boy from his 2004 album, It's All Bad. Big Lurch, six foot seven, and with a wild imagination,

according to him, had only two options growing up. Become a drug dealer or become a rapper, which, of course, is total bullshit. Lots of people grow up in the projects and live happy lives and don't become dope dealers or hip-hop stars, but for whatever reason, when assessing his career opportunities, Big Lurch, Born, Antron Singleton, believed he was limited to either a life of crime or a life of stardom.

And given the environment he grew up in, it's hard to blame him for this assessment. The East Dallas projects, like most public housing projects in America, are rough, tough living. The United States Public Housing Program was conceived with the best intentions. A way to provide families at the bottom of the economic ladder, a place to live within city limits, while working the way up from poverty and into the working and middle classes of American society. But this did not happen, for whatever reasons,

mismanagement of the federal program at the local level, insufficient funding from Congress, a lowering of standards for occupancy, for whatever reasons, the projects never became the low-income stanchion of upward mobility that they were intended to be. Instead, they became areas of concentrated poverty in America, riddled with drugs, crime, and gang violence, and for Big Lurch, a place of bleakness. The Fraser Courts Projects is located about five miles east of downtown Dallas, but it might as well be a world away from the land of tall buildings that Big Lurch wraps about in Texas Boy.

Fraser Courts is a neighborhood of one-story single-family subsidized homes. The concrete landscape is weathered, and where there is grass it is overgrown and unkept. And the area is a far cry from the Romanesque revival architecture of the Big D. But there is pride. You get a sense of the people of these East Dallas projects from their Facebook page, an unofficial page set up to digitally corral and organize community interests. There are the posts about the great time at the throwback block party, pictures of locals canvassing for voter registration.

There's a post about the mouth-watering chili cheese dog from Nuthies and multiple posts about chilling at home with the family. But there is also a darker side revealed. From both the Facebook group page and from searching hashtag East Dallas projects on Instagram. A pit bull stares menacingly into the camera in front of an abandoned backyard solo flex. There are photos of AK-47s, 12-inch stacks of $100 bills,

young kids outfitted in blood red, flashing gang signs, and a meme featuring a cute girl hanging on the corner at night with the caption, quote, when you hanging out with your hood boo and he got you on the block where everybody be shooting, unquote. Each post gives a glimpse into real life in the East Dallas projects where gang life is a reality and where big lurch grew up, and depending on how you look at it, either paid tribute to or exploited in his lyrics. Exploiting one's background for artistic means is nothing new. It's a time-honored creative tradition.

In fact, it's almost expected of artists as a way to express themselves. And in hip-hop, where you come from is typically a badge of honor, a hallmark of your authenticity, and how you live your life is equally important. Slinging dope, gang-banging and getting fucked up are required courses of the hip-hop curriculum. And big lurch took the getting-fucked-up part to extra credit level. Gin and juice? Nah. The chronic, not true.

strong enough. Big Lurge fucked with those wet cigarettes or quote-unquote smoking wet as it was sometimes called the practice of dipping a joint in formaldehyde before smoking it. Turns out for moutheytide, the highly flammable chemical substance used by morticians to preserve dead bodies when saturating a joint will get you high as fuck and even cause psychotic reactions similar to PCP, a drug that Big Lurch would soon find his way to smoking regularly. And PCP can, of course, kill you. You know what else can kill you? Six-foot-seven psychopaths with bad drug habits. By the late 90s, Big Lurch began making a name for himself around Dallas as an underground rapper. Somehow, he managed to grab the attention of Oakland, California hip-hop producer Rick Rock

and headed west to manifest his own destiny. Once there, he teamed with Rock and Marvin Dooney Baby Selman to form the group, Cosmic Slop Shop. It released an album called The Family. The record failed to set the charts on fire, but it didn't really matter. Big Lurch was now in the game. In the hip-hop game in the late 90s was going through a bit of an identity crisis. Tupac was dead, so was Biggie, Shug Knight was in jail. Gangster rap as a genre seemed to be waning in influence over mainstream.

America, and a young white kid from Detroit had cornered the market on the charts, selling four million copies of his Dr. Dre produced debut album, The Slim Shady LP. Eminem had captured the minds of American youth with his new and different brand of over-the-top, violent and misogynistic lyrics. This wasn't drive-bys and big asses. This was, fuck you, bitch. I'm going to cut you up and bury you so you can't see our kid. incredibly dark stuff and incredibly personal

Eminem's lyrics for Kim where he details the murder of his estranged wife in the first person or his lyrics for Bonnie and Clyde where he takes a drive with his daughter to bury her mom's body were both examples of just how far hip-hop had come from dealing dope on the corner

and this was no longer street trade this was cinematic this was personal and way dark almost novelistic in a way I'm Eminem's lyrics had more to do with Stephen King books than Nate Doghooks. Eminem's whole unique approach caught the attention of not only the record buying public, but of course of the music industry, and enterprising producers and record label heads.

And this new style that Eminem was messing with was called Horrorcore. It had its roots in mainstream 80s rap with DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince's A Nightmare on Maestrie, and was later refined by Cool Keith and then the ghetto boys, and by the mid-90s, the hip-hop group, the Flatliners, would bring the genre to greater prominence, along with Detroit hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse, who, no doubt, had some influence on Eminem

despite their very public beef. So, by the year 2000, horrorcore was a thing, and Big Lurch was listening. That is, he was listening when he wasn't tripping out on Shirm, also known as PCP and smoking formaldehyde. We'll be right back after this word, Word, word. Lurch sat in the studio and took in the sounds around him, banging.

These West Coast dudes knew what was up. The producer, Roger Troutman Jr., son of legendary funk musician and founder of Zapp, Roger Troutman, Sr., was dialing Lurch into what he was going for musically. Lurch could feel it. Musically, these California dudes had that West Coast 5 and 70s funk influence on lock. Zapp, the brothers Johnson, Charles Wright, and the Wall, Otts 103rd Street rhythm band, Shuggy Otis,

even the fucking Doobie brothers sounded good coming out of trout and speakers. Which duby you be, Lurch wondered. An existential question to be answered another time. Lurch was into it all, but his mind was wandering to a darker place. He had rented and watched Silence of the Lambs over the weekend, and Lurch couldn't get the movie out of his head. Hannibal, the cannibal, and what a sick fuck. Imagine that.

Eating another person. Just then the vibe in the studio changed. It went from West Coast Party to Backstreet ominous and the time it took war to take the Cisco kid to the breakdown and back again to the chorus, blasting out through the studio speakers. But had the vibe actually changed or was Lurch just being paranoid? Some roughnecks entered the control room, wearing blue, Crips. Lurch rode with the Bloods back in Big D and repped red up in Oakland.

The Crips freaked them out. Lurch didn't know if they were vibing him or if the weed he was smoking had him paranoid. Either way, shit was bad. To bust the vibe, Lurch bounced out of his seat and told Troutman to get the track ready. He then headed into the vocal booth to jump on the mic. The track, playing back into his phones, was hot,

low, dirty, mean but funky at the same time. Quintessential G-funk. Troutman knew what he was doing. When it came to putting a track together anyways, but Lurch wasn't into the lyrics. Troutman had scruveled out. The hook consisting of trite West Coast shoutouts. Ghetto whistles and good times, shorties on the block and steady passes, big bouncing grills and bigger bouncing asses. Lurch wasn't buying it and dropped the lyric sheet to the ground. And when his cue came,

freestyled into the mic, lines about being a vampire and wielding a syringe with battery acid. It was this. Troutman looked at his engineer. His engineer shrugged. Troutman stopped the tape, Pushed the talkback button on the board and instructed Lurch to take it again, but from the top. And this time, to give him a little intro vocal riff. He then rebound the two-inch on the reel-to-reel and hit record. The track washed over Lurch in the booth. He closed his eyes, thought once again of Hannibal Lecter. His cue came and he spat out murderous lines that name-checked Jason Voorhees, Freddie Cougar,

Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahmer. Seriously, just exactly what the fuck was this? Troutman had no idea. Lurch was one sick bastard. He let the tape roll and grabbed all the madness he could out of this big Texas boy with the horror-flicked tongue and scary as hell baritone. When he was done rhyming,

Lurch headed back into the control room and shot a look to the roughnecks and blue that said, Be careful who you fuck with. I'm six-foot fucking seven and on some other trip entirely. Lurch bounced. He had a plane to catch. Back to Texas. Big Lurch was back in the Big D for his. grandmother's funeral, high on chronic and behind the wheel of his mother's dusty shipbox.

Watching the road was a distraction because Lurch didn't want to take his eyes off this chick in the passenger seat. Man, those thighs, those bright red bike shorts would come off quick, he thought. They had to. She was fine. She reminded Lurch of the big chick from Salt and Peppa. Was it Peppa or Salt? Lurch could never keep them straight. Spinderella was where it was at anyway, but right now, whipping around the back streets of the East Dallas projects, little Miss Offbrand Peppa would do, because he could tell that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. He needed to keep his eyes on the road, but couldn't.

The weed made him horny as fuck, and he'd been wanting to get with this chick as soon as he saw her. Now, in his mom's car, barreling around corners at a 50-mile-per-hour clip through a 25-mile-per-hour residential neighborhood. Lurch could care less about maneuvering the shipbox. He wanted to maneuver himself onto and into the young, aspiring R&B chicks sitting in the card who was right.

It would be sweet, he thought. He could picture her naked, caramel skin, those thighs, that hair, and her big ass, big tithe. Big lurch was spinning. His head hurt, his neck killed. The car accent was no joke. His broken neck meant intense pain. The PCP helped dull it. Sher made the dreams wild, silence of the lambs, kianti and fava beans, big bouncing grills and big bouncing asses.

The coma was one long trip. And when he awoke, after the accident, the world was one big dream state. Big lurch moved through it with caution and amusement. The fuck was going on. Was he alive, dead? Where was his hunger coming from? He kept himself high all the time. The PCP bent the world to his will.

The sherman pushed the pain to the back of his brain and brought a new world into focus. He thought about his rhymes. He thought about those g-funk beats. He thought about Big D. What happened to the girl he was riding with? And where was she? Where was he? The room stank like wet dope and dried dog food.

The pit bull was a nuisance. What's happening on in the background of the TV all the time? A dog, though, always barking, shitting all over the place. Where was that cough syrup? No formaldehyde. Nothing to wet. them cigarettes with. Let's dip him in NyQuil. Let's trip the fuck out. Let's forget the pain. Let's ride this out on 24-inch gold D's slow. Raise the hydraulics. Bounce that base. Those spandex bike shorts.

Believe in that big ass. Believe in that big beat. The tragedy is not to die but to be wasted. Where's the fun and dying? A man's got to eat and give me that pipe again. Who's that knocking? What's happening? I'm wearing red, motherfucker. Fuck off. You don't know who you're fucking with. quid pro quo my ass shut that dog up i'll eat a bitch before i fuck her in those shorts where's that goddamn lighter ain't nothing in the world in my stomach right now and this ain't no disco this ain't no fucking around no heby-jee you hear that it's the devil fuck off clarice he's coming for you i told you this is it world gonna end i'm riding out on 24 inches 14 carat six seven where the fuck are you going clarice the devil don't answer that forhees meyers

Dahmer, they shine my fucking shoes. Who are you? You're going to end this world? You're going to take me out, you blue devil motherfucker? Shut up when I'm talking to you and shut that fucking dog up. Woman, I swear to God. Tell me you didn't fucking hear that one more time. One more fucking time and I swear to God. I swear to God, I swear to God, I'll cut your fucking head off. Say it, say it. Don't you fucking say it. Big Lurch had lost his mind. The PCP was in control now. His eyes were like black marbles, vacant. His roommate was 21, stoned herself, and fucking petrified and rightly so.

Lurch was hovering above her, an intimidating figure at almost seven feet tall. And she didn't know what she'd done wrong or why Lurch was so angry. And what in the hell he was ranting about? Blue Devils, the world ending, big asses, and who the hell was this Clarice? And what has she done that had him so amped up? Lurch pulled her up to her feet and got down on his knees. He pulled her shirt up, exposing her navel and pushed his face to a half inch from her stomach's skin. He stared into her belly intently and yelled,

I know you're in there, you motherfucker! He was frozen in fear. Her pit bull chained to the bed barked madly in the background. Lurch stayed still on his knees and slowly arched his head to his shoulder while continuing to stare into her belly, looking for God knows what. His face screwed itself into a look of amusement, and then frustration. Come out of there! Come out.

When nothing happened, he jumped to his feet and grabbed her by the hair with his large mitt. He pulled her, kicking and screaming, past the chained and barking pit bull and into the kitchen. He threw her to the floor where she landed with a violent thud, her head bouncing off of the linoleum. Lurch grabbed the paring knife off of the cutting board on the counter and bounced down on top of his rattled roommate, straddling her in place on her back. She screamed and tried fighting him off, but he was too big a man. He grabbed her neck with his hand and squeezed, looked again to her stomach and screamed, I know you're in there.

Come the fuck out or I'm coming in. She kicked violently, but it made no difference. Lurch's hand was now firmly around her throat, cutting off her air supply. He moved the paring knife in his right hand, slowly to her stomach and applied pressure. The blade entered with ease. Lurch sliced clockwise, slowly.

She screamed in horror. Lurch squeezed her throat as hard as he could with one hand while continuing to move the knife in a large circle around. with his other and into his roommate's supple stomach skin. Her body began to go limp beneath him. The kick slowed and her legs fell flat. Her feet twitched a bit and her screams completely stopped.

She was either gone or had passed out in fear and in shock. Lurch thrust his hand into her gutted belly and felt around for the devil. He then tore into the rest of her torso violently, removing flesh, organs, bones, whatever he could in search of the devil he feared. know the devil he knew was hiding in her belly and had been sent there to destroy the world. His hunger now raged inside of him. It had been days since he'd eaten anything. And he reached up into her chest cavity in search of her heart, but grabbed a lung instead.

He pulled hard, freeing it from his roommate's inner chest and mashing it into his mouth. He bit down, devouring bits of the organ with total inhumanity. The pit bull had stopped barking. Now it just looked on it. Lurch stood up. and looked down at the blood completely covering his hands and arms up to his elbows and splattered all over his clothes. He stripped with one hand while holding tight to his roommate's half-eaten lung and his other. The devil, he thought, the devil, if it wasn't inner, then where was it?

Scared to death and totally naked, blood on his face, arms and chest and mouth, big lurch, all six feet, seven inches of him, took off out of his apartment and bounded out to the street. He began frantically walking down Figueroa, his head on a swive. in search of the devil that he was convinced was sent there to destroy the world. A plot that only he knew about, and that only he could foil. He moved in fits and starts,

peering under cars and around street corners. Onlookers couldn't believe what they were seeing. A blood-covered six-foot-seven madman shooing feverishly on something, wandering down the street naked at two o'clock in the afternoon. When Big Lurch heard the sirens, he was relieved. Finally, some backup, you thought. The officers were only semi-shocked.

and this was Los Angeles after all, but by the time they braced Lurch, they began to sense that this wasn't any ordinary arrest. All Lurch could think of was the dog back in the apartment barking. Cops, nothing but dogs themselves, Lurch thought, so he growled back and began howling. He was cuffed, taken into custody, and jailed. When he awoke behind bars two weeks later,

he was informed that he was being held on a murder charge and that while he'd been jailed, a medical examination, had revealed human flesh in his own stomach. Authorities had found bits of his roommate's lung. Big Lurch, Antron Singleton, was woken from a two-week PCP-induced coma to learn that not only was he a murderer,

but he was also a cannibal. Big Lurch had no recollection of any of this. His attorney, Milton Grimes, the former Rodney King attorney and also the owner of the record label, Stress Free Records, that was set to release Big Lurch's album, the puppet master, claimed that his client was innocent.

He wasn't a killer. He was a mixed-up kid who got caught up in drugs and couldn't possibly be responsible for his behavior. Lurch was of unsound mind and insane in a psychotic state from PCP. The defense fell far short of being effective in court. And Big Lurch was sentenced to two life sentences in New Folsom Prison for murder and aggravated mayhem.

After his conviction, Milton Grimes, his attorney and the owner of his record label changed the name of Big Lurch's debut album without his permission from the puppet master to It's All Bad. Opportunistic, Exploitative, both, either way, he was right.

The story of Big Lurch, it's all bad. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show, notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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