In order to understand Rip the Jacker, one must first understand Canibus' history as an artist. And there's nothing to do but start with his beef with LL because that's really where his career started. Not to mention that this beef (and its fall-out) is one of major thematic focuses of RTJ.
So, Bis was pretty hot in '97. He was getting a lot of respect doing freestyles, mixtapes, and the other underground stuff that a rapper usually has to do before he gets a major deal. In short, people were feeling him, and his flow and subject matter made people think he might totally change the game in the same was Nas later did. He was that unique.
Bis eventually got the attention of Wyclef Jean, who decided he would produce his debut album. Buzz was circulating and the hip-hop heads were intrigued. Around this same time, already-established LL Cool J was set to come out with Phenomenon, the 7th of what are now 13 records. 13! He was supposed to have a posse cut with Red & Meth, as well as then-little-known-now-also-kind-of-little-known DMX. As often happens, everyone laid down their verses before LL did so he could make sure he liked them.
Cool James had one issue; in Canibus' verse, he said, "Yo, L, is that a mic on your arm? / Let me borrow that," a reference to LL's microphone tattoo. Here's the original verse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN8biMDFYU8
LL perceived this as a diss, which seems ridiculous (and IS ridiculous), but makes more sense when you remember that he came up in the rap game by dissing more famous rappers and using his beefs with them to bring himself attention (see: Moe Dee, Kool). A bit paranoid about someone pulling the same trick on him, LL asked Canibus to change the verse. Bis did, of course, and presumably thought the whole thing was over. Here's the changed verse, starting at 1:30:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6rJava11i0
LL decided, despite this, to devote his entire verse to dissing Bis, albiet not explicitly, including multiple references to an "amateur" rapper (who could that be?) and grandiose statements about the inability of anyone to touch/mess with the mic on his arm. Pretty hard to miss what he was getting at, especially since by this point the video was out, but Bis wasn't in it, LL having made him record his part separately from the rest of the group. It's unclear whether he also forced him wear the ridiculous football get-up. Here's the video for the song, the SECOND version which was released with Bis in it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWI2JPhT1eY&feature=related
By the way, Meth's mummy costume ranks as one of the all-time best music video costumes for a rapper. He's a MUMMY. With Scream-mask people in the background!
So, around this time, LL called Bis up and they talked about it like grown men. How do we know? WE HAVE THEIR PHONE CONVERSATIONS?! God, I love the Internet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvW0LFOVJUI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpUq8mApS0Y&NR=1
The underground track never happened. Somewhere in here (the chronology is a little convoluted and I'm not sure exactly where everything falls), LL was asked by Dr. Dre to replace Snoop on a song that he had to drop out of called "Zoom." LL devoted another (unfairly maligned!) verse to dissing Canibus, although more subtly. Somehow, this song also has a music video. If there's any lesson we've learned so far, it's that rappers will make music videos out of ANYTHING.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk9UIFjuRbg
Man, remember when Dre didn't put any time into his verses at all?
Anyway, Bis was obviously not pleased about how the whole thing turned out. Being a battle rapper by trade, he came out with his own diss track, the fabulous and fabulously flawed "2nd Round K.O." (a reference to LL's "Mama Said Knock You Out"), which was the lead single off that debut Bis/Wyclef album we were talking about, Can-I-Bus. Here's the music video for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z63cQKWlDgQ
A lot has been written about "2nd Round K.O." because it's one of the most intriguing diss tracks in rap history. By that I don't mean that it's one of the *best* (although it is), but that it represents simultaneously the zenith and nadir of one of hip-hop's most fascinating "busts." On the one hand, the song is pretty much sick. Canibus was always LL Cool J's lyrical superior and he does a good job of detailing LL's ridiculousness throughout the whole creation of their beef. The video is also sort of cool.
On the other hand, this song is a microcosm of what went wrong with Canibus' career. It contains one of the worst lines ever uttered in a diss song ("You might have more cash than me, / but you ain't got the skills to eat a nigga's ass like me") and it highlights Bis' unmarketability (has any rapper ever looked more awkward in music videos than Canibus?). And, of course, while Mike Tyson was pretty much the man in 1998 (he was in the main even of Wrestlemania that year!) when this song came out, he was retrospectively a very poor choice, as he quickly became something of a cultural joke.
Somewhere I once read (it was probably rapgenius.com) that Bis' biggest flaw was that he was wack at the worst possible times, and that's pretty accurate. Though Can-I-Bus wasn't great (or even good, really), it had its moments, and there was still a decent amount of buzz for Bis as he dropped his next record, the stunningly mediocre 2000 B.C. (which itself contains approximately 3 good songs). Two mediocre albums left Bis fading from the public eye, and the death knell for his career was sounded with C: True Hollywood Stories, one of the worst rap albums of the last decade.
Back to the feud, though. LL came back strong from "2nd Round K.O." with "The Ripper Strikes Back". The Ripper, for the record, was his name for his beef/diss persona, based on legendary serial killer Jack the Ripper, and comes from his eponymous song from his beef with Kool Moe Dee. Here's LL's song, which is a classic in its own right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYJ0QhIPEw
It doesn't have a music video! Crazy, huh? Cool J also dropped a song dissing Wyclef specifically. It's not that great and isn't particularly relevant. But I thought I'd mention it.
It was then Canibus' turn. He fired back with "Rip the Jacker". Now, at this point, the phrase was simply a bit of wordplay on LL's beef-persona, as indicated in this line: "Jack the Ripper? / I'ma rip the jacker." Pretty straight-forward ("jacker" is slang for "stealer of things," usually things like swag, style, or jewelry). The song is hot, so give it a listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfhYYDy4Cz0
Let's be clear: the general hip-hop public sentiment is that Canibus won the battle and "lost the war." You'll see that phrase used a lot if you read articles, Youtube comments, or anything else related to this beef. The idea is that, while Bis won the beef, he ended up tanking his career in the process. It's hard to say exactly WHY; some argue that Bis' obsession with the beef distracted him from putting out quality records, some say that Bis was never going to make it in an album-format and the battle with LL created unfair expectations, some say that the beef revealed Bis' flaws too early and the public could never take him seriously. Whatever the explanation, the fact is that LL continued to make money (even though most of his stuff sucked post-98) and Bis continued to put out crap records that no one bought.
So that's the whole beef. I know we've sort of run this thing into the ground, but, just to be thorough, he's a little video from something or other about the feud that I found on Youtube. It has KRS-One in it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmW447Lhvnk&feature=related
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