Kangol Kid, who as a rapper in the group UTFO was a key contributor to the 1984 single “Roxanne, Roxanne,” one of the most influential and widely imitated songs of commercial hip-hop’s early years, died on Saturday morning at a hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., on Long Island.
77 on the Hot 100, but its influence was far vaster than statistics could capture.
“Roxanne, Roxanne” was produced by the group Full Force and based on a sample of “The Big Beat” by the rocker Billy Squier, which the producer Howie Tee had brought to the group.
Dre began working with Ice Cube, he urged him to perform a version of the song at clubs to help generate crowd excitement.
Kangol Kid — sometimes called the Kangol Kid — was born Shaun Shiller Fequiere in Brooklyn on Aug.
Kangol Kid started off as a B-boy, or breakdancer; he and a neighborhood friend, Doctor Ice, were known as the Keystone Dancers, and they toured with the early-1980s rap group Whodini, including on the New York City Fresh Fest tour, and with Full Force.
The group occasionally referred to itself as the “Village People of rap” because of its members’ distinct visual identities.
Yizo hizo bizoy wizon’t youza kizoy mesover herezere?’ — that’s just saying, ‘Yo, homeboy, why don’t you come over here?’ and what I did is make a rap out of that language.” It was a style he deployed on “Roxanne, Roxanne,” and it anticipated the later linguistic zigzagging of E-40, Snoop Dogg and others.
UTFO would go on to release four more albums, and became popular enough for their own slot on the Fresh Fest tour, a road show that was then an index of hip-hop’s growing popularity.