Music
Watch Chicago rap legend Twista laying down breakneck rhymes in the studio
Get up to speed on one of the world's fastest rappers, Chicago hip-hop pioneer Twista, as he releases his new five-track Lifetime EP and stars in the latest episode of Red Bull Studio Sessions.
Today, Chicago is considered a veritable rap mecca. Kanye West, Common, Chance The Rapper, Chief Keef – a list of the city's groundbreaking, stylistically inventive and socio-politically minded rappers grows every year. If you’re an A&R without a list of potential signees from Chicago, you may be filing for unemployment shortly. Still, it took decades for the city to achieve this status. But retracing Chicago’s gradual rise reveals the enduring impact of one of its most revered pioneers: Twista.
Rappers rhymed quickly before Twista, but he accelerated the craft to previously unfathomable speeds. He perfected the art of 'chopping', rapping each word as though it were projected from semi-automatic firearms. Every verse is an adrenaline rush as Twista’s mind and body work in concert to produce sounds and rhythms that seem inhuman, like they could’ve only been manipulated and sped up in post-production.
Listening to Twista (real name: Carl Terrell Mitchell) you wonder how he breathes. Whether rhyming about the life on the streets or under the sheets, he possesses a surgeon’s precision and a jazz soloist’s ear for melody. Only a rapper with his versatility could collaborate with everyone from Kanye and Cam’ron to Mariah Carey and Trey Songz.
Nearly 30 years after his debut album, the platinum-selling and Grammy-nominated rapper continues to push himself, his home city and his own corner of the genre forward. This year, Twista worked with a team of rising artists as part of the ongoing series, Red Bull Studio Sessions. Over three days in Los Angeles, he collaborated with producers Bixtel and Lord Quest, dancehall MC Mad Lion, and Red Bull Songs writers Roken, Crash Land, pineappleCiti and Jordyn Dodd.
Watch Red Bull Studio Sessions: The Twista Edition
18 min
The Twista Edition
Twista is joined in Red Bull Music Studio to hit the music hard for three days of creating and recording.
Red Bull filmed the sessions for a captivating behind-the-scenes documentary. Watching Twista create while feeding off the exuberance of the other musicians is almost as compelling as listening to the final product. “Sometimes I like to put words in weird pockets,” he tells pineappleCiti, before mumbling an off-kilter cadence at breakneck speed. Though unvarnished and filled with mostly unintelligible syllables, the in-progress verse is remarkable. Twista finds spaces between words and drums that few can hear.
Inspired moments like these lead to Lifetime, a stellar five-song EP due out on Valentine’s Day (February 14) that was crafted over the course of those LA days. To understand the significance of Twista releasing an EP of this calibre at this stage in his career, you have to know his lifetime in rap. It’s inextricable from, and a chief part of Chicago’s ascent to becoming a rap capital.
At 19, only a year on from working at McDonald’s, Twista was the first Chicago rapper to garner national attention (Common would follow soon after). Before that, he’d sparred with and defeated peers in high-school cafeteria battles under the names Cavalier and Tung Twista. Then, he signed a deal with Zoo Entertainment and released Mr. Tung Twista. At four minutes, it was the rap analog to the most dizzying and acrobatic floor routine. Think Simone Biles performing one gold medal-winning flip and spin after another. The video was in rotation on Yo! MTV Raps, but that somehow wasn’t enough to put the spotlight on Chicago.
Twista in the booth
© Aldo Chacon/Red Bull Content Pool
So, in 1992, Twista earned the title of World’s Fastest Rapper from Guinness World Records. With a speech pathologist and a reporter from The Source looking on, he managed to spit 598 syllables in just 55 seconds, beating the previous record-holder by 70 syllables. Michael Jordan needed two overtimes to set the NBA record for most points scored in a playoff game, but Twista left time on the clock.
The press surrounding Twista's record-breaking feat was the ’90s equivalent of going viral. Major labels largely believed rappers were only bred on the coasts, but that Guinness World Record introduced scores of rap fans to Twista's locally-grown, lightning-quick style: tung twisting (later known as chopping). His skill separated him from his Chicago peers and raised the bar for technical ability in an art form that many still wrote off as a fad.
“My secret, OK, I like to blow something out of proportion. Like for instance, tung twisting. I didn’t invent that style; other people would use it here and there,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1992. “I just took it to the extreme.”
Twista’s 1992 debut, Runnin' Off At Da Mouth, cemented his status as one of the most technically gifted rappers in the world. But Twista wanted to prove that he could do more than stack interlocking syllables and find unknown pockets in the beat. He had depth and an on-the-ground perspective about the grim realities of Chicago life.
According to the Chicago Tribune, homicides reached 920 in 1992 – the highest number since 1973. Twista addressed the violence in the city on 1994’s Resurrection. As its title implied, it was an album intended to revamp Twista’s image, to move him beyond that “the guy who raps fast” tag. He slowed down on songs like the gripping Street Paranoia and addressed the blood spilled over drugs and concrete turf.
“We used to go places every once in a while and run into some gang who thought we were rivals. We’d end up getting into it. That was common in Chicago,” he told Vibe in 2003. “You could get caught slipping at the wrong place at any time.”
No Twista record captured the anxiety of walking haunted blocks after dusk better than his 1997 masterpiece, Adrenaline Rush. While Bad Boy and Teddy Riley enjoyed the heyday of the jiggy era and New Jack Swing, Twista put on for his own city. His flows were the pinnacle of Midwestern chopping. He floated on dark production from The Legendary Traxster, his triple-time flows keeping time with skittering hi-hats and knifing between and cavernous drums. Radio rotation was lacking, but the album went platinum on the strength of hometown support. It’s part of the Chicago canon – the chopper album against which the rest are measured. No word is extraneous, no rhythm out of place. It’s so meticulous it seems effortless.
Since the ‘90s, Twista has both inspired and worked with a premiere list of choppers. Po Pimp, his 1996 single with Chicago compatriots Do or Die, went gold; and in the '00s, Twista collaborated with everyone from former rivals Bone Thugs-n-Harmony to Busta Rhymes (see: Can U Keep Up) and chopping ambassador Tech N9ne. When paired with his equally dexterous peers, Twista either matches or exceeds the wit and intricacy of their verses.
“One of the big things with fast rappers, because they know they have to make the rhyme fast, they put more into the rhythm and cadence and it takes away from what they are actually saying with the lyrics and metaphors. Then they sit up and end up saying dumb s*** just trying to make the pattern go,” Twista said in a 2019 interview with HipHopDX. “You’ve got to be able to take what you do as an MC and lyricist with the wordplay and metaphors and still combine it with cadence rhythm, timing and flow.”
Bixtel
© Aldo Chacon/Red Bull Content Pool
pineappleCITI
© Aldo Chacon/Red Bull Content Pool
Twista and Crash
© Aldo Chacon/Red Bull Content Pool
Twista and Mad Lion
© Aldo Chacon/Red Bull Content Pool
The 2000s belonged to Kanye, of course. From The College Dropout (2004) to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), West's progressive production, brash lyrics and off-record boasts cast a shadow so large that few Chicago rappers outside of Lupe Fiasco and Common received anything like mass acclaim. But there was Twista, shining and bigger than ever with two Grammy-nominated, Kanye-produced hits.
Slow Jamz and Overnight Celebrity are unimpeachable classics. They topped charts during their day, but haven’t aged a day since. On Slow Jamz, Twista rhymed in rhythm with West’s chipmunk soul samples. Rapping on beat at his speeds is difficult, but the way he became one with the melody elevated chopping to an even higher plane. He followed it up by rhyming over violins on Overnight Celebrity. And both times, Twista proved that the masses were ready to hear chopping on a pop record. He hadn’t slowed down; the world had finally caught up.
In the early 2010s, Chicago saw its largest wave of rap coverage. Journalists first focused on rappers making drill music, Chicago’s answer to Atlanta trap. The melodies were haunting; the crushing, rapid-fire percussion sounded as though it were sourced from war zones. Rappers like Keef, Lil Durk, and G Herbo signed deals and earned critical acclaim for the fatalistic, frontline narratives that reflected the violence in neighbourhoods labelled “Chiraq”. At the same time, rappers from the city’s open-mic scene, who adapted insightful spoken-word about the effects of the violence, garnered glowing profiles and album reviews. Chance The Rapper, Mick Jenkins, Saba, Noname – they now sell out venues, top charts, and run book clubs that practice carceral outreach.
Watch Red Bull Studio Sessions: Behind the Scenes with Twista
3 min
The making of Twista's Lifetime
Get a glimpse of the process that went into making Twista's new song Lifetime at Red Bull Music Studios.
Twista, as intelligent as he is streetwise, was capable of rapping alongside artists from both camps. In 2013, he appeared on the remix for drill star Lil Reese’s Traffic and Chance The Rapper’s Cocoa Butter Kisses. Twista reminded listeners of the mortal penalty for crossing certain Chicago residents and spent Cocoa Butter Kisses referencing Coogi sweaters and particle physics before praising his mother and grandmother. In a testament to Twista's stature among younger rappers, both Reese and Chance granted him the final verse on those songs.
“I think [my] longevity stems from anybody doing something they love doing. If you’re doing what you love doing for a living, then it doesn’t feel as much like work,” he told HipHopDX. “Sometimes, but not as much. So, if you love doing it, you’ll be around forever doing it.”
His new Lifetime EP affirms Twista’s love for rap as well as the signature style that he cultivated in Chicago. Even in a genre that forever favours the young, Twista hasn't slowed down. Listening to Lifetime, it’s clear that Twista’s style is as timeless as ever, and his influence on the next generation in and outside of Chicago cemented.
