Dana Dane hails from Brooklyn, New York, but people have always wondered if he is from England. This myth comes from the fact that the legend uses a British accent in his rhymes.
While some claim that Dana Dane was biting off Slick Rick, the MC says that he was indeed influenced by the British rapper. They formed a group called the Kango Grew while they were in high school with Kool Alski, Omega The Heartbreaker and Lance Brown, who went by the name Alpha. Dana Dane remembers that Omega and Brown were from Jamaica and he says they didn’t want to sound like they were foreign, so they tried adopting American accents. Dana Dane was inspired to try something different himself.
“I thought the English accent was the best ever, ” he says in an episode of Myths Exposed, “so I said, yo we need to use that and I started learning the vernacular and really putting it into my flow and my flavor. I guess people thought of it as a gimmick, but they loved it. They loved the way it sounded. They loved the way that I pronounced some of the words. People really believed I was from England. I think I did a good job of imitating being an English rapper, a British rapper but with a little American twist on it.”
He says that other rappers would be confused when meeting him in real life.
“When I think back to my accent and meeting other rappers, I never really paid attention to it, but I can remember a lot of them saying, ‘Yo, I really thought you was from England. Yo, what happened to the accent?'” he says. “I said, ‘Yo, that’s just something we use in Hip Hop.’ I explained the story of the Kango Crew. They say, ‘Yo, that’s dope. That’s dope. They listening, man. I wish I woulda had that accent.’ And that’s what they say most of the time.”