The East Coast-West Coast beef has become a staple of hip-hop history as there are continuous attempts to explain the murders of 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. and there is continued pressure to represent for one side or the other.
But one Cali-based crew, Tha Alkaholiks, was never involved in the feud and group member J-Ro shared with Unique Access the reality of the situation.
“It was very few people, it was very media driven,” he explained. “It was a beef, but it was very few people and then it just spilled out into the fans more than the artists.”
J-Ro said that he and the fellow members of Tha Liks didn’t think twice about collaborating with artists who were supposedly rivals. The group’s 1995 album Coast II Coast featured production and a guest verse from The Bronx’s Diamond D. Because of their willingness to keep working with the East Coast, J-Ro said there was a time when the only West Coast artists on the East Coast radio stations were Tha Alkaholiks and Snoop Dogg.
“I never looked at it as someone from New York is different than me or someone from Houston is different than me,” he explained. “I felt that was very important for us to work with people from different places, especially from where it started. So even during the beef, the East Coast, West Coast beef, we were flying to New York. We didn’t see nobody from out here. I remember us talking about it then like we were saying, ‘We have to do this.’ Some people like, ‘You guys flying out there? You crazy?’ We have to because if we don’t, it’s just beef then. So we got out there, we on the radio, all that. ‘We from LA, man. We ain’t got no problems with y’all.’ It held true.”
Tha Liks — made up of J-Ro, E-Swift and Tash — served as messengers for their fellow Left Coast artists to let them know the rivalry wasn’t what it seemed to be.
“We had to come back and report, ‘Yeah it’s cool out there. You all can go. You can go to Maryland. It’s cool,'” J-Ro explained. “We had the time of our lives and we’ll come back home and people are like, ‘Man, I’m not going out there.’ ‘We just got back, you should go.’ I hope it helped some people just overcome that.”
In general, Tha Liks didn’t feel a need to fit into any box that people put them in, even what it meant to be a West Coast group. Close friend King Tee stuck to more of the gangsta rap image, but the trio was free to have more fun with their music.
“We showed people how to balance it,” J-Ro said. “We all know where we from, but we was straight up hip-hop. We wanted to display our lyrics. We wanted to have people knowing all the stuff we were saying and the styles we were using and the breaks we were finding and rapping over.”
J-Ro added that the music reflected their own journeys trying to have fun and make it home safe at the end of the day. As a professor, the legendary rapper asks his students in the college class he teaches what hip-hop means to them and then reflects on what Tha Liks brought to the culture that is so much more than music.
“Just having fun, man,” he shared. “Not taking things so seriously. Having a message, but just having fun with it. Just wanted to show people that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, all the cliche stuff without actually saying it. None of us lived perfect lives or nothing like that, but we grew up and at the time we were just having fun. We’re not trying to hurt nobody or nothing like that. We’re just really dedicated to good lyrics.”