Venom Tha Tiger Dragon

Venom Tha Tiger Dragon

aka Ven Deezel

aka Chill Coldberg

aka Tha People's Lyricist

aka Tha Classy Assassin

aka Tha Hip Hop Hitman

Tha best thing happenin in St. Louis 2day. Bringin street flow with an advanced twist, and tha most versatile and quality styles of music since Kanye West. Out tha Midwest, that is...

When you think St. Louis, what comes to mind? Chingy... Tipsy... Thurr... An Arch. Well, here's a man on a mission to change not only how the general hip hop community views The Gateway City, but how people view hip hop as a whole. Venom Tha Tiger Dragon's debut double album "The Weapon X Project" is an odyssey of the extensive versatility of rap music. Not only is every facet and style of the music accounted for, but the smooth, deadpan delivery of Venom on each song infuses what many rappers lack or neglect in these styles of rap. Lyricism. Whether narrating his escape from a government research laboratory, or kickin' game to an enticing young lady dancing in a club, every line is meaningful, and every rhyme is constructed impeccably.

"St. Louis ain't got nobody goin where I'm goin. Tha mainstream stays in tha club, and tha underground stays thug and gangsta. Nobody's really MCin' around here."

One of his standout lyrical displays, "Ooooh" is also tailored to be club accessible. "That song started as kind of a joke. Make a club song wit words nobody in tha 'hood uses." The beat, produced by Apex Productions, is reminiscent of a Lil Jon creation with it's Crunk-flavored synths and mid-tempo drum. Venom then proceeds to spit compliments and a descriptive account of a hardcore sexual encounter with the vocabulary of a surgeon with an english major. Then mercifully, on the chorus he says "Now you don't understand a word I'm sayin, but yo bitch is singin this song". The club jam, "Nkredible Dubb Block" is his pledging of loyalty to his hometown rap group and affiliates while maneuvering through the beat with dexterity and overt cockiness. With lines like "flossin like we dentist recommended, whippin the Infinite'/ givin chickens incentive 2 let us get in it and quit it/" he displays a certain arrogance and clever wordplay while delivering an intricate rhyme scheme reminiscent of the late Big Punisher. And that's not the best line in the song. Another song aimed only barely at the ladies is "The Perfect Booty", a semi-fictional narrative of his sexual experience with that one female that every man's seen with a body they'll never forget. "No matter what body part u into on a female, u've seen that female, in real life, that had the perfect 'somethin'".

On other songs, of course, is a grittier side, as well as a personal edge. The dramatic and ominous "Follow Me" shows Venom at his most intense, launching a pre-emptive strike against any doubters and promising change in the local hip hop scene, as well as a warning of his ascension to legendary status in the world of Hip Hop. "Lofty ambitions coming from St. Louis, I know. But God gave me this gift for a reason. Somebody out there's gonna do it if it's not me." Other songs in this vein include "My Mission" and "The People's Lyricist" a song in which he raps over a charged, triumphant beat worthy enough for any boxer to enter the ring with, rapping between samples of The Game, Jay-Z, and... The Rock!!

We hear Venom the comedian on the narrative "Triple H" which is the abbreviation for his alter ego, "The Hip Hop Hitman". "That's my Supaman Luva. My Slim Shady. Half tha rappers in tha game got an alter ego, and I wanted one I could just cut loose wit." In this song, which he plans to be an ongoing saga in his albums, he introduces the character Triple H and lets you in on his last "hit" on Juelz Santana. This song is far too creative and hysterical for anyone to take it personally. "I'm actually planning to make a Triple H solo album. I'ma make a lotta rappers mad wit that one." Speaking of personality changes, another song that introduces one of his darker sides is "Gladiator". You might not be able to gather it from his name itself, but the CD art might give a hint that Venom and The Tiger Dragon aren't exactly the same person. "I Hulk Out on this song. U barely know it's me." Indeed, his voice switches from smooth to menacing and monstrous, while kicking his rap flow and vocabulary into high gear. The alternate title of the song is "Super Sayin 3", and judging by the outrageous "anime-action-movie" lyrics, we see why.

Then there's Venom the socially conscious. On the songs "Black America" and "Raining Tears", he tries to breath hope into the cynical who can't see our progress as a society, and acknowledges some of the major tragedies over the past few years, respectively. There's also the very personal "Lost Touch" in which he reaches out, at least in song, to the people who were once close to him and gone, or those he doesn't keep in touch with like he should. "I'm not tha socializing type, but Grandma always told me it doesn't hurt to call and say 'hi'."

Finally, there's the hometown anthems "Love Ya Hood Remix", a feel-good summertime jam featuring his rap group, STLiens, and "St. Louis", the intense street banger in which his passionate bars are accented by a flanged .44 Magnum blast, and an "Army March" style beat.

We could be here for days going over the songs on the CD. What began as perhaps a 10 or 14 track demo evolved into a 36 track epic that's been developing itself almost for the past 4 years. So far we've covered 12 songs. The club songs, the girl songs, the conscious songs, the anthems, the deep personal songs, the hardcore songs, and the alter ego song, and we've still yet to scratch the surface of what "The Weapon X Project" has to offer. "Not only that, but I'm plannin a sequel that's gonna top this by far. It'll be more tight knit, conceptually. More of the same variety, but better executed."

Venom became inspired to leisurely write rhymes in 1996, following the death of 2Pac. "I'd actually never really listened 2 him much before then. I knew the big songs, but I didn't have an album." Fortunately, his father, being a huge music enthusiast, owned the 2Pac album "Me Against the World", which Venom would go on to listen to and be inspired by since. "That was the first album to really show me how deep music could reach. Everything I listened to before that was completely superficial by comparison." Like many who begin rapping, his subject matter was influenced by the things he listened to, which was mostly.... 2Pac. "Couldn't keep that up, tho. I ain't no thug, I just like puttin the words together. I ain't tryin to shoot nobody. I ain't that angry. I've got no reason to be." In 1999, he came to own a computer with internet service, where he stumbled on hip hop communities that specialized in battle rapping. "Honestly, everybody I got started with was about on my level when I got started, and we all really grew together as lyricists. One guy I used to battle occasionally taught me tha rules and tools, and within about 6 months, I was better than him." Internet rappers are notoriously tough battle rappers, as their roots lie in simply writing out the rhymes, which is less prone to hold one's attention than an audible flow, so the written rhyme has to be that much more intricate and clever. "I was in on that for about a year before I decided I wanted to record. So I went from simple ass gangsta raps to elaborate metaphysical metaphor rhymes." He was content with his material at first, but upon further listening, he began to feel something was missing. In 2001, Jay-Z's album "The Blueprint" released and Venom finally realized what he needed. "All I was putting together was 'I'm better than you' rhymes, basically. That's not real 'music'. Music is about everything. I'd lost touch with that when I eased up on tha 2Pac, cuz even when I was writin my little gangsta raps, there was a part of me in it. I felt something when I'd read them back to myself. So I had to get back to that." Along with that realization came a theory about marketing music and the general perception of the music by artists and fans. "Mainstream artists do what they do, which honestly is pretty watered down, and they get paid. Then u got the underground rappers that go completely to the left and say 'you supposed to do it like this, and just to show you we'll never go pop, we're gonna make it completely different'. I mean, rap began as havin fun before the gangsta and the battlin. Why can't we do that anymore? By today's standards, even Run DMC and Rakim in the 80's were wack skill-wise. They still get respect cuz they don't do the things everybody been doin from the beginning? So I got to the point where I was tryin to pull a Luke Skywalker. I was tryin to balance The Force. You can do these 'pop' songs, just do em clever and creatively. Do ya hardcore joints, too, but lure the people in, cuz it's not the artists fault that's what the fans like." As Venom began to reconstruct his album, he saw examples of his theory in artists like Jay-Z and 50 Cent. "I like 50 cuz he's got it figured out like I do. I don't agree with the reason he does it that way, but he's sayin the same thing I've been sayin. He's doin exactly what I think'll work, minus tha skillz. His albums, subject-wise are various, he directs his marketing at more than just the gangsta, he goes for the ladies and the clubs, too. So u got the streets behind you, the club by you, and the ladies under you (get it?). That's a winning formula. So my whole thing is to get some of these underground cats tryin 2 keep it extra-real 2 see that you can display ya skillz and get on if u execute it a certain way. I really think there should be some concentration on the word 'pop' that all these dudes don't wanna be. U do wanna be 'pop'. Popular. U wanna be popular. U don't wanna put out m

I've only done one show, so far. but I'm looking forward 2 smashin tha stage again.

Whew... Millions of em.

Rakim, Jay-Z, Eminem, Big Pun, 2Pac, 50 Cent 4 his marketing savvy, Nas, Tech N9ne, Ludacris, KRS-One, Redman & Method Man, Will Smith, old skool and new skool rap in general.