Slick Rick

What strikes me most about Slick Rick is that he essentially invented the idea of the rapper as a novelist. Plenty of MCs in the mid-eighties could rhyme; almost none could build a scene, voice multiple characters, and land a punchline the way he did on "La Di Da Di" and "The Show." The fact that "La Di Da Di" became one of the most sampled records ever says it all — generations of artists keep returning to borrow his cadence. That London-born lilt over New York hip-hop gave him a sound nobody has convincingly imitated since. For my money, he is the genre's first true storyteller.

Name (English)

Slick Rick

Name (Japanese)

スリック・リック

Reading

すりっく・りっく

Born

January 14, 1965 (age 61)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Snake

Origin

Mitcham, United Kingdom

Occupation

rapper / singer / record producer / philanthropist / songwriter

High school

Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttps://www.slickrickisart.com/
• Xhttps://x.com/iamSlickRick
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AA%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AA%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF

Tags

• rapper
• singer
• record producer

Last updated

2026-06-10

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.