The story of Lamont Coleman started off one warm spring day in what is now referred to as the Danger Zone. On May 30th 1974, the last of three children was born to Gilda Terry in Harlem, New York. She would name him Lamont, but by the end he would come to be known as Big L, a name to go down in the hip-hop history books. Lamont was never physically Big as a child, his nickname was Little Lamont, and like most great emcees a lust for hip-hop flourished at an early age. Lamont was always known as a joker, from cracking corny puns to his aunts and uncles as a child to spitting slick lyrical verses. Cameron Giles was among those who knew him best: "He was mad funny thats why when he rhymed, he had a lot of slick shit to say. I wanted him to be on my next album. He was never on that hatin shit. Ill always have mad love for him."

As an adolescent Lamont grew up listening to the talents of Run DMC, Cold Crush Four, and Big Daddy Kane, eventually, he started to mimic his favorite rappers. For all his life Lamont lived on 139th Street and Lenox Avenue he would learn to rhyme in the park near his house at 104th West 139th Street; he would spend hours there trading rhymes with friends to pass the time. Eventually, while attending Julia Richmond High School he was given an alias; Big L, to spite his childhood nickname, he stood only five foot eight inches tall. L describes his lyrical growth: "I started writing rhymes in 1990 and was in a group called Three The Hard Way, but they wasn't serious so I went solo. Then I started winning rap contests and battling everybody in my 'hood and roastin' em." Infact L would win more sanctioned freestyle contests than any other Harlem emcee in the 1990's. L kept perfecting his natural talent and by the time he was seventeen years old he was fast approaching the line that divides pastime and profession. His lyrics defined by the world around him gave insight into fabled Harlem shootouts and legendary Harlem street life.


"Yo L, I ain't got to tell you what to doman, just lace them niggas" - Ma$e

In the early 1990s Big L formed a crew known as Children of the Corn when he asked several friends from a local Harlem rap crew called Caged Fury to join up, Mason "Murder Mase" Betha, Cameron "Killa Cam" Giles, and Cams cousin, Derek "Bloodshed" Armstead were among those who joined. A young Darrell "Digga" Branch did producing for the crew, which created over thirty-five street hits, and Herb McGruff also lent his talent to the COC. Both Mase and Cam were aspiring NBA players when Big L showed them the way of the mic. In fact, the only one who at the time was actually taking professional rapping seriously was L. Lamont was also the first to be signed when Columbia picked up his four track demo-tape. As high school neared an end the COC crew became weaker in its central members when Cam and Mase both went to college and eventually signed their own record deals. The seams began to come undone, Murder Mase was signed to Bad Boy and eventually helped put Cam on Untertainment Records. Both artists shortened their tags; Killa Cam "Cam'ron", and Murder Mase "Ma$e". Anything that was left of the COC crew was destroyed in 1996 when Bloodshed was in a horrible and fatal car accident in Harlem. If you listen to recent material put out by Cam, you will still here him talk about his fallen comrads.

From I Love You on Diplomatic Immunity [2002] Killa spits: ...Have visions of Gotti, visions of lottie, pictures of Blood, scenes of L. In July of 2003 Six Figga Ent. released a 21 track COC Collector's Edition Compilation, many of the tracks were previously never heard by the public.


"Im tryin to make CREAM and that's that" - Prodigy, Mobb Deep

When Big L was still in high school he caught the attention of Lord Finesse in the back of a New York record store called Rockin' Wills. Finesse along with Diamond D, were the founders of the DITC clique. L's first professional appearance came on the B-side of Party

Raptalk.Net: We are here with the extremely legendary DOC himself! Start us off by letting everybody know how you're doing right now!

The DOC: I am well Lunatic. I'm on the west coast as we speak. The weather is not too hot but I'm doing pretty well these days.

Raptalk.Net: That is good to hear! You were born and grew up in Dallas but developed a sound that was mainly west coast and east coast focused. Tell us how that came about.

The DOC: Yes I grew up in the projects in west Dallas, Texas. My sound is not so much a west coast sound as much as it is an east coast sound. If you take Rakim, KRS-One and Slick Rick and match them all together, you have me; but you have to put Dr. Dre beats in there for it to work.

Raptalk.Net: I was just about to say. How did you link up with NWA because you really became like an unofficial member of the group so tell us about that.

The DOC: Well (Dr.) Dre knew a DJ in Dallas and Dre came to Dallas to do a radio show with a friend of his and he heard me rapping. We actually did a song together that was really insane, kind of the way guys do songs today; the young guys that just go in and rap. Well I and Dre did that years ago on a song called "toughest man alive." He (Dre) didn't even lay the drums; he just played it by hand on his 808 and I just started rapping and that's what we came up with. He thought I was so good that he told me if I came to California, he thought that we could be rich. As long as my family wanted to try and send me to the army, I took Dre up on his bill (laughs).

Raptalk.Net: (Laughs) Well nobody blames you for that one.

The DOC: For real.

Raptalk.Net: Do you have any studio memories from being apart of the recording process for "Straight Outta Compton"? With such a classic album, there are usual a few memories that stick out in ones mind.

The DOC: The whole process of making that album was the shit. For me and Dre, it was just getting up every morning and listening to Public Enemy's first record and being so inspired by those guys that a lot of our stuff that came out really came out almost militant but it was really just those guys talking shit.

Raptalk.Net: A few years later you released your solo debut album, "No One Can Do It Better." What are your main thoughts on that album as you look back upon it?

The DOC: You know what? What stands out the most to me about that record is that I and Dre did that album on weekend's in-between when they were doing shows when they were promoting their new records. It took us about three weeks to do that album. We used every song that we did. There is no leftover material; every song we did, we used. To me, it was so crazy that I never had the chance to develop into what I thought I could be because of the accident and everything happened so fast after the album was released.

Raptalk.Net: We're definitely going to get into all that. It is crazy that there was no leftover material. In a day and age where it seems like some artist put leftover material on their albums, for you to not have a track left over combined with the fact that everything you used was so classic is absolutely fantastic.

The DOC: I know its bananas. The thing that trips me out about that record the most is as an artist myself, I think I have to give myself credit in a lot of ways because I only got a chance to make really once record and 20 years later, people really feel such a high regard of the artist that I am; it makes me feel that I must have done something special.

Raptalk.Net: You certainly did. With no leftover material, what's your favorite song off that album and why?

The DOC: "The Formula" is probably my favorite record on that album and it was just because I was such a huge Marvin Gaye fan. The way the song came about, Dre said he had it. Dre had went to the movies with one of his girls and when he came back, he was telling me about a daydream he had in the car about me doing a song called "Th