Fresh out of high school and with an ear hungry for hard-hitting 808s, Fly pulled the record out of a local bin, not because he knew anything about the Showboys or the song, but because he respected the label that put it out.
âWe ran into the room, that shit was so hot. Triggerman 'Triggerman' is a collection of five hard hitting gangsta style trap beats ready for you to turn into your next certified street hit. Nothing from the label, nothing from the shows. As Price puts it, âThat recordâs about 34 fucking tracks.â But the signature xylophone flourish that initially caught Spanish Flyâs ear came about as a fluke. We don‘t have an album for this track yet.
âMr. We didnât know nobody in New Orleans, and ever single record as weâre riding into New Orleans is Triggerman.
The business side of one of the most influential records in Southern rap history tells another story entirely. We really put in our work, did something great.â, âItâs a blessing to know that we have contributed to hip-hop on this level,â he continues. DJ Jimi hit the Billboard charts with his remixed version âWhere They At?â some months later, and the rest was bounce history. It wasn’t long before Triggerman became synonymous with the budding Memphis sound, a legacy that’s still alive and well today, from the unflinchingly hard edge and often overlooked storytelling abilities of the scene’s most famous MCs (8Ball & MJG, Project Pat, Yo Gotti and, more recently, Young Dolph) to the consistently dark undertone churning through its beats. So we were like, âThatâs our record, but that shit ainât named âTriggerman.ââ. âOnce we heard that, thatâs when we decided to crash the record with the hard kick first on the intro, hard kick on the descriptions of the two villains, and then 808 on the verse,â Hall continues. âHe told us, âYo, some promoter called yâall for a show.ââ, âNo, he said, âA promoter called for a show, but he said heâs looking for the guys that made âTriggerman,ââ says Hall. â[Hallâs brother] calls Or and he said to him, âYo, Iâve got a surprise for you,ââ says Price. First they went to Memphis, then to Houston, and then they rolled into New Orleans. And while both Memphis and New Orleans can rightfully lay claim to the record, current consensus credits Memphis DJ Spanish Fly for breaking the song in the deep south. Two months?â, âAnd then it was gone,â says Hall.
In New Orleans, the song took a separate, parallel path.
The 1-bar drum loop was known to be used in bounce music, which has been influential in recent hip hop music, including Canadian rapper Drake's "Nice for What" and "In My Feelings", and also "Go Crazy" by American singer Chris Brown and rapper Young Thug.
They recorded several singles for Profile Records in the mid-80's, including a song called Drag Rap (Triggerman) in which a twisted tale of revenge-seeking gangsters unfolded over a richly syncopated beat. Everything was analog and you [recorded] to two-inch reel. Even just for our legacy, I think that would be something phenomenal to just fucking know.â.
âBack then, there wasnât nothing digital. âThen, we got to when we sort of had a pattern laid down and we were fucking around with the keyboard, thatâs when we came up with the [xylophone sound] and Brian Perkins started doing that over the top.â. I really would like to know. By Benjamin Meadows-Ingram on June 6, 2018. âFor years, I donât think it really bothered us.