FROM the dawn of hip-hop through the mid-1990s, rapping and singing were like church and state. Rappers rapped, singers sang and, especially on gangsta rap records, never the twain did meet.
All that changed in 1994 when Cleveland quintet Bone Thugs-N-Harmony upended the hip-hop paradigm, marrying West Coast G-Funk and gun-blast boasts to a mellifluous rapping-singing hybrid that has since been co-opted by the likes of Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, T-Pain and Akon. After becoming one of the top-selling hip-hop acts, Bone Thugs finally imploded; rapper Flesh-N-Bone was sentenced in 2000 to 11 years in prison on gun charges and three years later, founding member Bizzy Bone was kicked out for erratic behavior.
Fan fealty never flagged, however. And now as a trio signed to Interscope Records/Full Surface Records, Bone Thugs is set to release "Strength and Loyalty" in late March, its first major-label release since the group's platinum-certified greatest hits album in 2004. The rappers' aim: to claim to their rightful place in the annals of hip-hop.
"I can't turn on the radio without hearing a bunch of Mini-Mes," says Bone Thugs' Layzie Bone. "We really created a movement in music 13 years ago. We changed music and got everybody to do what we do. But you never see us mentioned as one of the greatest groups of all time. That makes us mad as hell."
Over the last 18 months, the group hopscotched across the country, recording some 75 songs in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cleveland and Phoenix with the help of a Who's Who of hit-making producers -- will.i.am, Timbaland, Jazze Pha and Swizz Beats among them. From there, Bone Thugs narrowed the album's track listing to a single album's worth of songs (an exact count has not been decided).
A world-class wrecking crew of hip-hop and R&B chart toppers, including the Game, Chamillionaire, Three 6 Mafia and Carey, were brought in as featured artists (one such collaboration, "I Tried," featuring Akon, will be released Feb. 1).
And courtesy of vocals he laid down before his prison sentence, Flesh-N-Bone appears on "Strength and Loyalty." "We found some of his old sounds and put new production on it," Layzie explains. "His incarceration is up next year, and they just moved him to a lower-security prison. He went through hell in that system. But by the time of his release in 2008, it'll be like we never had a break."
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