Unsigned Hype: The Red Eye Crew

The Red Eye Crew of Staten Island, New York were featured in the Unsigned Hype column of The Source Magazine's March 1993 issue. Staten Island is referred to as "New York's most slept-on borough", only a few months before a local group called the Wu-Tang Clan released their debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and brought the area to the forefront of hip hop. The trio consisted of rappers Hype, Jun Jak the Invincible Principle and Oob the Freestyle Fanatic. Hype was previously a member of a group called the Brooklyn Poets and spent a year playing college basketball for the Xavier Gold Rush basketball team in Lousiana, before returning to Staten Island to form the group. The other two members "just started actually writing rhymes together in the last year", which brought a "spontaneous element and a brand new style" to the group. The group had influences in the form of fellow New York artists: listing Slick Rick, Organized Konfusion and KRS-One as their favourite artists. They only had two songs on their demo tape – "Red Eye" and "Flowin' in Fly" – but were working on cleaning up their 4-track demo with Web D of Darc Mind (a group featured in Unsigned Hype less than a year prior).

As Red Eye in 1993, they appeared on "Darc Mind Inc." by Legion of D.U.M.E. alongside Funky Jilz (in what is an ultimate Unsigned Hype collaboration: Legion of D.U.M.E. of June 1992, Red Eye of March 1993 and Jilz of June 1994). Hype released the singles "Da Professional"/"Real MC's" as HDM (Hype da Madman) and "No Nice Timez"/"Who Wanna Taste"/"Big Apple Anthem" as Sho-Nuf in 1997. He appeared on The Stretch Armstrong show in 1997.

With credit to a great post by HipHop-TheGoldenEra that brought this to my attention, HDM could have had his career go very different. Through an affiliation with fellow Staten Islander Schott Free, HDM was invited to appear on "Right Back at You" by Mobb Deep from their album The Infamous. Prodigy wanted him to change his verse but HDM refused and he was replaced by another Staten Island rapper: none other than Ghostface Killah. That must have been a reasonably life-altering decision; Big Noyd built his whole career off of his Infamous appearances. Only a demo version with HDM's appearance exists.

Edit: This article was edited to update corrections by Digital Stimulation, who performed their research a bit better than mine. Big ups. The group also apparently appeared on The Stretch Armstrong Show in 1993 but I cannot find a working link.