Hip Hop History: CPO Boss Hogg

This is long over due, and a day too late. That doesn’t diminish the fact that this is also well deserved. We lost a real yesterday, and I’m gonna tell you all about him. Sit back, reply to your inbox messages, and mute or pause your tv, because THIS one is gonna have some length! Leggo!

Vince Edwards , my namesake, known by his stage name “CPO Boss Hogg”, was born and raised in Compton, California. He was a founding member of the hip hop group Capital Punishment Organization in 1989 under the moniker Lil’ Nation. The group released their only album before splitting up in 1991. Afterwards, CPO continued his career as a solo artist, featuring on several high-profile albums.

While N.W.A., DJ Quik, and Compton’s Most Wanted were famously independent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hub City’s King T and CPO were notably inked to a nearby landmark, Capitol Records.

CPO’s biggest feature was with the late Tupac Shakur on the track “Picture me rolling” on the All Eyes on Me LP. In early 2015, CPO Boss Hogg announced via Twitter that he was working on new material, for a new album release. But let’s back track a lil more.

In an interview, CPO said he “didn’t have any aspirations to rap or anything like that”. He was really happy for MC Ren, who, is credited for “discovering” him. He reflected on watching the success of 1988’s Straight Out Compton album by N.W.A. In the 18 months that followed though, the man picked up a pen and dabbled with the craft he heard coming from Ren, Eazy, Dre and Cube. “They were saying, ‘Let me hear something,’ and he said ‘No.’” Pressed further, CPO shared the “Ruthless Villain” his work. “Next thing he knew, Ren was like, ‘You need to write nine more songs’.”

Those 10 songs would ultimately lead to what would be CPO’s first album, 1990’s To Hell And Black (released as a group with DJ Train and Young D, along with Lil Nation). Ren ushered his homies into Capitol Records, home of MC Hammer and The Beastie Boys, and secured a deal to his new production company. Ren produced much of the album, which hit #33 on the Rap charts, despite limited marketing and promotion. At the height of Compton hats and Locs, CPO was one of the artists to benefit from the city’s musical map-making. For CPO, it was all so sudden. The next thing he knew, MC Ren shot him a check. They just went from there and his record deal was with Capitol.

Following the release of the album, the Boss Hogg made a brief appearance on the raunchy album cut, “Findum Fuckem, and Flee” on N.W.A.’s final LP, Niggaz4Life. With Ice Cube already gone from the group, and Ren soon becoming closer to Eazy-E than ever before, CPO’s fledgling career was in the balance. When Dr. Dre—whom he admits he never knew as well as Ren—mentioned a burgeoning new imprint called Death Row Records, CPO honored principles. CPO was really about integrity and loyalty, so he was happy with himself in the fact that he was loyal to Ren. He knew Dre as well, but he was closer to Ren. He always saw it as a missed opportunity. He could have very likely been on Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic”. He was hella hot. When the opportunity came to go again, he shook. Although not on the original 1992 release of the album, CPO Boss Hogg was very present during those early 1990s sessions at Dick Griffey’s Solaar Studios.

The rapper had strong ties to Chocolate, who was Death Row CEO Marion “Suge” Knight’s first client, the man who allegedly (and rather notoriously) wrote Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” hit. When the new ownership of Death Row re-released The Chronic as “Re-Lit & From The Vault” in 2009, a CPO song, “Slippin’ In The West” was included.

To be fair, it was two years later that that chance encounter with Dre and Suge, took Boss Hogg to ink his second record contract. After running into Dre at the producer’s regular hang-out of the day, Gladstone’s restaurant in Malibu, the two discusses a potential collaboration. While Dre told CPO he was too occupied to produce a track, he introduced his friend from the Ruthless Records years to Snoop Doggy Dogg’s latest deejay, DJ Jam and producer Tony Green. The result was “Just So Ya No” on Above The Rim soundtrack, followed by “The Eulogy” on the Murder Was The Case soundtrack, both twice-platinum each. “When I got on Above The Rim, that was a flick,” proudly recalls CPO of the Barry Michael Cooper-penned script-turned-blockbuster. “You know rolling up to the theater and walking on the red carpet. That has never happened to me with my album and you know I’m with the top dogs in the industry. To be on Above The Rim and to turn around and be on Murder Was The Case, is huge!”

It was an actor in both films, Tupac Shakur, that would ultimately give CPO Boss Hogg has greatest sense of worth in a lengthy career. The pair had met in 1992, just days after the film Juice hit theaters. They were sitting in a room way in front of a ballroom, at a B.R.E. magazine event in Los Angeles, California. It was dimly lit and they saw the door open up at the other end. One could easily see from the hall light, that it was Tupac. He started walking CPO’s direction, and they looked at each other and CPO said, “Does it look like he is walking towards us”? So they moved to the left and when they moved he moved, just like a Ludacris song. Of course CPO knew who he was, but there is no way in the world he thought Tupac knew who the hell HE was. Wrong. He walked up and said what’s up to him. CPO then congratulated him on Juice, and he was like, ‘Cool, I appreciate it.’ They shook hands, a couple of hellos and then Pac disappeared.

After CPO had signed to Death Row, the two crossed paths one day at the label’s studios. In 1994, while Tupac was hanging out with Snoop, Tha Dogg Pound and Nate Dogg, CPO passed through. “They were all sitting at the board. ‘Pac got up and walked over to me and hugged me,” recalls CPO. “He just walks over and gives me hospitable love. We don’t know each other like that; he has only met me one other time. So I thought that was super-cool. This is a humble cat, he is just really cool. He went back to what he was doing, but that had meant a lot to me. This dude doesn’t know me from Adam other than that bree brief encounter.

As the ’90s pressed on, Death Row Records expanded greatly. The label roster would boast artists such as R&B crooner Danny Boy, producer/emcee Sam Sneed, and eventually CPO’s former label-mate MC Hammer, along with Hit Squad member K-Solo. As the roster widened, CPO’s label correspondence and his paychecks halted. The rapper would take a job in reception at Martin Luther King Medical Center in L.A. to support his family. Several years removed from his multi-platinum soundtrack appearances, CPO learned that he was about to lose his day-job too. He was really depressed because he knew he was going to get laid off. He was sitting there thinking to himself, that he’s signed to Death Row, the biggest record company out here and nothing is going on with him. He wasn’t doing videos or anything. Drinking away the pain with his potnas, he admitted in an interview, “I just wanted to talk to somebody, anybody who is doing something, so I can feel like even if I’m not doing shit, I can talk to somebody who is. So I called the studio and Travis at Death Row answered the phone and said, ‘What’s up CPO?’ I said, ‘Who is in today?’ and he said. ”Pac,’ and I said ”Pac…Tupac?.’” CPO, like many, was shocked to learn that the incarcerated rapper was now not only a free man, but the latest acquisition on the Row roster. The session was following Tupac’s bail from Clinton Correctional Facility, orchestrated by Suge Knight and label lawyer David Kenner. CPO requested to speak to his friendly acquaintance.

He put him on hold and when the phone picks up he could hear Pac’s voice. ‘What’s up Pac?’, he asked. And he said, ‘What’s up, who dis?’He said, ‘CPO.’ He said, ‘What’s up, CPO.’ I said, ‘I had a vision,’ and he said, ‘What was it?’ I said, ‘To do a song with Tupac.’ He said should I do a song with you, do one with me. I said, ‘Cool, we got to do that one day.’ He said, ‘Nigga, I’m here now.’ I was like, ‘Okay.” And he hung the phone up. Then him and the homies went to the studio.

When CPO and his friends arrived at Tarzana, California Can-Am Studios, they found Tupac Shakur and his Outlawz entrenched in a studio session with late producer Johnny J. Death Row provided the session with extensive liquor and marijuana, which CPO indulged. They sat down and smoked a gang of cigarettes back-to-back. “He is doing his thing and I start writing in my pad”, he recalled. So he get to this one part and CPO so blazed out of his head, he got writers block. So he walked to Pac and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to say this and I want you to come in and say something, and then I’m going to come in after you. I don’t care what it is. ‘Cause I’m stuck right here.’”

They finally laid it down, then sat there to listened to it. He dropped the music on CPO’s part which he thought was interesting. He dug it! The homies asked if they were going to use this song and CPO thought for sure he wouldn’t. He figured, it would be “protocol; they go in, do a whole lot of songs and then choose from the songs that you like, and then you put those on the album. Little did he know that EVERY song he was doing, he was going to use! There were a lot of things that surprised CPO that day. He didn’t know he was doing a double CD. When All Eyez On Me came out, he didn’t think twice about it because for him, that cat made his day just by inviting him to kick it at the session.

For CPO Boss Hogg though, the story does not end there. While “Picture Me Rollin’” and its position on the five-times-platinum All Eyez concluded his Death Row Records catalog of appearances, the Compton vet appeared on albums such as The Eastidaz’ platinum self-titled debut, and the Bones soundtrack, two opportunities afforded by Snoop. However, although he was paid by his former label-mate, he still was on hard times at the turn of the millenium. In 2000, he didn’t know what the hell happened to his finances, but he was having hard times. He left his job because he got hurt while working. They were supposed to pay worker’s comp, but it hadn’t come through yet. While Suge Knight was still incarcerated from a parole violation the night of Tupac’s fatal shooting, the rapper contacted his former label, after parting ways with Interscope Records’ distribution channel. Times got so rough, he decided to do the unthinkable, and call Death Row. He knew he was going to be told ‘hell no,’ but decided to call, anyway. He said wanted to talk to somebody about the song he did with Tupac. A Death Row employee instructed CPO to contact Universal Publishing, after Afeni Shakur severed ties with Death Row following Tupac’s 1996 death. CPO thought he might be getting the run-around from a label that had subsequently caused Snoop, Nate Dogg, and Kurupt to leave. He called Universal, and his call was transferred through a number of departments. Finally, somebody asked his name and the song in question. “She said, ‘Well, we are only paying mechanicals,’ and he asked, ‘Exactly what are mechanicals?’ She replied that it means “you actually wrote something” Confirming he did in fact write, CPO said he was told he would receive a check in two weeks. After his tenures at Capitol and Death Row, the rapper admitted, “I knew there wasn’t no check coming.” He was wrong (again).

Although it took nearly three weeks, the low-funded CPO Boss Hogg checked his mailbox. He got a letter in the mail from Universal, that looked like a check. “I’m sitting there thinking what if it’s $1,500 that would be the shit right now—and then I’m thinking what if it’s $5,000,” he recalls. “Then I’m like, ‘Chill cuz, it’s not $5,000, open the check and be happy with what you get.’ He open the check and it was a little over $37,000, and he was like “Whoa, I’m rich, bitch!” He was STILL getting paid for that song.

In a career that included close ties to N.W.A., Snoop Dogg and Suge Knight, CPO touts, “‘Pac did more for me than anybody else.”

CPO released his sophomore album, “I, Boss” in ,2019; 20 plus years after the debut. It included production from another Death Row Records alum, Sean “Barney Rubble” Thomas, who in addition to work with Warren G, J-Flexx and The Lady Of Rage, played keyboards on All Eyez’ biggest hit, “California Love.” Dave Aaron, who engineered many a hit for the label, has also returned to Rap, to see CPO Boss Hogg’s second LP through. Also involved is CPO’s brother, Bokie Loc, who has worked with South Central Cartel, Goldie Loc and Snoop Dogg on Malice N’ Wonderland.

That was the last work we will receive from this gentle giant. We who knew him, even if you only shared a few words with him, you felt his character, his kindness, and his appreciation for everything he had earned. My only wish is, I wish I done this sooner.

Rest in paradise CPO Boss Hogg. The world won’t be the same without you.