Esham Attica Smith (born September 20, 1973), known mononymously as Esham, is an American rapper from Detroit, Michigan. Emerging as one of the first ever hip hop artists from Detroit, Esham released his debut studio album, Boomin' Words from Hell, in 1989 at the age of 16. Since then, he has gone on to release 21 studio albums in total and is best known as a representative of the hip hop subgenre horrorcore. In 1992, he co-founded the horrorcore group Natas. He and his brother James Smith founded and ran the Detroit hip hop label Reel Life Productions.
As one of the first rappers to receive attention in the city, Esham was often cited as a major influence on another Detroit horrorcore act, Insane Clown Posse. Esham is known for incorporating elements of rock music in his beats, and his lyrics cover a number of subjects, including death, drug use, evil, paranoia and sex. Esham refers to his style of music as "acid rap".
Biography
Early career
Born Esham Attica Smith on September 20, 1973, in Long Island, New York, Esham grew up splitting time between the Seven Mile neighborhood on the East side of Detroit, Michigan, where he lived with his mother. He attended Osborn High School, and lived with his grandmother in New York during summers. He studied piano, guitar, and trombone in high school, and listened to artists such as Sugar Hill Gang, Run-DMC, Ozzy Osbourne and Kiss. Esham began to write original lyrics, and was encouraged by his older brother, James H. Smith, to seriously pursue a career in hip hop. According to Esham, "He felt like I had a dope flow, and he thought I could bring something new to the game, just coming from the city of Detroit. Back then, it wasn't really a [rap] music scene in Detroit. Everybody was just imitating what everybody else was doing." In the second grade, Esham met Champtown, who was also an aspiring rapper. The two performed together at open mic events Seafood Bay. In one occurrence, Champtown and Esham were forced to rap for a drug dealer at gunpoint.
At the age of 16, Smith released his debut album, Boomin' Words from Hell, in 1989. Of the album, Smith stated, "It was the crack era, [...] and that's where all that really came from. It was all an expression about ['70s-'80s drug cartel] Young Boys Incorporated, Mayor Coleman Young, the city we lived in and just the turmoil that our city was going through at the time. We referred to the streets of Detroit as 'Hell' on that record. So that's where my ideas came from." In 1990, Esham and James H. Smith founded the independent record label Reel Life Productions, which reissued his debut album with an alternate track listing and artwork. Esham found it difficult to develop a fanbase, because many wrote off the dark content of his lyrics and imagery as shock value, while hip hop fans did not connect to Esham's albums because of his heavy metal influences.
In 1991, Esham met Joseph Bruce, a member of the group Inner City Posse, who praised Esham and Reel Life Productions, and gave Esham a copy of the group's EP Dog Beats, beginning the two rappers' friendship and professional relationship.
After releasing two EPs, Erotic Poetry and Homey Don't Play, Esham completed the double album Judgement Day, and its two volumes, Day and Night were released separately on April 9, 1992. In All Music Guide to Hip-Hop, Jason Birchmeier wrote that Judgement Day, Vol. 1 "may not be his most well-crafted work, but it certainly stands as his most inspired work of the '90s", while Vol. 2 "isn't quite as strong as the first volume, suffering mostly from a number of weak tracks [...] the first volume doesn't rely quite so much on cheap shock, instead focusing on evocative horror motifs, making Judgement Day, Vol. 2 the less important of the two."