For fans of late 80s and early 90s Hip-Hop, there were few, if any MCs who commanded more respect than Big Daddy Kane. His first two albums, Long Live The Kane and It’s A Big Daddy Thing, stand among the greatest of all time, in any era. However, many of Kane’s biggest supporters believed there was a precipitous drop off in the quality of his work, after his 2nd LP. Specifically, his albums Taste Of Chocolate and Prince Of Darkness were received unfavorably. In speaking with The Huffington Post, Kane reveals the perception was not just in fans’ heads. In fact, Kane intentionally put out records that he knew to be sub-par due to problems he was having with his record label.

When asked why his output slowed after 1994, Kane said “Well, the string of releases essentially ended after the first four albums. We did Long Live the Kane and I caught the bug. I realized pretty much everything I did wrong with Long Live the Kane and went right back in and did It’s a Big Daddy Thing, because now I had a more universal approach. I think Long Live The Kane was pretty much a real boxed-in mindset with me just doing what I represented in the hood. After the success of that, I was able to tour the world and see what was happening in other places, like Los Angeles and London. I had a broader perspective and I was able to really paint it in It’s A Big Daddy Thing.”

It was then, however, that Kane disclosed his intentions subsequent to the release of his second album. “After that, I was unhappy with the label, so I dropped two trash albums to try to hurry up and finish up my 5-album deal so that’s why they were coming so fast after that,” he told Huffington Post. “I was trying to hurry up and get out of the deal. I guess Warner Brothers caught on after Prince Of Darkness and they just stopped me and made me freeze for a year. I was glad they did because at that point in time I started realizing that the streets were saying ‘Yo, they say you fell off. You whack.'”

Prince & Big Daddy Kane’s 1989 “Batdance Remix” Is Finally Released (Audio)

While Kane re-focused after Prince Of Darkness, and was happy with his next album, Looks Like A Job For, he says he made a misstep by not properly assessing how Rap flows had changed by 1993, the year of its release. “I think that it was me who made the mistake because I was spitting a lot of dope rhymes, but I didn’t realize that with artists like Method Man and Biggie and Nas, the flow had changed. Cats were behind the beat more, they weren’t that rapid-fire like I was accustomed to doing so I think my style was out-dated.” While Kane would release two more albums after that, his career was never the same.

In other parts of the article, spotted on Ego Trip, Kane discusses gentrification in Brooklyn, his next career moves, his favorite MCs of all-time and currently, Donald Trump and much more. Check out the full story at The Huffington Post.