Ill Bill & Vinnie Paz live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 11 February 2013

Heavy Metal Kings began as a song title. In 2006 Vinnie Paz’s group Jedi Mind Tricks released a single by that name with Ill Bill on it, and the two men later took the words as the name for a partnership of their own. On Monday, 11 February 2013, that partnership played Crocks in Thunder Bay.

Loffredo & Associates announced the night on 10 January, a month ahead of the date, with a headline that had the Heavy Metal Kings invading the city. Thunder Bay was one stop on a Canadian run that also listed Oshawa, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Two careers, one stage

Ill Bill was born William Braunstein in Brooklyn in 1972. In the mid-1990s he became a member of Non Phixion, alongside his brother Necro and the DJ Eclipse, a group MC Serch put together in late 1994. Their debut album, The Future Is Now, came out in March 2002.

His first solo album, What’s Wrong with Bill?, followed in 2004 and The Hour of Reprisal in 2008.

In 2005 he helped form La Coka Nostra, a group that included members of House of Pain. Its most recent record at the time, Masters of the Dark Arts, had come out on 31 July 2012, about six months before the trip north. He also runs Uncle Howie Records, which he started in 1998.

Vinnie Paz was born in Sicily in 1977 and grew up in Philadelphia. He co-founded Jedi Mind Tricks in 1993 with the producer Stoupe and started the Army of the Pharaohs collective in 1998. Jedi Mind Tricks released Violence Begets Violence in 2011.

His stage name comes from the boxer Vinny Pazienza. Both men had spent close to twenty years building audiences that follow them from group to group, which is how a pairing like this sells a room in a city neither of them lives in.

The record and the calendar

The duo’s self-titled album came out in April 2011 on Enemy Soil and Uncle Howie, the labels run by Vinnie Paz and Ill Bill respectively.

The record had sixteen tracks, production from DJ Muggs and a long list of others, and it reached number 24 on the Billboard Top Rap Albums chart. That was nearly two years before the Thunder Bay date, so the show belonged to an established partnership, not a launch.

A follow-up was announced in 2011 as Heavy Metal Kings vs. DJ Muggs. It never came out, and Ill Bill said in 2016 that it was no longer being worked on. The duo’s second album, Black God White Devil, came years afterwards.

Each man also had solo work in the frame. Vinnie Paz put out God of the Serengeti on 22 October 2012, less than four months before he reached Thunder Bay. Ill Bill’s third solo album, The Grimy Awards, followed on 26 February 2013, fifteen days after the Crocks date, on Uncle Howie and Fat Beats.

That record carried seventeen tracks and guests including A-Trak, Cormega, El-P and Jedi Mind Tricks, with production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor and DJ Muggs. It reached number 75 on the R&B/Hip-Hop albums chart.

A Monday night

It was a Monday. Monday is not a night for large crowds anywhere, and a small northern city feels that more than most. Underground rap of this kind has never depended on radio, though, and its audience is loyal enough to turn out on a weeknight. That is a reading of the calendar and the genre, not a stated reason.

Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South, near the Lake Superior waterfront. A year earlier the room had put on Raekwon on a Tuesday, and Riff Raff was billed for later that same month.

Support acts for the night were never published. The rest of the room’s calendar for the period sits on the shows page, and the release date of The Grimy Awards makes a handy marker for anyone matching this night against the rest of that winter’s bills.