Mac Dre
He also provided an uncredited hook to the track "Gotta Survive" off of Young Lay's Black N' Dangerous album.
His lyrics were largely based on his neighborhood known by those around him as "The Crest", short for Country Club Crest. His music gained popularity in the early to mid 1990s throughout the Bay Area, eventually receiving national recognition through his independent record labels Romp and Thizz Entertainment.
During his music career, he released many hit singles, such as "Too Hard for the F*****n' Radio", and more recently "Feelin' Myself" and "Get Stupid". He was the creator of the "Thizzle Dance", as well as many other popular dances which were referred to as giggin'.
Early Life and Career
Mac Dre, born Andre Hicks, was born in Oakland CA but was raised in Vallejo, CA, on July 5, 1970.He was one of many Gangsta Rappers of the Westcoast.
Aside from a few slick soul-talking DJs on select radio stations in California, the notion of rapping as a musical form was years away. Speaking from her Vallejo home, just after the one-year anniversary of her son's death, Hicks' mother Wanda Salvatto can't say that she knew her son would be a performer, but she remembers noticing from an early age that he was a rampant individualist.
"The thing about Andre as a child," she says, "was that he was always very, very outgoing and outspoken.
He had a mind of his own early on and followed his own direction." His parents tried to get him involved in sports, but Salvatto says he took more interest in talking to other kids than in playing games with them. "He was interested in all kinds of people," she says, "and in the differences in people.
He opened up to everybody."
It wasn't until the family moved to the Country Club Crest neighborhood--known more familiarly as Crestside or "the Crest"--that a clear picture of his future started to take shape. "He also started asking for keyboards," Salvatto recalls, "and early in junior high, he started to pick up the microphone and started rapping and writing lyrics himself, I'd say about the seventh or eighth grade."
By the time Hicks was a teenager, rap music had become a coast-to-coast phenomenon, and Vallejo's own underground began bubbling.
One of Vallejo's early pioneers, Michael "the Mac" Robinson, released the groundbreaking album The Game Is Thick in 1988; its influence is still felt throughout the Northern California rap scene. After recording his first three albums between 1989 and 1991, Mac Dre was charged with conspiracy to commit bank robbery.
His record label, Romp Productions, and his many references to "Romper Room" in his songs, coincided with a Vallejo robbery gang of the time calling themselves the "Romper Room Gang" and responsible for the robberies of many area banks and pizza parlors. The Robberies even had a small segment on the television show Unsolved Mysteries.
Hicks was alleged to be a member of the gang which also included Bay Rapper J Diggs and Da'unda'dogg. Hicks was sentenced to five years in prison in 1992.
In prison, Hicks gained some notoriety by recording the lyrics to songs directly over the Fresno County jail inmate telephone. His album, Young Black Brotha, was a result of such efforts, as well as guest appearances on fellow artists' songs, all while Hicks was still imprisoned.
A later album, Back 'N Da Hood, was also made up of these prison-recorded songs.
After his release from prison in 1996, He first released Mac Dre Presents the Rompalation, it was said he did this compilation with many other artists from the Bay Area before his solo album Stupid Doo Doo Dumb to give them more exposure, as he knew his return from Lompoc would be greatly noticed. Following those albums, Hicks met with Executive Producer Bernard Gourley and recorded the classic album "Rapper Gone Bad" with the help of with production from Tone Cappone, Lev Berlak, and Warren G.
This started a new beginning for Mac Dre as he began to release albums steadily, building a huge catalog of music recorded at The Grill Studios in Oakland, CA. Hicks relocated to Sacramento, California where he started a new label imprint, "Thizz Entertainment", and is credited with coining the slang verb to thizz thus securing Dre as the Godfather of the Hyphy movement that years later was brought to the mainstream by E-40.
Death
On November 1, 2004, returning to Kansas City, Missouri, a car pulled up next to the white diesel van carrying Dre.
Though it is not known whether words were exchanged, occupants of the car opened fire. He is believed to have died instantly from a gunshot wound to the neck.
In 2005 due to a large amount of suspicion, Kansas City rapper Anthony "Fat Tone" Watkins was murdered in Las Vegas, allegedly by Bay Area rapper and Dre's good friend Mac Minister, in retaliation for Hicks' death. The body of a prostitute, 21-year-old Lee Danae Laursen, was found in Fairfield, CA in November 2005; Laursen had been in the company of Mac Minister (Andre Dow) and Jason Mathis in Las Vegas when Watkins was murdered. In March 2006, Dow was arrested by FBI officials and both Dow and Mathis were indicted on murder charges in the Watkins murder. Some in the rap community initially suspected the March 2007 shooting death of Johnny Cash (Johnny Castaneda, a/k/a "The Fast Gunna") was related to the Mac Dre killing; however, officials attributed Castaneda's death to unrelated "street violence".
On the weekend of the August 26, 2006, Hicks' tombstone was stolen from his final resting place at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
However, B.E.T.'s documentary-type show American Gangster aired an episode on January 16th, 2009, focusing on Mac Dre and his Romper Room ties. Mac Dre was also featured on M.T.V.'s My Block in a memorial Chris Kanaris montage.
Mac Dre was also featured on a Thizz Nation DVD Treal TV.