The 10 Most Notable Rap Supergroups That Never Actually Put Out An Album

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Kevin Durant recently signed a deal with the already-stacked-73-and-9-record-breaking-Western-Conference-Champion Golden State Warriors to form what could be the greatest NBA team ever assembled. The Warriors starting five will now include four All-NBA players, including the last two NBA MVPs. Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and now Kevin Durant are each stars in their own right, but now their transcendent individual talent can play off of one another in unique and unprecedented ways.

In hip-hop, similar combinations of star power have happened with mixed results. Jay-Z and Kanye West took black excellence and rap opulence to another level on Watch The Throne, while AZ, Foxy Brown, Nas, and Nature, didn’t quite meet expectations as The Firm. Slaughterhouse continues to make waves when they form like Voltron. The Horsemen Project though? Not so much.

But even though these supergroups didn’t all release great music, they at least did put out albums. That’s further along than the groups we discuss in this post ever got. Most only dropped a single and a name, and others never even made it that far. Be it because of tragedy, lack of forethought, or scheduling issues, these ten would be supergroups never got far past the idea stage. With super teams and super groups on everybody’s mind, let’s talk about the ones that could have been, but never were.

The Commission (Biggie Smalls, Lance “Un” Rivera, Puff Daddy, Lil’ Cease, Charli Baltimore, and Jay-Z )

On the intro to the dark and brutal Life After Death track “What’s Beef?,” The Notorious B.I.G. announced the members of the supergroup The Commission. Biggie Smalls, Lance “Un” Rivera, Puff Daddy, Lil’ Cease, Charli Baltimore, and Jay-Z formed what could have been the greatest supergroup of all time. Sadly, the announcement was already too late as Biggie would be murdered in LA before the song’s release on his posthumous sophomore classic. Had B.I.G. lived, the group could have altered the course of hip-hop history in so many ways.

If Un and Jay-Z are in the same crew, maybe they don’t run into the *ahem* unpleasantness that almost cost the future Big Homie his freedom. Does Charli Baltimore become a lasting force as a female MC with her own round of praise being heaped upon her along with Queen Latifah and Lil’ Kim on the most recent Hip-Hop Honors? Jay-Z lamented “The Commission was our vision/We ain’t it see it come to fruition/We ran outta time” on the Young Gunz’ 2004 album track “Never Take Me Alive.” We’ll never know what could have been.

Child Rebel Soldiers (Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell)

Kanye West’s excellent 2007 mixtape Can’t Tell Me Nothing introduced a group consisting of arguably the three most influential rappers of the “everyman” era in hip-hop — Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Pharrell. Featuring a Thom Yorke sample looped up by Lupe–by far the least accomplished producer of the trio–their debut track “Us Placers” had the early hip-hop blogosphere salivating and message board reply numbers looking like a Steph Curry box score.

The group didn’t reconnect again until the next year for the remix of N.E.R.D.’s “Everybody Nose.” CRS released their final song together two years later–the frantic “Don’t Stop” from Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Friday series. When the song was released, MTV quoted Lupe as saying “Pharrell came up with the idea ÔÇö ‘Let’s do a group, Child Rebel Soldiers,'[…]That was, like, a year and a half ago, and the whole time we’ve been figuring out what to do.” They never did.

Murder Inc. (Jay-Z, DMX, and Ja Rule)

New York Giants Jay-Z, DMX, and Ja Rule spent the late ’90s and early 2000s jockeying for position as the biggest hip-hop artists in the world. The three New York MCs all had their careers tied to one another through various means: Jay and X’s infamous battle, early appearances on underground singles with Mic Geronimo, Jay’s close relationship to Ja Rule’s right hand man Irv Gotti. All three acts eventually landed on Def Jam records and released multiplatinum albums and singles as solo artists by the time they graced the cover of XXL together as Murder Inc. in 1999.

With all three acts in the same label system, at the top of their respective games musically, and also at the height of their popularity, what kept this supergroup from releasing an album? “Ego,” according to Ja Rule. In an interview with MTV, Rule stated that his two fellow Murder Inc. members weren’t on the same page. “We couldnÔÇÖt get X and Jay in the same room, from long ago, their storied battle on the pool table, guns out [and] all of that. That carried over into our careers and we were all trying to do our thing separately and it carried over. It was hard to get all of us into a room to do what we needed to do.”

Dr. Dre and Ice Cube

After an acrimonious breakup led to the most scathing diss record in history, no one expected Dr. Dre and Ice Cube to be on the same song, let alone the same room. However, as depicted in the hit film Straight Outta Compton, Dre and Cube were mending fences behind the scenes long before the public was aware.

The duo released “Natural Born Killaz” on the Murder Was the Case soundtrack, and announced that they would record an album entitled Heltah Skeltah, not to be confused with the Brownsville duo. R.I.P. Sean Price. The usual scheduling issues and Dre’s perfectionism likely contributed to this project never panning out, but it was also marred by problem different from the other supergroups on this list: a third party who partially sabotaged it. Former N.W.A. writer and standout soloist The D.O.C. took some of the beats and lyrics that were intended for the album, headed to Atlanta, and named his own disastrous solo album Helter Skelter to spite his former mentor for relegating him to writing only, after he lost his powerful baritone to a car accident.

In an extensive interview with now defunct early hip-hop blog ThaFormula, D.O.C. spelled out his motives:

See me and Dre is like a big brother, little brother thing and when the big brother piss his little brother off, then his little brother is gonna number one, take his shit and run with it, which I did. “Heltah Skeltah” was really a Dr. Dre record that he was starting to plan on working on that I had actually already started writing lyrics for, and one of the songs that he was trying to takeaway from me was a song that he wanted to put on “Heltah Skeltah.” So I was like “f*ck this shit,” went to Atlanta and recorded the album.

The only other song that was reported to be apart of the project to drop was the Dre-produced album closer “Game Over” from Scarface’s The Untouchable.

All City Chess Club (Lupe Fiasco, Asher Roth, B.o.B, The Cool Kids, Charles Hamilton, Blu, Diggy, J. Cole, Wale and Mickey Factz )

This group, the brainchild of Lupe Fiasco, seemed to be doomed from the start. There were way too many acts on too many different labels, with different personal and commercial motivations for this to ever work. Lupe did drop a promising “I’m Beamin’” remix that featured all of the original members except Wale, Cole, and Mickey Factz who was brought into the fold later, but nothing else ever came of the proposed supergroup. As for Lupe’s take on what happened?

ÔÇ£@BiGGS_7: @LupeFiasco if no CRS….at least All city chess club?ÔÇØ

Ask @MickeyFactz what happened… Hahahaha

— EG| Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) July 25, 2013

Mac and Brad (Beanie Sigel and Scarface)

For their entire careers, Scarface and Beanie Sigel have been two of the most respected MCs in hip-hop–both for their thoughtful lyrics and their bona fide street credibility. So when they linked up in 1999 on “Mac and Brad” from Sigel’s 1999 debut album, the chemistry between the two was evident and fans immediately wanted to hear more.

After a decade’s worth of classic collaborations, Scarface announced in 2012 that they would release an album named after their first one Mac and Brad.

Follow the real beanie @BeanieSigelSP Mac and Brad comin soon……

— SCARFACE (@BrotherMob) March 30, 2012

Facemob stated that each rapper would do six songs and send them to the other to add their verses, which would result in a solid, 12 song, LP. He even called Beans live on air during an interview with Sway on MTV’s since cancelled Rapfix, and the Philly rapper stated. “It’s a reality now; you know our word is our bond. We said we gonna do somethin’, we gonna do it[.]”

They didn’t.

A year later, in an interview with Fuse, Face said the album wasn’t going to happen, and there hasn’t been much conversation about it since. Who knows if Beanie’s legal problems or other issues got in the way, but this seemed like a match made in hip-hop heaven. Too bad we’ll never know what the two legendary rappers had in store.

T-Wayne (T-Pain and Lil’ Wayne)

In 2008, a T-Pain/Lil Wayne album sounded like not only a great idea, but one that had a strong possibility of happening. After trading huge singles on each other’s albums–Pain’s “Can’t Believe It” and Wayne’s “Got Money” respectively–the duo announced that they would put out a full album as T-Wayne.

Of course, a recurring theme in this post is timing, and it never seemed to line up for the southern Auto-Tune loving duo. Between touring schedules, jail stints, and waning popularity, the two were never simultaneously at the same artistic height again.

DOOMSTARKS (MF DOOM and Ghostface)

We’re going a decade since the project was originally announced with new tracks dropping from DOOMSTARKS as recently as last year. Although DOOM is well known for his classic collaborations with Madlib, J. Dilla, and Danger Mouse, he hasn’t been able to cross the finish line with Ghostface.

In past interviews, Ghost has placed the blame firmly at DOOM’s presumably metal feet–stating that he’s waiting for more songs from DOOM, but a sliver of light seems to be appearing through a recently open door with new music and the potential for an album’s release. Then again…we’ve heard that before.

Center Edge Territory (Curren$y, Jay Electronica and Mos Def)

This is one of the most unexpected entries to this list. The three MCs met at Dame Dash’s art gallery/recording studio/performance space DD172 in 2009 and hit it off quickly, reportedly recording six songs together. Curren$y is possibly the most prolific artists of his generation, having dropped more mixtapes and EPs in the past two years than Mos and Jay Elec have released songs combined.

Add to that Mos’s recent travel issues, the fact that we may never hear the tracks they did record due to the legal issues surrounding Curren$y’s music from the DD172 days, and Jay Electronica’s enigmatic personality, and the likelihood of this one happening is pretty low.

Juelz Santana and Lil Wayne

“‘I Can’t Feel My Face’ is getting started/And Weezy is my accomplice”

Not so fast, Juelz. What once had the rap game in feverish anticipation, never came to be as Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana never released their collaborative album I Can’t Feel My Face. Jay-Z’s return from his brief retirement caused some rancor amongst the next generation of rappers who wanted to ascend to the then empty throne.

By 2007, with Dip Set and Hov at odds and Lil’ Wayne staking his claim as the best rapper alive, this would have been the perfect time to push the aging superstar aside. Alas, as the saying goes, youth is wasted on the young. Juelz and Wayne were unable to capitalize on an opportunity that may have been bigger than both rappers realized at the time.

The 10 Most Notable Rap Supergroups That Never Actually Put Out An Album : UPROXX