Lloyd Banks

Posted on 07.19.2002

Lloyd Banks
G-Unit
Real name: Christopher Lloyd
Birthday: April 30, 1982
Hometown: New Carrollton, Maryland

Lloyd Banks was born Christopher Lloyd twenty-two years ago and raised in Jamaica, Queens. "My mom is Puerto Rican, my pops is black," he informs. "It was kinda like when I was with my mother’s side of the family I was the bad seed, I was the one who was most unlikely to succeed. And then when I was with the black side of the family, I was the angel, because all my uncles are career felons." His parents were young and never married. And his father, who choose to pursue tax-free income on the streets, spent more time behind bars then he did with his son. That left his mother to raise a young man who was close to six feet tall by the 6th grade and who started sprouting facial hair in his early teens. "My mother showed me everything," Banks says. "When I was in the third grade, she took a cucumber and showed me how to put the condom on." Like many kids in the inner city his age, Lloyd Banks sought to escape the poverty and death of his environment.

With his father in and out of the prison system, Banks’ mother was left to raise him. Dropping out of high-school before his sixteenth birthday, Lloyd began performing his rhymes on the streetcorner where he gained local fame, appearing on several mixtapes. Together with two other local aspiring artists, Tony Yayo and 50 Cent, G-Unit was created. Banks would later sign a record deal with the label after it was established as a subsidiary of Interscope Records

Early on he took to writing various musings-ghetto poetry, loose narratives; nothing quite structured, though he was influenced by rap gods like Big Daddy Kane and Slick Rick. "I listened to Big Daddy Kane a lot, cause that’s what my pops listened to," he says. Banks’ favorite songs were Rick’s "Young World" and Kane’s "Smooth Operator," and "Ain’t No Half-Steppin’." High school didn’t agree with Banks, so he dropped out before his 16th birthday. The freewriting he had been doing had morphed into full-fledged rhymes, but that was a secret. "I never let nobody know I did it," he says. But he soon got his courage up. "I started rhyming outside and everybody started telling me, ’You should shop your material.’ This is before I even got in the studio." Banks appeared on local mixtapes becoming one of the neighborhood’s best unsigned rappers. His only competition was a childhood friend named Tony Yayo.

One day, Tony, along with another childhood friend who rapped under the name 50 Cent, approached Banks with the idea of becoming a group. If Banks wanted to be down, he could be part of the crew that they were calling G Unit. Banks was down. "I always felt like if I was to get into doing rap professionally, I wanted to get into it with somebody who was from my neighborhood," he says. "Who better than people who I’ve known my whole life?"

Fronted by 50 Cent, the G Unit quickly redefined the urban music industry. They produced a series of street albums with original numbers and high quality artwork, making the discs something more than a bootleg, but not quite an independent release. 50 Cent was soon signed to Shady/Aftermath/ Interscope Records and released the instantly classic, record breaking Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, on which Banks was featured. Then came G Unit’s Beg For Mercy, which was still riding high in the top 20 of the Billboard 200 after four months on the shelves.

Though these successes allowed Lloyd Banks to tour the world multiple times over, one accomplishment means a bit more than all the rest: Earlier this year, Banks was anointed as 2003’s Mixtape Artist of the Year due to his appearance on G Unit mixtapes as well as his own Money in the Bank series. "I take pride in that cause I’m not qualified for a MTV Awards or a Vibe Awards or Grammys or any of that yet," says Banks. "I got my name through the mixtapes."

Lloyd Banks public notoriety has risen since his 2004 debut, establishing him as a skilled lyricist. Banks’ reputation is based on his ability as a punch-line rapper, meaning that his verses often contain many one-to-two bar sets of lyrics (often metaphorical or with similes) that are amusing by themselves and can also be lyrically vicious towards other rappers. As an example of this type of rapping, on the song "I’m So Fly", Banks raps, "Don’t confuse me with these suckas/Cause When I spit, you hear more ’oohs’ than a Skip to My Lou move at the Rucker."

"It’s Either Cause They Boyfriends a Scrub Like Brillo/Or Cause Banks is Cooler than The Other Side of the Pillow." "You can either get bucked or get your ass jumped/ The only trigger you’ve touched is on a gas pump." Some other punchlines are: "I’m Hugh Hefner all over when it comes to broads/ Even the ones that don’t fit in hump the cars.", "Hoes rushin me without the tag spray on."Some more punchlines are "theses niggias better start acting right i aint rap to tight ill leave ur head red and white like a apple bite i got a fat niggias appatite pass throught the trafic light smash on tthe coppas light. Also on a other song he says "he game u see now show him cuz hes a punk two niggias in 1 like shot G and humptyhump.

His solo debut for G Unit/Interscope Records, The Hunger for More, was released in June 2004. The album included the hit singles "On Fire", "I’m So Fly", and "Karma". The Hunger for More sold over 400,000 copies in its first week, putting him behind only millionaire rap mogul 50 Cent for most sold in the opening week in G-Unit.

In the fall of 2005, an album titled, The Big Withdraw was leaked on the internet and featured an extensive collection of songs,23 recordings total.

More infos: see G-Unit page

Lloyd Banks Discography:

Lloyd Banks Albums
2006: Rotten Apple (September 19, 2006)
2004: The Hunger For More

Lloyd Banks Mixtapes

2006: Gang Green Season by DJ Whoo Kid
2004: Cashing In (Mo Money In The Bank pt. 3) by DJ Whoo Kid
2003: Mo Money in The Bank by DJ Whoo Kid
2002: Money In The Bank by DJ Whoo Kid