Schoolly D
Inducted: 2025
As a rapper, songwriter and producer, Schoolly D – the stage name of Jesse Bonds Weaver Jr. – is synonymous with the birth of gangsta rap. Emerging from West Philly long before Meek Mill, Lil Uzi Vert and Tierra Whack started making rhymes – and long before some of them were even born – Schoolly D was the undisputed heavyweight champion of Philly rap. He is credited with creating the first known gangsta rap album, Schoolly D, and the first song to contain aspects of street life with his song “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?”
Schoolly D was inspired to become a rapper at an early age after seeing Richard Pryor perform on Johnny Carson in 1976. He was particularly drawn to Pryor’s rhythm of speaking, feeling it was something he wanted to emulate in music. In the mid-’80s, Schoolly signed with Jive Records and began to broaden his lyrical repertoire. He soon found himself opening for Prince, as well as for James Brown in front of 100,000 people in London.
Schoolly D’s lyrics reflect urban realism, violence, and sexual bravado, and he does it right here in Philly. Many people are under the impression that gangster rap is originally a Los Angeles phenomenon, or a New York one. But it was Schoolly, the Philadelphian, who became the first rapper to channel the lives of hustlers, gangsters and pimps – people who sold dope and sold sex and broke the law because there were no other options for economic advancement in their neighborhoods- into a new kind of street poetry.
He was also one of the first to slow down the cadence of rap from a fast babble, a faucet of words, to a drip, so that you could hear every word with beautiful clarity. Like Langston Hughes before him, Schoolly was a black man writing a letter to America about a particular slice of the black experience. But more than that, he’s an iconic Philadelphian. He has remained tethered to his roots in West Philly without being tied down by them.
He is bigger than his gangster image, bigger than the Main Line. He is a tribeless wanderer in a tribal city – the rare Philadelphian who can go anywhere, party with anyone, and come back with a story.