Michael Lafayette Troy (born January 15, 1969),[1] better known by his stage name Myka 9, is a rapper from Los Angeles, California.[2] He is a member of Freestyle Fellowship, Haiku d'Etat and Magic Heart Genies.[3] Known for years as Mikah Nine, he changed the spelling to Myka Nyne with the release of A Work in Progress in 2003. Since Magic Heart Genies' album Heartifact in 2008, he has been credited as Myka 9.
History
Originally known as Microphone Mike in the 1980s, Myka 9 was a member of the MC Aces with Aceyalone and Spoon Iodine. He ghost-wrote the Rappinstine song "Scream" on N.W.A.'s debut album N.W.A. and the Posse in 1987.[4]
Released in 1993, Freestyle Fellowship's second album Innercity Griots is one of the landmarks of Los Angeles hip hop. Their videos for "Inner City Boundaries" and "Hot Potato" brought them to the attention of a wider audience. Myka 9 was also featured on two tracks on Project Blowed compilation in 1994. In the late 1990s, Myka 9 came together with Aceyalone and Abstract Rude to form Haiku D'Etat. In 2008, Myka 9 formed Magic Heart Genies with J the Sarge and DJ Drez.[6]
Myka 9 has collaborated with The Wailers Band, Prefuse 73, Daddy Kev, Busdriver, Cut Chemist, Talib Kweli, and many others. He has worked extensively with producer and trumpeter Josef Leimberg, who produced the majority of It's All Love: American Nightmare and A Work in Progress. He has released three albums with Canadian producer Factor Chandelier.[7]
In 2022 it was found that Myka 9 has the largest vocabulary in hip-hop history. Myka employs over 9,000 unique words throughout his catalog.
Style and legacy
Myka 9 is known for rapid-fire, jazz-influenced, melodic rapping, often incorporating singing and occasionally scatting into his songs. Myka 9 has said of his style: "My rhymes take the direction of a jazz trumpet or sax solo, like Miles or Trane, if I was to rhyme in the same meter as those notes... that’s my concept."[8]
Myka 9 has had a large influence on Los Angeles underground hip hop and freestyle rap in general. Discussing the influence of Myka 9's song "7th Seal" on Freestyle Fellowship's first album To Whom It May Concern... (1991), Ellay Khule said, "'7th Seal' blew everybody's mind for at least 2 years straight. People studied that shit backwards and forwards—even we don't know all those words. That made everybody say like 'I gotta get a tape out' or 'I can't rap like so-and-so no more. I can't be in 80s, now we movin' to the 90s.' That totally transferred our musical thought." Drummer and producer JMD said, "Mike was like the Charlie Parker of all these motherfuckers."[9]
Pigeon John said, "For me Mikah 9 was like Miles Davis. He was a tall good looking dude, the girls always liked him and this dude just went on stage and there was no effort in him. He was a genius in what he did. He affected and influenced so many people in hip-hop including Mos Def, Talib Kweli, that whole scene. Years before Leaders of the New School, there are stories where Freestyle Fellowship, when they first came out and they went to New York. That whole shouting stuff, they had this ingenious way to do it and they had a backing jazz band before Digable Planets. Busta Rhymes ran up to him (Myka 9) afterwards and said 'dude what kind of style is this,' and then lo and behold Leaders of the New School came out. So there's plenty of stories like that, but that's just like a taste of how potent that scene was at the Good Life."[10]
Film
Myka 9 is featured in the documentary Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, Where We're From: The Elements Documentary, and the Hip Hop Evolution Netflix series. He is also featured in the award-winning documentary This Is the Life, chronicling the music movement that was birthed at The Good Life Cafe in South Central, Los Angeles. The Good Life Cafe is the open-mic workshop where he first performed with Freestyle Fellowship in the early 1990s.[11]
Publications
In 2022, Myka 9 released a book called My Kaleidoscope, which features song lyrics, a detailed oral history, and photography by Brian "B+" Cross and more.[12]
Myka 9 has also been featured in the books How to Rap and How to Rap 2 by Paul Edwards, The Real Hiphop by Marcyliena Morgan, and The Yale Anthology of Rap.
