Grap Luva

Hailing from uptown New York's Mt.Vernon,Greg Phillips A.K.A "Grap Luva" got his start out in the hip hop game dancing on tour with his older cousin and hip hop pioneer Heavy D,around the same time his older brother was about to drop a gem on the hip hop world as 1/2 of the ledgendary duo Pete Rock & CL Smooth. With the release of Mecca & the Soul Brother, Grap made his way onto the album with one of the most memorable freestlye's of the time.lets put it this way Lil Fame of M.O.P saw Grap coming out of the studio and asked him to kick it for him.Shortly after that Grap and a few of his boys(Rob O,Marco Polo) formed a group calling themselves InI,due much in part to Grap's Jamaican roots.with production duties handled by his brother Pete Rock the group released their first single and video for the classic 12" "Fakin Jax" on Elektra, with little push or promotion the groups,now heralded as a classic first full length album "Center of Attention" unfortunately never saw the light of day.With the subsequent demise of Pete Rocks Soul Brother Records to be distributed through Elektra the group parted ways with their label and the album was lost in limbo.that is untila couple of years later gangsta rap and the so called "East vs West" fued was in full swing, a couple of songs started popping up on mixtapes,even though they sounded like recordings of recordings Djs all around the world were putting these songs on their mixtapes(yes actual tapes kiddies) and low and behold they were bootleg copies of songs off of the InI album"Center of Attention" fast forward a couple of years from then the very much classic album was bootlegged so much and sought after by so many that BBE Records decided to track down the masters and actually release the album almost a decade after it was recorded,the demand was that strong.As all this was going on, Grap stayed working with cats from all around the world releasing a slew of singles and now producing tracks for some of hip hop's up and coming heavyweight emcees in the game right now.although a very elusive cat Grap Luva has etched his name in the hip hop history book and has devout fans allover the world.he has helped alot of cats get on (Kev Brown,Sound Providers to name a couple)and to this day is sought after by new jacks all over who remember the first time they heard that famous first line "I am the one they call the G the R the A the P and."