D4L

History

Shawty Lo, whose real name is Carlos Walker, put up his own money to get D4L off the ground. He said the group’s name means “Down for Life.” The group signed with the indie label Dee Money Entertainment, which put out their first release together with Asylum Records. Their first single was “Betcha Can’t Do It Like Me,” and Billboard credited it with helping to popularize snap music. In January 2006, their track “Laffy Taffy” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Like another Atlanta rap group, Dem Franchize Boyz, D4L was part of the mid-2000s snap music wave, which many say reached its high point when Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em dropped his number-one hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” in 2007.

Their first album, Down for Life, came out in November 2005 through Dee Money Entertainment and Asylum Records. After it took off, the group hit the road. With help from Outreach Entertainment, they shared the stage with several up-and-coming Midwest acts, most notably the Joplin, Missouri duo Midwest Connect, which included Southeast Kansas artist Brent Ward (Koo-Laid) and St. Louis rapper Neno Black. Other rising artists also performed with D4L at the Oakley-Lindsay Civic Center in Quincy, Illinois. More shows followed, and the group’s fame kept growing.

“Laffy Taffy” stayed popular on the charts, helped a lot by strong online sales. The producers were Cory Way (known as Born Immaculate), Broderick Thompson Smith, and Richard Sims (known as K-Rab). The song samples and borrows from New Edition’s “Candy Girl.” Several remixes exist, including an official one with Busta Rhymes and another with Chicago rapper Twista. But even as the group celebrated the multi-platinum success of “Laffy Taffy,” they faced sharp criticism from the hip-hop world. On his 2006 track “The Champ” from the album FishScale, Ghostface Killah rapped, “Y’all stuck on Laffy Taffy / Wonderin’ how’d y’all niggas get past me?” Ghostface had also made fun of the snap dance during his 2005 tour. There’s also been a dispute over who wrote the lyrics to “Laffy Taffy.” Rapper Liam “Smack Eyes” Thomas claimed the group took the words from his rhyme book. After D4L’s debut album, Shawty Lo went solo, putting out his first solo album, Units in the City, in 2008. More recently, in 2011, D4L entered into a joint venture with 50 Cent’s G-Unit Records.