Kingpin Skinny Pimp

A North Memphis rap pioneer whose 'Pimp' is a stage name, not a record: King of da Playaz Ball (1996) is persona, not biography.

Kingpin Skinny Pimp, born Derrick Dewayne Hill, is one of the foundational voices of Memphis rap and one of the first to make the word "pimp" part of a rapper's billing. According to Jason Birchmeier's AllMusic biography, he was raised by his grandfather in the Dixie Homes housing project in North Memphis and began rapping in 1985 while at Herman Junior High School. His first recordings came out of the early-1990s underground tape scene: he made "Undaground" tapes in 1993 and was affiliated with DJ Squeeky, whose rapid hi-hat production he later told Rolling Stone was "the first" of its kind he had heard. After a falling-out with Squeeky's camp he moved into the orbit of DJ Paul and Juicy J, appearing on Three 6 Mafia's 1994 compilation Smoked Out Loced Out and on their 1995 debut album Mystic Stylez.

His own debut, King of da Playaz Ball, was released in April 1996 on Prophet Entertainment (catalogue PE-4403), produced by DJ Paul and Juicy J with Jordan Houston, Paul Beauregard and Nicholas Jackson as executive producers. The seventeen tracks include "Lookin' for da Chewin'," "Midnight Hoes," "Pimpin' and Hoin'" and the title track, with guest turns from Gangsta Boo, Lord Infamous, Koopsta Knicca and Gangsta Blac. The title itself borrows the name of the annual pimp gathering founded by Bishop Don Magic Juan in 1974; the record is a fantasia on that world rather than a report from it. Writing for the newsletter Cabbages in 2024, Gary Suarez described the album's mode as "unabashedly explicit anecdotes of the pimp game" delivered with harsh comedy, closer to a character study than a memoir. Two further albums followed the same year, Skinny but Dangerous and One Life 2 Live, and he continued releasing independently through New Beginning (1998), 2000 Rap Dope Game (1999) and Back to Tha Playaz Ball (2000).

The distinction between persona and biography matters here because the name invites confusion. No published interview, court record or news report describes Hill working as a pimp. In the Rolling Stone profile that accompanied his 2021 resurgence, when a snippet of "Lookin' for da Chewin'" became the soundtrack to more than a million TikTok videos, he spoke about production, credit and money, not about the trade his name evokes. He told the magazine that others in Memphis "had more connections than me to major distribution," and that a 2021 deal with Black 17 Media had earned him his first advance for the old material: "We just want to get our credit where it's due."

The women in his songs are types, not people, and the archive treats them accordingly. What the record documents is a body of work that helped write the Memphis vocabulary of the pimp, made by an artist whose only verifiable relationship to the subject is on tape.

ALSO KNOWN AS
Derrick Dewayne Hill (performs as Kingpin Skinny Pimp)

BORN
Memphis, Tennessee — date not independently verified

STATUS
Living

ERA
1985–present

ASSOCIATED WITH
North Memphis; Dixie Homes; DJ Squeeky; Three 6 Mafia; Prophet Entertainment

STANDING
Persona