Celebrity Favorites: Lil' Cease

Rick Ross with the fur coat and shades. Nicki Minaj with the green hair and other colorful wigs. While Ross and Minaj have carved out niches with their own distinctive styles, they still hark back to golden memories of the Notorious B.I.G. and Lil' Kim.

Diddy is working with both artists, and now Lil' Cease, another person who has been a part of Biggie and Kim's inner circle, said he loves what the Bawse and Barbie are doing.

"It's a good thing to me," Cease said of the comparisons to his childhood friends. "If people are taking steps into people's styles like that, that's paying homage. I definitely looked at Nicki and was like, 'That's that Kim remedy.' I think Ross is nice. To see him be co-signed by Diddy, it gives you that feel. I like it. It's just showing the influence we had on people. It shows the influence Kim had on females. It shows the influence Big had. I don't look at it like they're trying to take [Big and Kim's] spot or trying to be them. Big paved the way for Ross, and Kim paved the way for females that's hot now."

Cease said he loves Ricky Rosé's flow. "As far as with Ross, it's the delivery," Cease said. "He's lyrically hands-on. Just his whole swag, to me, he's just the dude. That big black dude. Every time I see him, he gives the feel of just B.I. Just his whole swag too. He's got that confidence that B.I. had. B.I. was real confident. No matter how he looked, he would say it in rhymes: 'Fat, black and ugly as ever.' That's one of the most quoted lines. It didn't do nothing for him but make him a better person. Ross got that same swag. He knows he's dope. Then when you getting the best of the best co-signing you, it makes you go harder. I feel he made three dope albums. He can get that Big effect where he's consistent with it. A lot of his material is just dope music. You can't knock him at the end of the day. Whether you want to compare him to Big or not, he's a dope artist."

Cease applauded Minaj as well. "Nicki ain't really got too much competition out there. Ain't too many female rappers out there," he said. "But she's a female, one that's bringing the sex appeal back to it. No matter what Kim talked about, she had the appeal to it. Kim would dress up. She looked like a lady. Kim could rap about the hardest thing ever, but she would still dress up: hair done, she still got on the flyest stuff. Nicki is kinda taking it to that same mind frame. She's having fun with it too.

"One thing about Kim, she switched up the flow and concepts," he added. "She was playing with it. You can tell that Nicki, she's starting to get comfortable with herself. The way she sounds now, I heard her on some early mixtapes, she sounded a lot more East Coast, a lot harder. You could tell [Nicki is] sitting around those vets now, and she's just feeding off the energy of being around Young Money and Cash Money. You can hear that Wayne effect in her rhymes with the animation in it and the flow. It's kinda good. She's getting that knowledge from Young Money and Wayne and them, and they teaching her how to make records."

This Friday, on Notorious B.I.G.'s birthday, Cease is putting out a mixtape called Hardbody Vol. 1. Definitely check back with MTVNews.com for a lot more on Cease's project.

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