Initial career and break up (1989–1995) Black Sheep was formed in 1989 by William "Mista Lawnge" McLean. While working as a DJ in New York, McLean met Mike Gee of the
Jungle Brothers and
DJ Red Alert, who encouraged him to start his own hip-hop group. He recruited Dres, who he had grown up with in North Carolina. Their first official appearance as Black Sheep was on
De La Soul's 1991 album
De La Soul Is Dead. Dres was featured on the track "Fanatic of the B Word". ''
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing charted three times on the Billboard''
Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in 1992 with "
The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)" (No. 9), and "
Strobelite Honey" (No. 1). Black Sheep was also featured on the
remix of
Vanessa Williams's single "Work to Do" (No. 8). The group's relationship with its label, Mercury/PolyGram, allowed Dres to establish a boutique label through which he could sign his own acts. Mercury distributed the imprint, which was called One Love, through PolyGram's
Independent Label Sales division rather than PolyGram Group Distribution. However, only one full-length title was ever released, the only album by affiliated act the Legion, titled
Theme + Echo = Krill from 1994. The group's second album,
Non-Fiction, was released later that year. In 2006, Dres released an
online-only album titled
8WM/Novakane, under the name Black Sheep, but Lawnge was not a part of the album.
8WM stands for
Women with Women with Weed with Wine with Me. According to a 2006 article on
AllHipHop.com, Mista Lawnge added another spelling of his name to Mr Long. Dres appeared on the 1990s remix of
Nas' February 2007 song "
Where are They Now?" In 2008, the single "
The Choice is Yours (Revisited)" was ranked number No. 74 on VH1's 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs. The song was featured in a commercial for the 2010
Kia Soul. ==Discography==