‘It was fun until it wasn’t’: hip-hop A&R Dante Ross on De La Soul, ODB – and punchups with P Diddy | Rap
At first, “the Forrest Gump of hip-hop” sounds like an incongruous nickname. Surely there are few characters who embody the spirit of that genre less than Tom Hanks’s slow-witted sprinter? But Dante Ross is thrilled with the title. “Gump is the connector,” he explains on a Zoom call from his home in Los Angeles. “He’s connected to all these things. But you don’t really know who he is.”This sobriquet, given to Ross by Black Thought, lead rapper of the Roots, is one of many endorsements that grace the cover of Ross’s new…