Cage (rapper)
American rapper

Christian Palko (born May 4, 1973), better known by his stage name Cage, is an American rapper from Middletown, New York. With a majority of his career being spent with record labels Definitive Jux and Eastern Conference, he has released six solo albums, in addition to two compilation albums, three singles and three EPs.
Aside from his solo career, Cage is one of the founders of the underground hip-hop supergroup The Weathermen, which was formed in 1999. He also established a group called Smut Peddlers, with hip-hop duo The High & Mighty, publishing an album titled Porn Again, in 2001. He is also known for his collaborations with New Jersey rapper Tame One; the two were collectively known as Leak Bros. Cage and Camu Tao made up the duo Nighthawks, who released an eponymous 2002 album.
Early life
Chris Palko was born in Würzburg, West Germany, to American parents. His father was stationed on a West German military base as a member of the military police. Palko lived there until the age of four when his father was dishonorably discharged for selling and using heroin, and the family was sent back to the United States, where they lived in Middletown, New York. His father would often force Palko to pull homemade tourniquets around his arm as he injected heroin.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1077632. VIAF identifies the subject as 262067671. The Library of Congress control number is no2005097464. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1999, 2001 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cage (rapper)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.