Psycho-social, violent by design were big influences on my life as a whole. Even now they allow me to travel back in time to a place that was mystical and magical.
"I who have nothing" brings tears to my eyes. What those "kids" did with the limited resources they had is something special.
JMT / Vinnie Paz is still good. The problem is two-fold: One hand underground boom bap ain't poppin like it was in the 2000s and early-2010s. On the other hand, and this is the worst part, Vinnie Paz don't promote his shyt like she should at all.
The last few years his album titles have been getting longer but the cover art don't even have the artist name and album title on it. That makes them harder to come across, harder to remember, harder to tell people about them, and so forth. Even a thumbnail makes a difference on how many people click or not. His fanbase size is a shell of its former self.
Also, damn Philly rap outlets/scene for not fukking with their boom bap scene and they got a good one. They wasn't even fukking with AR-AB like that until the mid-2010s. I swear if Philly outlets got their shyt together, they would be unstoppable. There needs to be an east coast version of No Jumper that covers rappers from the Northeast, Midwest and DMV regions.