Cormega Giving Props To It Was Written
- Thread starter Ziggiy
- Start date
Figaro
Superstar
Hated by who? bytchass journalist and hating ass backpackers.Summer of 96 that shyt was getting bumped everywhere.
I wasn't old enough to remember them times vividly but media & journalist must've had serious power to convince some of the mass that this album wasn't great.
Glad it's getting the flowers it deserves, Illmatic might be the GOAT album but nearly every rapper from 96 on was stylistically influenced by IWW much more.
Dope post by Mega. Love the part about how a lot of guys patterned their projects after IWW. Even like a decade later Lupe used it as the template for his debut.
Overall I've grown to hate the discourse around both Illmatic and IWW. There's so much cool stuff to discuss thematically, lyrically, sonically, conceptually etc. But it always turns into the same tired underground vs mainstream debate. At their core both are STREET albums but people talk about them like different genres of music.
Overall I've grown to hate the discourse around both Illmatic and IWW. There's so much cool stuff to discuss thematically, lyrically, sonically, conceptually etc. But it always turns into the same tired underground vs mainstream debate. At their core both are STREET albums but people talk about them like different genres of music.
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Piff Perkins
Veteran
I just watched a little of a clip of Meth on the Math Hoffa podcast, talking about the mid 90s Def Jam era and how insane the success was in the building...kinda got me thinking about this thread again. Sony/Columbia is a big label but it wasn't rap royalty. How much of the struggles and narratives over mid-to-late-90s Nas are a direct result of him not being on Def Jam or even Bad Boy? Not being in that big club where the label is handing out more payola than anyone else, not pushing your records as effectively as it could be pushed, etc. Because you never hear the "real hip hop" dudes shytting on Vol 1 or other Jay records. You don't even hear the disdain for some of those Meth records. Sure as hell don't hear it about DMX.
IWW and LAD are basically the blueprint everyone ran with yet Nas is the guy who caught the hate. I def think Biggie would have faced sellout accusations if he had lived long enough for LAD to come out and get in rotation but instead Nas was the guy alone on the island getting sniped at.
IWW and LAD are basically the blueprint everyone ran with yet Nas is the guy who caught the hate. I def think Biggie would have faced sellout accusations if he had lived long enough for LAD to come out and get in rotation but instead Nas was the guy alone on the island getting sniped at.
BulletProof
Just a B@stard Living in a Suit
Well put.
FunkDoc1112
Heavily Armed
I always say not much about the rap game would've changed if Biggie had lived (Tupac is the real wild card)...though Bad Boy probably would've pivoted to that Ruff Ryder sound instead of getting stale...either that or they'd cling to it until Biggie got fed up and signed to Roc-A-Fella or something lol
Its a double edged sword because Nas was one of only 3-4 rap acts on Columbia so by his own admission they pretty much let him do what he wanted. Nas on Def Jam or Bad Boy and following their rules and regulations you might not get Nas Is Like, Made You Look, I Can, and Bridging The Gap as singles later on down the line. If nikkas had the gall to think that It Was Written was commercial, imagine Nas on Bad Boy in 97 dancing around in a shiny suit or on Def Jam rapping over Alexander O’Neal samples. He would’ve been KILLED.
Besides The Fugees, Nas was the most commercially successful artist on the label, and probably more so because the Fugees broke up after The Score and Lauryn went into exile after Miseducation whilst Nas kept going. Its probably for the best that Nas was able to do what he wanted on Columbia because Russell Simmons already let it be known that he thought Nas sounded too much like G.Rap and “G.Rap don’t sell no records” so if MC Serch would have fought and convinced Simmons to sign Nas then whose to say Illmatic even comes out as it did?
The big three (excluding Wu-Tang) of New York rap in the 90’s is unquestionably Nas, Big, and Jay. And I feel its no coincidence that each of them were able to flourish being under separate labels. Puff poured all of his energy into big. Lyor Cohen put his energy into Jay. And Tommy Mottola let Steve Stoute pour all of his energy into Nas. It HAD to happen the way it did for Nas to be THE Nas he is today.
In effect, It Was Written.
TELL ME YA CHEESIN FAM?
I walk around a little edgy already
Jay hated on it too
Rhyme 4 Rhyme
Pro
pawdalaw
Superstar
nikkaz pulled the receipts on that fakkit
Crazy how deep the game was back then.25 so gs barely make me rotation a year let alone 25 albums. Do I chalk this up to being
I think people were put off by IWW because it was ahead of its time. Yeah, there was some backlash against the whole mafiosos style at the time. Even The Fugees were vocal against it, which is ironic considering Lauryn Hill appears on "If I Ruled The World". Nas put this whole different twist on mafiosos style because he added a consciousness to it by making songs like "I Gave You Power" and "If I Ruled The World", but keeping it street. Then there was the commercial flair of The Trackmasters, but balanced it with production from Havoc and Stretch. Trackmasters still had some hard tracks on there too.
Ethnic Vagina Finder
The Great Paper Chaser
Nah.
When people heard he was doing a collab with Lauren Hill, everyone was hype.
The song was totally different than what people were expecting. And she didn’t even rap.
Overall the album was dope. If I ruled the world opened doors for Nas career so you can’t even knock it.
Piff Perkins
Veteran
Jay hated on it too
And yet a year after IWW, Jay was saying Nas top 3 lmao. There's no way someone with Jay's writing/pop/etc sensibilities thought IWW was wack. I remember when him and Nas made up on that MTV special he said that "one hot album" line was just something he said because he knew it would be popular.
reserved_one
#Ambivertgang
IWW is Nas’s true benchmark not Illmatic. Rapping wise, he went to another gear and in my opinion he’s never matched that level of rapping since. I missed it in real time because I was only 6 when it dropped but as i got older and started becoming more of a Nas fan, I checked it out and couldn’t understand why IWW got hated on so much. Even the so called filler cuts wasn’t terrible, it just paled into comparison to the Classic cuts on the album.
It seemed like the hip hop purists wanted another Illmatic and automatically rejected it because he was aiming for a larger audience and it definitely was the right decision.
It seemed like the hip hop purists wanted another Illmatic and automatically rejected it because he was aiming for a larger audience and it definitely was the right decision.