I still trip off If I Ruled the World being called a commercial song. I mean I know it was the radio cut and it was on the video shows but dude talking about chicks going down town on him, hitting chicks raw, smoking weed in the streets, freeing the brothas from the pen. WTF
It Was Written turns 20 today
- Thread starter ManBearPig
- Start date
Piff Perkins
Veteran
singing=commercial to a lot of people. I thought Nas broke it down perfectly on Drink Champs. Like imagine all your homies are rugged dudes wearing timbs boots and dirty hoodies...and you tell them aite I got a new song and it samples Whodini's Friends beat, and the hook is a reference/interpolation of Kurtis Blow. Their reaction is probably gonna be "aite that sounds dope as fukk, can we hear the song?" right lol.
Then you play the song and yea...it's clearly a radio record, it sounds clean as fukk mix wise...but it's still hip hop as fukk and Nas isn't rapping about soft shyt. And it BUMPS in the whip.
I've said many times IWW's sonics are vastly different from "hip hop" at the time and I stand by it. Go listen to a Hot 97 dj mix from 1996 and compare the sounds (especially the drums) to IWW...I get why some people were mad about the album. But being mad at If I Ruled The World makes no damn sense.
All the Bad Boy shiny suit era songs get hit with the "commercial" tag too, but when you look at the lyrics and content of songs like:
Hypnotize- "your daughter's tied up in a Brooklyn basement"
All About The Benjamins- Kim's verse yalks about making someone deep throat a German ruger
Mo Money Mo Problems- triple beam American dream, feds had his cell tapped,
Feels So Good- "now I'm getting head from girls who used to hardly speak" and he talks about menage trois.
spliz
SplizThaDon
Difference is. All them shyt’s was disco beats. Nas’ single was 100% hip hop. From the sample to the hook to the lyrics.
Breh was talking about the lyrics and content. In terms of production, there are songs on IWW where classics were made out of an interpolation of a Eurythmics song, some funk samples, and a Pop record by Sting.
I’m just sayin that lyrically, if I ruled the world was just as tough as anything in illmatic, over a whodini beat (whoever say that ain’t hip hop sucks) and even a classic hook being sung. The song gets an unwarranted bad rap. It was an instant classic and top 10 in his catalogue and possibly top 5 because it was one of the first times that creativity started to come out.
IllmaticDelta
Veteran
IWW on the whole from a production standpoint is less commercial than Reasonable Doubt of the same year and Biggies debut (RTD) from 2 years prior.
i was laughing to myself that i was posting on a 24th anniversary thread then found myself in here..lol##time machine
