Joe Budden and Crooked I say "It Was Written" was even better than "Illmatic"

[zerozero]

if i ruled the world was not commercial at all. besides why are we blaming nas and not ?

that's what I'm saying, these arcane elite dudes go super hard on Nas and other sincere spitters meanwhile 98% of the airwaves is full of tepid mediocrity. And if the first people you're going to dump on are Nas, Common, Black Thought, Lupe etc instead of the Meek Millz, Big Seans and and associated fukkery that passes for music I have to wonder what your point is. If we go by Art Barr's methodology, the hip hop universe has 50 b-boys and 200 million toys. Fine, but this frame of reference has no rooting in the reality of the nature of rap music as its creators and audience exist.

 

[Perry J. Perrywinkle III]

whats wrong with meek mill?

 

[Peruvian Connect]

whats wrong with meek mill?

He's one dimensional. He's like a wack(er) version of Ace Hood. I thought Rozay had fixed his flow because he was outstanding on that MMG Vol. 1. But his mixtapes are boring and retarded.

 

[zerozero]

whats wrong with meek mill?

I'm not saying he's really bad or anything but just saying that there are a lot of artists all over the place who have paid far less dues and show far less respect for their hip hop integrity than the people hip hop culture-keepers want to dump on

if nas is a fallen-off sellout, what the fukk is nicki minaj? lol

 

[Big Mel]

that's what I'm saying, these arcane elite dudes go super hard on Nas and other sincere spitters meanwhile 98% of the airwaves is full of tepid mediocrity. And if the first people you're going to dump on are Nas, Common, Black Thought, Lupe etc instead of the Meek Millz, Big Seans and and associated fukkery that passes for music I have to wonder what your point is. If we go by Art Barr's methodology, the hip hop universe has 50 b-boys and 200 million toys. Fine, but this frame of reference has no rooting in the reality of the nature of rap music as its creators and audience exist.

you have to kinda have an innate bullshyt detector in hip hop to really avoid being duped.


like, De La Soul can sample disco songs and still be as fresh as they want because they're intent is pure plus they're in on the joke and irony.

same thing with DOOM. he can go in on quiet storm records all day and stay true simply by the way he hooked them up and his intent with the record.

now you'll ask "how can you prove intent?"


that's where the innate BS detector comes in.


that gussied up shyt on IWW was not pure.

 

[zerozero]

you have to kinda have an innate bullshyt detector in hip hop to really avoid being duped.


like, De La Soul can sample disco songs and still be as fresh as they want because they're intent is pure plus they're in on the joke and irony.

same thing with DOOM. he can go in on quiet storm records all day and stay true simply by the way he hooked them up and his intent with the record.

now you'll ask "how can you prove intent?"


that's where the innate BS detector comes in.


that gussied up shyt on IWW was not pure.

I understand what you're saying. It lacks authenticity in some respects (although it still sounds pretty gritty to me in many songs). And I can look at contemporary reviews from that era and tell that people were extraordinarily disappointed.

and of course, we can tell from the couple albums that followed that that Nas had completely lost his way (he just said in his complex interview, "I toned it down at times. I started to feel like a nerd when I was a young dude, and that wasn’t what I wanted to get across. I wanted to be relatable. And that was part of my mistake, because I toned it down a lot.")

but my point is just this, to reiterate, and it doesn't take away from your criticism of his mainstream play, but is it right to hold artists who came out 'pure' to more criticism for going mainstream then people who were already weak and mainstream? What about 'Juicy' and 'Big Poppa'? I heard an interview a while ago and I can't remember exactly but Big was saying something to the effect that he didn't really want to do Juicy, he did it for the women/mainstream audience, he thought the more hardcore songs was his authentic work.

It's like you're disappointed in Nas, and thus have extra bile for him. Whereas people who were already mainstream or wack dont' get that level of bitterness in your criticism. Is there not a double standard?

 

[Big Mel]

well, the most glaring reason BIG side steps the harsher criticisms is he was simply much better at making those records than Nas. I'm sorry but half of IWW is pretty dull.

but yeah, Bad Boy is the most heinous scourge rap has ever seen. just so happens BIG was an incredible talent.


as for the double standard....eh....i think Nas truly made a forgettable, cliched Biggie lite attempt. Some joints, sure but ultimately nothing i ever really need to go back to. I'm not going back to BIG all that much either.

 

[fscballin]

Art Barr and Big Mel, do yall feel Talib doing that record with Timberlake a sell out move? i didn't even download the official album cuz of that sh*t... just kept the advance

 

[Big Mel]

by the time that record was conceived there were no more surprises. it was par for the wack ass course.


Kweli is a doofus though.

 

[zerozero]

well, the most glaring reason BIG side steps the harsher criticisms is he was simply much better at making those records than Nas. I'm sorry but half of IWW is pretty dull.

but yeah, Bad Boy is the most heinous scourge rap has ever seen. just so happens BIG was an incredible talent.


as for the double standard....eh....i think Nas truly made a forgettable, cliched Biggie lite attempt. Some joints, sure but ultimately nothing i ever really need to go back to. I'm not going back to BIG all that much either.

Okay, here's what puzzles me. So we have this situation where IWW is forgettable & cliched, and Biggie's album was affected by a scourge

now let's hold onto that judgement matrix.. and then apply it to what passes for music in this genre now. What about 2chainz, etc? If IWW and LAD are bad, we have to say, this guy, Nicki, Big Sean etc. are 10,000x worse. Right?

 

[Big Mel]

i haven't even heard those artists outside of stumbling into them on radio or something.


i actually played Big Sean's leak because i'm a No ID fan and was disgusted to here him doing pop rap beats.


but here's the thing. the IWW's & LAD's are whet led to the current situation. so in that sense, they're VERY HARMFUL ALBUMS.


i smelled it coming back then when i bought them. does it add to my rage? absolutely. But BIG made better records than Nas in that context.

 

[Walt]

Zero, Art Barr's scorn for Nas and his opinions of Niki Minaj are completely irrelevant to each other, as they should be. They're quite different topics.

The reason artists like Nas and Common seem to elicit ulta-disgust from some people - myself included - is that they are artists who embraced hip hop as culture, so that they either publicly or implicitly declared allegiance to certain unspoken rules in hip hop, as well as to the notion that an artist is his work. That's what makes their convenient and prompt rationalizations about selling out more egregious than Modern M.C. 395730. Especially since Nas and Common going pop is part of what paved the way for doodoo pop rap to become an accepted thing, and threw the culture of hiphop into a state of confusion and downright schizophrenia.

I've always felt the same way about Nas - son is unquestionably a legend, period. But it isn't like Mel and Art are reconstructing history to fit their personal sensibilities when they point out how IWW was perceived by a significant number of people. And at the time, rapping over Kurtis Blow's shyt with L-Boogie on the hook was petty much a transparent cheeseball move.

I have no problem with someone liking IWW, but one can like and dislike within context. Just as I can't stand old ass rap fans so stuck in a knee-jerk mindstate that they can't seem to see the talent in any new artists but hail every new release from a burned out bum from 1991 as a return to the real shyt, it's embarrassing to watch people without much understanding of historical context make absolute declarations and dismissals based on what album happened to be popping in their household or apartment complex when they were old enough to finally understand what music was.

There's a worthwhile, informed and maybe even comprehensive way to converse about artists, albums, and history instead of every debate degenerating into a black-and-white orchestra of put-downs. I read people discussing certain older rap records and they assess them without any care for understanding at all. Almost as if they're watching a great Hitchcock film (I'm not crazy about Hitchcock, just using him as an example) but then deciding generic thriller X from 2007 is better because there's color, explicit sex, and the violence looks more true-to-life.

It's one of the reasons I stopped discussing rap on SOHH years ago. Newer interesting artists and older fundamentally significant artists were being discussed in such stupid terms, it wasn't clear to me that the hip hop forum had very many people posting in it who actually cared much about hip hop.

 

[Hannibal Fox]

i haven't even heard those artists outside of stumbling into them on radio or something.


i actually played Big Sean's leak because i'm a No ID fan and was disgusted to here him doing pop rap beats.


but here's the thing. the IWW's & LAD's are whet led to the current situation. so in that sense, they're VERY HARMFUL ALBUMS.


i smelled it coming back then when i bought them. does it add to my rage? absolutely. But BIG made better records than Nas in that context.

It's funny the only crossover rap/R&B Nas was on that I ever liked was that track with Allure.

I guess he just worked with the wrong people in that regard, it always came off forced.

B.I.G.'s natural charisma, and overall, rugged yet smooth carefree approach to spitting lends itself well to those kinds of records, being around Heavy D probably didn't hurt either.

 

[spliz]

It's funny the only crossover rap/R&B Nas was on that I ever liked was that track with Allure.

I guess he just worked with the wrong people in that regard, it always came off forced.

B.I.G.'s natural charisma, and overall, rugged yet smooth carefree approach to spitting lends itself well to those kinds of records, being around Heavy D probably didn't hurt either.

During that era...both If I Ruled the World and Street Dreams remix was hot records...NOTHING..I mean absolutely NOTHING was wrong wit them shyts...Matta fact..


http://www.the-coli.com/booth/7194-complex-making-written.html

 

[zerozero]

Thanks Walt. I can understand what you guys are saying about having strong feelings about that era because of the direct effect it had on the following era(s).

Fundamentally there's also a lack of ability to discover context even if people want it, someone like me who didn't grow up in that physical or temporal location (cue 3k "grew up by myself, not round no park bench") and just gets info and songs off the web doesn't have a lot of resources to look to for critical understanding of rap the way we can get critical understanding of literature, movies, etc. There's always people who will happily pontificate about it but they're kinda disconnected from the culture themselves, hipster type dudes.