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

[spliz]

p

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, pitchfork type dudes.

Nah son..it was nikkas that was over critical then and over critical now...nikkas DID NOT.want NAS to be successful bro...Matta fact...the nikka didn't get the proper accolades for Illmatic he was supposed to get...not only did it get bootlegged heavy...and didn't sell as much...they straight gipped the nikka for lyricist of the year for RTD and Biggie..who not only bit off Nas for the album cover...straight up had a more commercial and cleaner sounding album and singles overall..and shyt got mad praise...nothing short of hypocritical...if u gonna feel a way about one artists...feel that way about EVERYONE..that nitpickin shyt is for the birds...

 

[Hannibal Fox]

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

Where did I say that those records were garbage?

Son I will always choose the Street Dreams remix over the OG that's one of my cuts right there.

If I ruled the world not so much, never really liked it (I kinda like it for Laurens singing ironically) but I tend to skip it , it's kinda I can see why some people like it and why some don't, I don't really care what other people like.

I wasn't talking about those record specifically, I should have made that clear.

 

[yesiambowling]

Big Mel and Art Barr taking this thread double plat:

Almost 200 posts of

 

[zerozero]

Nah son..it was nikkas that was over critical then and over critical now...nikkas DID NOT.want NAS to be successful bro...Matta fact...the nikka didn't get the proper accolades for Illmatic he was supposed to get...not only did it get bootlegged heavy...and didn't sell as much...they straight gipped the nikka for lyricist of the year for RTD and Biggie..who not only bit off Nas for the album cover...straight up had a more commercial and cleaner sounding album and singles overall..and shyt got mad praise...nothing short of hypocritical...if u gonna feel a way about one artists...feel that way about EVERYONE..that nitpickin shyt is for the birds...

my point was larger than IWW though, I was talking about the old-head clique dissing people who I feel actually rap well more than the wack dudes most of this board talk about and I think the resolution is that they're not stacking the Nas, Comm, Roots, Talib etc albums against every other album but against heightened expectations for these guys

so in the sense there could be a double standard in one angle but it's not necessarily illegitimate from another

I had a bit of a deja vu feeling; founda thread in which you, I & big mel were talking about IWW in a similar situation:

There isn't a single wack verse on It Was Written - ProjectCOVO.com Global Forum

 

[Hannibal Fox]

p

Nah son..it was nikkas that was over critical then and over critical now...nikkas DID NOT.want NAS to be successful bro...Matta fact...the nikka didn't get the proper accolades for Illmatic he was supposed to get...not only did it get bootlegged heavy...and didn't sell as much...they straight gipped the nikka for lyricist of the year for RTD and Biggie..who not only bit off Nas for the album cover...straight up had a more commercial and cleaner sounding album and singles overall..and shyt got mad praise...nothing short of hypocritical...if u gonna feel a way about one artists...feel that way about EVERYONE..that nitpickin shyt is for the birds...

I would love to see you try and prove this, it's kind of a silly statement.

 

[Big Mel]

p

Nah son..it was nikkas that was over critical then and over critical now...nikkas DID NOT.want NAS to be successful bro...Matta fact...the nikka didn't get the proper accolades for Illmatic he was supposed to get...not only did it get bootlegged heavy...and didn't sell as much...they straight gipped the nikka for lyricist of the year for RTD and Biggie..who not only bit off Nas for the album cover...straight up had a more commercial and cleaner sounding album and singles overall..and shyt got mad praise...nothing short of hypocritical...if u gonna feel a way about one artists...feel that way about EVERYONE..that nitpickin shyt is for the birds...

More falsehoods. Everyone would have celebrated if Illmatic sold well. Same as Gang Starr. Same as Black Moon. Same as Jeru.


And Biggie getting that award wasn't THAT crazy. Jeru, BIg and Nas were all three varieties of top notch lyricism thatbyearbout of NYC.

 

[spliz]

I would love to see you try and prove this, it's kind of a silly statement.

Nah..its a crab in the barrel mentality that is heavy in the hood and hip hop.as well..and u know it..they even speak on it on the making of IWW interview in which I felt that way BEFORE the interview...

 

[Walt]

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.

B.I.G.'s first records of real note were P&B, the Supercat remix, and Juicy. He was a natural at that lane, he was like a Grisham type of author who was also capable of dropping an artsy novella here and there.

Nas was more darling of the literary elite who suddenly began writing contrived Robert Ludlum thrillers. And it does seem contrived as fukk. You couldn't tell me a single bad thing about Nas back in the day, but that changed with every successive r&b feature. He was just... terrible on those songs. Oil and water terrible. B.I.G. fit on that type of tack, Nas didn't. Same with Jay-Z, that was his lane. Hearing Nas awkwardly labor over the Jermaine Dupri track that sampled Sledgehammer was like watching Shaq try to play point guard and continually getting ripped or dribble it off his foot.

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.

The context is out there for sure, though I agree it's difficult to sort through all the different information (or lack thereof in some cases) and get to the heart of it. I think some of the people who were living and breathing hip hop back then do their perspectives a disservice at times by being so condescending and even nasty in presenting them, and that can lead to arguments instead of conversations. The level of fanaticism doesn't help matters either. People have so much invested in these artists that any critique is taken as blasphemy, something to rage against.

I find an overwhelming amount of honest assessment in many of Big Mel's post, but occasionally those are colored by a degree of frustration and condescension. And Art Barr's posts are... well, very much their own unique brand of posts. And I don't say that as a knock on either person, because on 80% of shyt Big Mel expresses an opinion completely in line with how I see things. And Art Barr is pretty much an entity of sorts as far as I'm concerned.

I think argument has replaced conversation in general. It wasn't always like that on SOHH. which is the reason I first started posting there.

 

[JayBaldacci]

never thought jeru was that nice lyrically or with flow, just back by great production from premo and good concepts on his first 2 albums.

 

[Hannibal Fox]

Nah..its a crab in the barrel mentality that is heavy in the hood and hip hop.as well..and u know it..they even speak on it on the making of IWW interview in which I felt that way BEFORE the interview...

“I went into thinking about the launch strategy. I thought he had much more potential than Illmatic because I felt like everybody liked Illmatic but they just wanted him to stay there. But the record had not gone gold at that time. I just want to see this guy win.”-Steve Stoute

Sounds a lot like Jesus and Lucifer in the wilderness to me, Nas half fell for it too.

 

[Big Mel]

Trackmasterz have long been the team employed to "sell" already established acts.

Chubb Rock.....Kool G Rap.....Nas


They water down boom bap. They're like those Swedish pop producers who churn out radio friendly schmaltz for all the starlets of the day.

 

[Big Mel]

The Shaq running point analogy is fantastic.

 

[up in here]

i can understand the sellout arguement to a certain degree. i mean iww did have more commercially presentable singles with rnb hooks. trackmasters worked on alot of the tracks. the videos for the singles were big budget with nas dressing in suits instead of army fatigues. he did switch it up to a degree.

but you know what, i enjoyed the album. i mean, lyrically nas was spittin like crazy, and even though it was trackmasters, the production was still very dark, even moreso than illmatic and definitely more than any other "commercial" album at the time. it wasn't boom bap but it wasn't light either. also, i dont just listen to boom bap and reject everything else.

as far as content, its not like nas went from being phife dog to becoming eazy-e or mc hammer or something. he was talking about drug deals and shootouts on illmatic too. sure iww was a little more mafioso, but it really didn't seem like that much of a drastic change from what he was talking about on illmatic. it was still very much centered around things going on in the projects, only this time it was from the perspective of a dude who had dough instead of a dude scramblin on the street corner. but it is still a project narrative. the escobar persona was not about flying around the world, eatin breakfast in paris and dinner in japan, it was about a nikka being known in his projects and dealing with the drama that comes with that, which really kinda paralells where nas was at in life after illmatic.

nikkaz blaming nas for the commercialization of hip-hop is fukkin idiots. that shyt would have happened regardless. badboy, deathrow and defjam were already doing the radio friendly rnb joints in a major way. nas isn't the god of hip-hop, he is just one dude who is nice on the mic.

 

[spliz]

i can understand the sellout arguement to a certain degree. i mean iww did have more commercially presentable singles with rnb hooks. trackmasters worked on alot of the tracks. the videos for the singles were big budget with nas dressing in suits instead of army fatigues. he did switch it up to a degree.

but you know what, i enjoyed the album. i mean, lyrically nas was spittin like crazy, and even though it was trackmasters, the production was still very dark, even moreso than illmatic and definitely more than any other "commercial" album at the time. it wasn't boom bap but it wasn't light either. also, i dont just listen to boom bap and reject everything else.

as far as content, its not like nas went from being phife dog to becoming eazy-e or mc hammer or something. he was talking about drug deals and shootouts on illmatic too. sure iww was a little more mafioso, but it really didn't seem like that much of a drastic change from what he was talking about on illmatic. it was still very much centered around things going on in the projects, only this time it was from the perspective of a dude who had dough instead of a dude scramblin on the street corner. but it is still a project narrative. the escobar persona was not about flying around the world, eatin breakfast in paris and dinner in japan, it was about a nikka being known in his projects and dealing with the drama that comes with that, which really kinda paralells where nas was at in life after illmatic.

nikkaz blaming nas for the commercialization of hip-hop is fukkin idiots. that shyt would have happened regardless. badboy, deathrow and defjam were already doing the radio friendly rnb joints in a major way. nas isn't the god of hip-hop, he is just one dude who is nice on the mic.

Basically

 

[Colilluminati]

I been saying this since sohh