it's pretty much true...
a person who didn't grow up on true r&b/soul or even gospel music from church can't really ever relate to hip-hop at it's essence. we all grew up listening to soul first then graduating to hip-hop as we got older. the older generation of rappers are great examples of this and you can tell that alotta rappers who ended up being famous really wanted to be al green/mj/marvin gaye/ron isley/stevie and fell in love with that type of music first. look at pharoahe monch, andre 3000, cee-lo green, phonte, mos, etc... you got these extremely dope rappers who either fell out of love with hip-hop or always wanted to be vocalists deep down inside and they have reverted back to their roots and are now barely or rarely rap anymore because the rap game changed and doesn't appreciate them like it should but soul was their first love and always has been there for them. shyt i don't blame them especially looking at the game now...now of these rappers in the generation will ever have any singers from this era to look up to and aspire to be with their auto-tune and off-key singing asses.
with that said, these two tracks are ones that really held me down in the 90's as a youngster pining over girls, have alotta sentimental value and are obscure enough to separate casuals from true lovers of the music IMO.