Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / Jason A. England on How A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees & Mobb Deep Defined 1996 | 03.10

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Jason A. England on How A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees & Mobb Deep Defined 1996 | 03.10 · The Right Time with Bomani Jones

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A wave original.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Beaumont Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: You are a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesdays.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: We are here with part five of our series on
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the year 1996 in hip hop. Thanks to my man,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Wally Sparks, who was on from the last episode. We
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: talked about the emergence of the South in 1996. Now
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: back with us with some sunglasses on his side, the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: homie Jason England.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: He has returned. I see you have also given us
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: a new backdrop.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. You know, back again like tag team. And
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: since Eminem's Infinite came out this year, try to keep
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: it slim and shady. New pair though. New pair. Keep guessing.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Back again like tag team. Boy, that is an immediate change.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: The radio station bar right there.
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: Hey man the tag team boys they stumbled on gold
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: didn't they we'll get to 1996 in a minute but
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: for those who don't remember this about 1992 and this
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: was the best part there was whoop.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: There it is and then there was whoop there it is.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: And so what was interesting to me is whoop there
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it is got no play in Houston but whoop There
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: it is. By 95 South, I believe it was. That
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: one was the Houston joint. I didn't know that the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: one that was in the top five was a completely
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: different record.
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  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I don't I don't know how that worked out,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: who coordinated what. But it was a whoop and a whoop.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: There it is.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Whoop there. Oh, my. I was in Wilmington, North Carolina,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: doing a summer program. I remember there was a woman's
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: hoops program and a woman's cheerleading program there. And I
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: was 16 going on 17. I fell in love with
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: a woman named Tamekia. And that song was one of
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: the anthems of the summer. I didn't hear that one
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: out of D.C.
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: Either.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: But they made all the money, right? They were even
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: in commercials recently, like last couple of years. Yeah, Tag
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Team made all the money.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And they jumped that off because one of them was
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the DJ at Magic City.
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 2: And that was like the magic city call. It was whoop,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: there it is.
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  Speaker 1: It's impossible for me to imagine a time when whoop,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: there it is was not corny and played out.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I know. Do you remember Daisy Dukes? Yes. Around that
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: same time, someone had remixed it and they had a
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: song called Look at Fat Girls.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Doing Daisy Dukes Wrong.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: And I have to say, certainly coming from a flawed perspective,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: one might argue problematic, but funny.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Funny is a completely different discussion.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: All right. So.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: 1996 is an interesting year in that I think this
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: is the best way, I've been trying to figure out
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the right terms to talk about the wing of albums
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about for 1996. And boom
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  Speaker 1: bap feels inappropriate because I think a boom bap rap
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: is very, very specific.
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  Speaker 2: And what we're talking about is a little bit broader
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: than that.
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  Speaker 1: But what I mean by, what I'm talking about is,
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  Speaker 1: and this is the best way I can make the point.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: For those of you who don't remember, It was this
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: cat named Mike Geronimo, right? Mike Geronimo had a joint,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: came out in 95 called Master I See.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I'm so high. You so high.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I be getting money to the day that I die. Right.
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  Speaker 5: Right.
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  Speaker 2: Like it was a rap. It was very much a
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  Speaker 2: rap city song, right?
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  Speaker 1: It would be in the top 10 or whatever, but
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: it was, I want to say that's like a, like, like, um,
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  Speaker 1: like beat modders type joint or like bootcamp club. One
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: of them, a butt shot, I think is the one
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  Speaker 1: who produced that one. But anyway, that's the aesthetic that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: we're talking about. 1997 comes around, this motherfucker got on
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  Speaker 1: a shiny suit and a puffy beat and a Kelly
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  Speaker 1: Price hook and he dancing and singing in the video, right?
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  Speaker 2: In 1996, there was not.
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  Speaker 1: An expectation that your album had to have a club song, right?
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  Speaker 2: That was part of, you talk about this a.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Lot, the first single off of, it was written by
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Nas in 96 being If I Ruled the World. He
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  Speaker 1: had made a compromise at that point. Like it was
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: him feeling like this is what, you know, this is
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  Speaker 1: what I need to do to aspire to the heights
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  Speaker 1: of success that I wish to have. After 96, it
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  Speaker 1: didn't even feel like people were doing that because it's like, oh,
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  Speaker 1: this is where I wish to go.
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  Speaker 2: It was like a requirement for everybody. Like that is
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  Speaker 2: maybe the.
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  Speaker 1: Biggest puffy biggie influence in all of this is that
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  Speaker 1: nobody was too hardcore.
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  Speaker 2: To make a dance record, right? 96, it feels to.
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  Speaker 1: Me, and if I'm overstating this, let me know, but
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  Speaker 1: we got a lot of super dope classic albums out
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  Speaker 1: here that were not made with the gaze of pop success.
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  Speaker 1: And I think there were very few records after this
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  Speaker 1: year that were done with that sort of outlook.
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  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 3: One thing I'll say, just to give him his proper credit,
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: it was Buckwild, not Buckshot, who did Master I.C. But, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it's crazy. I think about this not just in 96,
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  Speaker 3: but let's go way back. This is what made hip-hop,
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  Speaker 3: for me, so incredible as a genre. It was like
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: punk rock in that you didn't know where it was
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  Speaker 3: going ever. So when Tribe First comes out and they have...
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  Speaker 3: an album about a small person in a weird hat
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  Speaker 3: and they're in El Segundo looking for a lost wallet.
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  Speaker 3: I didn't know. It was capacious. Like where, where could
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  Speaker 3: a record start and stop? And it was dope because
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: it sounded great. Right. It had no marketing aim like that.
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  Speaker 3: And you talk about the radio. Legitimately, we joke a
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: lot about my cousin, Kool Keith, and his multiple aliases
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: and his alt career. But him and Ultra Magnetic, they
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  Speaker 3: had 1212, 1212. That was on the top 10 radio
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  Speaker 3: primetime in New York City. They used to play records
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  Speaker 3: like that. which made the scene totally different. So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: so we have the very last whiffs of this. We
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: have like groups like the Cellar Dwellers are still trying
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: to come out in 96, you know, but there's no
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  Speaker 3: real lane for them except the underground. And then, like
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  Speaker 3: you said earlier, as we were talking up here, Pride
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: comes out and they kind of put out one of
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: the last records where, and even though they did have
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: like a somewhat radio single, it's still like a regular
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Tribe album because they were the ones who kind of
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  Speaker 3: set that in motion where it's like, yo, if you
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: have a movement and a sound, then you can break
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: an album. And I think that was the end of
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: it right there. We're seeing the very, like a comet,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: the very tail ends of a comet of an era
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: right here. And it's, it's a really depressing era to
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: look back on in some ways. It's almost like you're
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: holding a funeral for a certain era of hip hop. Yeah.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Like the tribe build is interesting because beats rhymes in
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  Speaker 1: life is the fourth tribe album. So we start with
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  Speaker 1: people's distinctive, um, travels past the rhythm.
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  Speaker 2: Been in an apple bomb. Can I kick it? Left
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  Speaker 2: my wilder nail segundo.
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  Speaker 1: Um, And there really had been no record like that
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  Speaker 1: up until this point. The next time out is low-end theory, which.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Bob Power just died in the week that we are
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  Speaker 2: recording this. Rest in peace to him.
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  Speaker 1: And I think I was talking about this with my
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: man Ben Hameen on his podcast For All Nerds.
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  Speaker 2: The other day.
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  Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting about Bob Power was
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Bob Power, who was a famous engineer, like the D'Angelo
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Brown Sugar is basically D'Angelo and Bob Power. Like a
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: lot of that guitar work on there is Bob Power,
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  Speaker 1: all of this. But he said the only rap he
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: listened to was the rap he worked on, which is like,
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  Speaker 1: A testament to what it was to do rap back
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: in the day in the sense that it was so
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  Speaker 1: freeform that this white man could be the one helping
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: you get all the sounds that you want without really
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: having a strong familiarity with the genre because the genre
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: was still so freeform that it could be there. But
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Low End Theory is one of the best sounding records
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  Speaker 1: that anybody has ever made. And it is Q-Tip, who
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to me is the epitome of... of rapping like a producer,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: which is to say he raps like an instrument, right?
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  Speaker 1: Like all the flows on a Tribe record are laid
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  Speaker 1: down and vocally produced to be instruments as part of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the aesthetic of Q-Tip the Genius that he has put together.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And so they take these jazz records and they make
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  Speaker 1: this incredible record with Low End Theory Then come behind
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: after that with midnight marauders, which they're also rising in
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: chart success as they do this. And midnight marauders is
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a bit more, it's, it's a bit grittier than like
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  Speaker 1: low end low end theory.
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  Speaker 2: I think had more whimsy to it.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't feel like midnight marauders really has any
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: whimsy at all, but they went as far as they
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: were going with that sound.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Jay Dilla, um, who at the time was going by JD, he.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Emerges in 95 with those far side tracks with running and,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: with Drop, a couple other joints. Now 96 comes, he
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: does this album with Tribe together. Tribe has gotten so
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: big now that they are, like, it's the number one record.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: This record debuted at number one, but we wasn't that
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: thrilled with it. Which I can't tell, even going back
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and listening to it, it's hard to get, it doesn't
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: feel like the problem was the record, it just felt
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: like the times were changing on them But they were like,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: we always did this for us anyway.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the times were changing on them. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: then with Dilla's edition, they were changing on what people
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: expected from the Tribe record. And I was one of
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: those people where I was like, yo, this doesn't sound
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: right to me initially, grew on me slightly. And then
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: when I went back to it a decade later, I
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, I was out of my mind. The
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: sound is dope. It's just like anything else. You can't
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: have too much. And we've talked about this in terms
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: of people in places and also music and celebrity. You
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: want to be a pleasant surprise rather than an expectation.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Once you become an expectation, people get bored of you.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: When you're a pleasant surprise, people are always happy to
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: see you. Tribe just loomed so large that I felt
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: like they'd become an expectation. And that meant we set
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: a standard for them that was impossible to live up to.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: And I think they were outgrowing things too. You talked
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: about how gritty Midnight Marauders sounded. And I think there
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: was this tension both in the group between Tip and
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Fife and also with Tip and his ambitions and the
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: fact that And I talked to my homie Shaka about this.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: The definition of what street or nerd was and real was,
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: people had kind of pigeonholed Q-Tip almost like he was
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: a bohemian nerd rapper. And Q-Tip was like, but I'm
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: out here. I got chicks. I got hands. I'm really
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: from these streets. I'm hanging with real street dudes.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I just did Give Up The Goods last year.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. y'all acting like you don't know who I am.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: And I think that his ambition and maybe even his insecurity,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: and I don't mean that negatively. I mean, just the
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: insecurity between who he really was and who people started
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: to view him as bothered him. And that changed things too.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's why he goes off and he does
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: a solo, I think. Yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And it really, like I said, it really jumps off
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: when Viber thing comes out. Because what makes Viber thing
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: so amazing to look back on is that beat is amazing.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: That's a Dilla beat. It is a slapper. It comes
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: on everybody.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Incredible.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It is the opposite of Scared of.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Girls music made by an ultimate Scared of Girls producer.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: All of that is there. But we ain't want that
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: from you.
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  Speaker 3: No.
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: You out here with no shirt on and a fur coat.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: We don't want that from you.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Arguably... my favorite hip hop figure ever. I think a
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: singular genius. When I really sit with it, those formative
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: years for me, he was somebody who for me was
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: a role model where it was like, all right, you
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: don't have to put on airs. You can be from
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: this sort of urban environment and you can still do
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: artistic stuff. And so when I saw him like that,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: And then when I saw him kind of in that
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: era hanging out with, what did they call him? The
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Pussy Pack or the Pussy Patrol? It was him and
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio. And he was breaking cameramen's cameras,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: paparazzi's cameras. I said, this is not the guy. I
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: had put him on a pedestal. And this was unfair
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: to him. I had an idea of who Q-Tip needed
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: to be. He had gone in a totally different direction.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: And it's an interesting thing.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I once saw, 50 Cent once edited an issue of XXL,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and he did an interview with Talib Kweli. And Talib
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: was explaining, he was like, yo, I wish I could
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: come up with hooks in the stuff that you want
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: to do. Which is to say, in many cases, your
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: favorite underground rapper is not there because he wants to be.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: He has simply not figured out his path to being
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the guy that's in the video with all the girls
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: by the car, right? Q-Tip, it took him a long
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: time to get there, but he figured it out and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: he got there. But you're right, Beast Rhymes and Life,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I look back on it and I listen to it
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: in retrospect, and it's like, no, no, no.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: It was fine.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I just think what happened was it was such a cluttered,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: chaotic year. And so much had come out that for
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: you to rise up and really stand up as like, oh,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: this is a super dope record. We already talked about this.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: By the time Beats, Rhymes, and Life comes out, Tupac
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: has already dropped and given us a banger. A bunch
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: of other records that we're going to talk about, like
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the Busta Rhymes emergence has already taken place by the
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: time Beats, Rhymes, and Life comes out.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Too Short getting it out with number 10.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Like all kinds of things have finally come out. And
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: now it's like, yo, the Jay-Z has come out. We
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: have so many new things that are stimulating us. And
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: then you get to the Tribe record and you're like,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you know, just like it came out the same day
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: as Rotten Dirty. It wasn't even the best record to come.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Out that day.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: You mentioned Too Short, man. I think about him a
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: lot in terms of people who supposedly couldn't rap. I
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: always think about them saying, they say the dog can't rap,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: but my pink account approved that. That was my guy.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that maybe more than, um, The
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: other guys who get credit for it, the more popular ones,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: he was the one who opened my ears to West
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: Coast music. It was just so fun.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: He made very good music. It depends on what you
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: mean by a great rapper, right?
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: He's got some incredible verses, right?
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much rapping he was doing, but
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: he's got some incredible verses.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Now, I'm going to go through some of these records
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: really chronologically, right?
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And the first one I want to talk about, and
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: this is a record that you and I have talked
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: about a lot off air. And I think it's really
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: interesting with the way that it looms large and the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: magnitude of it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: And by the way, came out the same day as
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: All Eyes On Me.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: To me, the most unexpected blockbuster record in the history
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: of rap.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: The Fugees, the score comes out in February of this year.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: The record is universally considered to be a classic. Fuji
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Lai come out into 95. That was like the first single.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: What jumped this record off is their cover of Killing
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Me Softly, right? Like that comes out. Lauryn Hill is
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: a giant star. The stardom comes from here. But it
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: is wild how this record is viewed as such a classic.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And I'm inclined to agree that it's a classic, but.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I don't hear people play it. I don't hear people
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: talk about it. If you ask people to start running
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: through all the jams on it, it's not really that
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: easy to do.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: And a record with three rappers, and one of them
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: is good. She's great.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: She's all-time good. Then one of them is there, and
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the other one always went last. Because if you went first,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't listen to.
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: The rest of the shit.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Really fascinating record for me personally. I couldn't stand it.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I thought it was a sellout record. It was an
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: obvious pop record. They were sampling Enya. I'm talking about
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: my views back then. I understand why. It's like all things.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: They exist in a larger context, and I can understand
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: that context now. I was the audience for rap for
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: a long time. That audience expanded and they pushed and
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: expanded that audience with that album. So, yeah, it came
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: out of nowhere because most of us were not expecting
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: something like that to have broad appeal. It didn't have
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: knockers the way we thought of knockers, but it did
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: have knockers the way that a larger audience, whites, black
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: people from different countries who were becoming a larger base
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: of consumers, too. understood and saw themselves in music. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Lauryn Hill's just a phenomenal talent. That's a one-on-one. You
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: want to talk about a comet, there you go. She's
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: a comet, right? And you could ride that comet to
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: great success. And to give Wyclef his credit, Wyclef has
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: made a lot of questionable music for me, a lot
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: of questionable personal decisions, and sometimes just seems a bit
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: like a cornball, but you can't say he had no
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: ear for music and he wasn't producing his ass off. He...
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: understood a sort of pop sensibility, and he took it
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: and he let that group ride it to commercial success
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: that we never saw coming. The stuff that happened after
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: with some of his solo stuff, I know you're a
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: fan of his first solo album, but it just got
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: confusing to me where he was getting funded for it.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: I was like, where's the money coming from? Where is
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: it coming from? Like dark government? Yeah. It felt like
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: a money laundering scheme, but he was on his shit
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: on that first album.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: So part of what's funny to me is when I
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: think of the sound of this record, outside of like
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Ready or Not, which is to me the only track
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: on that record that really sounds like they spent a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: lot of money on, right? I don't hear it as
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: a pop record as much. I do hear it very
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: often because one thing Wyclef was is a little bit
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: of a try hard, right?
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Like, ooh, I want to play.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: One thing Wyclef loves to do is make sure you
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: know that he listens to white people music.
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Like he like he really wants to make sure that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you understand that that sampling in you.
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Like, I just want to make sure that you understand
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: that I'd be over there, too.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Like, I thought that it.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Was still pretty squarely within a very particular East Coast
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: sort of aesthetic that they were going for. It also has,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: for my money, the greatest interlude in the history of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: rap music, which is the Chinese restaurant that.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Never stops being hilarious. There was no way to see
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: it coming.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And I can't believe, like, who thought, who, Wyclef is,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Wyclef is, guy, I will give him that. Like, if
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: he just, all he did was tell jokes, it probably
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: would have worked out a little better for him in
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the end. But to me, it's all about the comment
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that Lauryn Hill was such a supernova in this moment.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Because look, She sang I on there. She was I.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: She's not a legend in two games like Pee Wee Kirkland, okay?
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: She is a rapper who can do a little bit
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: of singing. But rapping, I felt like she could have
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: been the greatest rapper.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Of all time, and she decided she wanted to keep
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: doing that. She was perfect.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: In every single way and she had this interesting thing
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: of rap is a very masculine genre and she always
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: sounded just like a rapper but not like she was
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: rapping like a man you know what i mean like
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: it was a feminine energy that still went through all
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of that on top of the fact that she was
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: bad and she was better at rapping than every single
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: one of them like she nobody's ever carried the rest
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: of them i felt like quite like she carried everything
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: on that and just about always with verse two Because
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: you know she was going to have to get it
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: really high up there so y'all would be cool with
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: what was coming after that.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: She had an absolute irreducible confidence that bolstered her voice. So,
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: like you said, it's not masculine, but it's so confident.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: I think Rod Diggins has that. MC Lyte had that.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: You stood at attention any time you heard their verse
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: come on, right? And she had, on top of that,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: you know, she's young. She's gorgeous. She's confident. She can sing.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, this was very lamentable. for a fan that
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: she decided she didn't want to keep going with this
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: for many reasons that are personal, right? It seemed like
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: the sky was the limit for her. And this is
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: someone who came out of a scene where Wyclef, when
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: they were making those early songs, no one cared about boof, boff, and...
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: and Mona Lisa, can I hear that day on Friday?
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: They're beefing, they're competing with Natural Elements, who no one
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: even remembers, but I love Natural Elements, who's a college
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: rap group, or a rap group that was on those
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: college stations, and then beefing with J. Rue to damage
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: it very, very openly, right? And then all of a sudden,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: they can't even get a conversation with the Poojies, right?
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: Poojies don't have to talk to anybody. Now Tupac's dissing them.
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: Right. J.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Rue's another dude that had an album come out this year, right?
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Um....
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And again, the idea that someone like J. Rue the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Damager could be famous. That kind of stops at this point, right?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Like after this point, it feels like you either had
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to go in, and I'll use it was written as
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: the example, and call that a commercial lane for purposes
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of this discussion. Or you had to go the Rockets
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: records way, right? Like you had to make a decision.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: You trying to get yourself some money or not? Which
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: direction you going to go in? And a dude like J.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Ruda Damager could just exist as J. Ruda Damager, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: we would all know who he was off of a
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: couple of tracks, right?
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Well, part of it, too, was that the media that
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: covered hip hop cared. So that first album, people discussed
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: it as a potential classic. And so people paid attention.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Second album came out. Nobody cares as much. It's like
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Jay with Reasonable Doubt. One of the interesting things about
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Reasonable Doubt and how it was unrecognized by so many
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: people is that it didn't get reviewed until Dream Hampton
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: snuck it in. and attached it to the It Was
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Written review, right? So no one knew about it. No
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: one knew to talk about it until they were told
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: to know that. Those channels, they stop existing in that way,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: and they serve commercial purposes. That hurt J. Rue, but also,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: flat out, some of these records started sounding a little
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: bit stale. they weren't quite as good as the debuts.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: There were several in this year specifically, right? But that one,
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: you came out with playing yourself over the... J. Rue
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: comes out with playing yourself over the repurposed, sort of
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: reimagined Junior Mafia beat. It was provocative because of what
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: it was covering, but it wasn't a great record to me, right?
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: He comes out with Whatever is another record on there,
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: which uses the same sample as Give Up the Goods.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: And Give Up the Goods sample, the way they flipped
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: it was just a little bit better, and it was
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: a better record, right? So, like, there was... Me, Not
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: the Paper is an incredible beat, and there's a remix
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: to it that's also incredible, but there were just a
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: few highlights, and that was it. It was a very
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: forgettable album. It made me very sad because it kind
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: of faded away after that.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: The ultimate in-between on those two lanes that I was
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: talking about, these guys, they got a career where every
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: song that was good, you heard on the radio.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: And if it didn't make it to the radio, it
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: was not good.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: But this was the year the Lost Boys put out
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: four monster singles.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: On that record, right?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: The rap group with two dudes who I don't really, well,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: at least one, I don't really know what he do.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Another one who just pop up and be loud every
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: now and then. The DJ and the most unlikely like
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: pop rap maestro in Mr.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Cheeks.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: But them tracks is hard. Like for the most part,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: that stuff was banging.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: I liked one of the ones that wasn't a single
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: to get up and clap your hands. That was an
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: incredible song, but they were wild because people have to remember,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: people make fun of Staten Island and they talk about
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: how the Wu came out of nowhere. When you're coming
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: from South side Queens, that might as well have been
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Staten Island to a lot of people in New York, right?
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: It was way out there. So for them to come
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: out of there and Lost Boys being a street crew,
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: as well as just their group name, they came and
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: they bum-rushed with a whole crew. And they had serious
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: ties to the street. And they had this authenticity, this
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: incredible energy. And I think that the sum was greater
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: than the talent. Maybe Cheeks wasn't rapping his ass off
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: on every song, but he was generating a feeling. That
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: album was everywhere in New York. It almost reminds me
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: of Onyx's first album, where it's like, this came out
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: of nowhere. And I don't think people would believe you
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: if you're like, yo, these were the biggest rappers in
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: the world for half a second, right? Like, seriously, you
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: couldn't go anywhere in New York without hearing this music.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: And of course, the most comical bar of all time
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: for me, you know, when he said, Shorty want to
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: be a lawyer? She said, you want to be a lawyer?
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: In other words, Shorty study law. Yes.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: That song is, the narrative of Renee is preposterous.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: It is utterly ridiculous. There is no explanation how or
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: why she got shot. Any of this.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Like, they was just like, yo, we got to do
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: something for these girls. I got an idea. Okay, let's go.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: It also, I think, is an interesting record in explaining
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: what a single could or could be that changed over years. Like,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Easy Mo B's got two of those big singles on
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: that record, right? Like, the idea that a dude with
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: his style has singles for you.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: This is.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: It couldn't happen like that for much longer, though.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: But he slayed a comeback, right?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: He did.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: That was a smash.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: He is the most unlikely of all of this.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: He found himself a bit of a lane because after
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Freaky Todd died, they decided they couldn't be the Lost
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Boys no more.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Whatever they were, they could have continued. But that's how
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: they felt.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: There we go. But hey, coming up next, we got
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: more from the year 1996.
• 25:21
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• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Terms and conditions may apply. All right, we are back
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: with my man Jason Engel. We're talking about rap in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: the year 1996. To me, and I need.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: To revisit this.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I haven't done like a thorough revisit, but I've always
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: said this over the years. I have always felt like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: the best record that came out of this year was
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: De La Soul, Stakes is High. And the reason for it,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: on top of the fact that it is an incredibly
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: produced record, it has also proven to be just a
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: little bit prophetic, right? Like, hey, guys, here's where the
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: game is going. If we don't do anything about it,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it's going to get out of hand and we're going
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: to hate what happened.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: And then that is exactly what happened.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: Phenomenal sounding record, man. You know, everybody talks about De
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: La Soul. I'm not going to say that they're forgotten groups.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And their albums not being on stream and played a
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: little bit of a part and the albums falling off
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: people's radar because they just weren't played every day the
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: way everything else was. But I think somehow still a
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: little bit unheralded, still a little bit underrated.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I would say.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: By Black people, the white people who like to say
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: they like rap or who they love De La Soul.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: They do. This is true. This is true. But I mean,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: De La made three of the best albums I've ever
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: heard in rap history. And people don't talk about them.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: And something about them Reminds me of Outkast, which is
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: to say, and I was talking with a friend about this,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: certain groups are unbiteable. You cannot replicate them. MCs don't
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: even try. What they had was so their own, so
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: out there, so unique, right? And so whenever I listen
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: to this album, that's when I'm thinking to myself, like, man,
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: this is, nobody else could have made this album. Just
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: like the first two. No one could have made these albums.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, positive news is, There's one guy that sounds like that, right?
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: And what's so dope about a pause bar is when
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: he drops it in there, he'd be like.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Damn, why wouldn't I have thought of that?
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Like, he's not smashing Adams here, but it's always the
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: right line.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And the meter that he would typically use or when
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: he drops in on the flow, the timing is so
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: different than just about anybody else that would be out there.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Like, he was one of one.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Then you had Dave in there with him, and Dave
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: was kind of like perfect compliment sort of situation.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: It did not feel.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: It didn't feel the same as it did with Tribe
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: where there was a clear A and B.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I thought it was clear that Paz was the better rapper,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: but Dave served a, it felt like a different purpose.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It depended on the song and how I felt
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: about them. And conceptually, I think they remain unrivaled. You know,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I think about a song like, not on this album,
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: but Bitty's in a BK Lounge. They would rap about
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: anything and everything, and it was compelling. It pulled you in.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: It made you laugh. Their skits were incredible. Daylight's a one-on-one.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: I'm happy that they're kind of catching this swan song
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: right now. I just saw their Tiny Desk performance, and
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: their new album had some songs on it I really enjoyed.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Speaking of another great interlude on an album, because this
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: is also, by the way, this is the year before
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the interlude thing got out of hand. And everybody thought
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: they were a comedian and they had to have like
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: four or five of them. But that's the one I
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: still need to find when they got that clip of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: that white man rap.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. I don't like it. It's just
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: in words talking.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: I've referenced that. All the time, man.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: Same.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Same.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Me and my partner, we've been, for years, we have
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: been like, yo, we have got to get NT.com off
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: the ground. Like, we got to make it happen. Because
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: that's just all it was. And then the problem is,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: NT.com is just podcasts.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: The whole world. That's all it is. That's why somebody
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: needs to redo that. Podcasts don't like it.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Bunch of them talking.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: They just talking.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: That's all it is.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: The epitome. That's what we need.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: When they changed it to X, no, partner, it was
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a name just sitting here right in the tuck.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Waiting on you.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: InBirdsTalking.com. Got it for you.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, I had forgotten also, this was when the Helter
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Skelter Nocturnal album came out.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Love that album.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Because this is the year before the Boot Camp Click
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: album that disappointed us all came out.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: That one in the OGC The Storm. Ooh, that was tough.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: That was tough. But the Helter Skelter Nocturnal, bang.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: Helter Skelter Nocturnal is an incredible album. Operation Lockdown still
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: gets played to this day, probably weekly for me. John
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Price had one of the greatest reinventions ever when he
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: reemerged on the solo tip. And Rock Ness Monster is
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: just an incredible voice. And I mean, I think bars
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: from them all the time. And that was a group
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: that once again, we said this before, people act like
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: it's crazy to say, when... The movement was strong with
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Boot Camp. They were compared to the Wu-Tang, and it
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: was questionable in New York who the better crew was.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: And then we saw who the better crew was, right?
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: But the star power and the talent in that group,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: if you go back and listen to Nocturnal, you hear
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: it very clearly. You got one of the dopest voices
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: in rap, and you got a dude who's incredibly underrated
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: with a sense of humor who's just barring you to death,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: who inspired a whole generation of rappers. Sean Price's influence remains,
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: even with the young kids coming up today, in a
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: way that, like, an MF Doom does. And it shocked me.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: But I think that speaks to the legitimacy and authenticity
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: of his personality and his talent.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: And that music sounded like a New York that no
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: longer exists. Like, I think you and I talked about
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: this when I watched He Got Game not that long ago.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: And I looked at it, and it was like, I
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: had been to New York a little bit in that
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: time period, and I remember how that felt. But I
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: remember watching those shots of Coney Island at the basketball
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: court and being like, oh, okay, this is what the
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: rap sounded like. Like when I first moved here, somebody
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: told me, they were like, yeah, you're going to have
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: them cold, rainy days. You throw on that Mobb Deep
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Infamous and it's going to make sense. But I also
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: think records could, sounded like a New York record. This
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is also the end of you being able to do that.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: And that just be what you had to do.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: You're not the home team anymore for hip hop after
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: this year, really. And it sounds like Brooklyn for sure.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: And this is a conversation I had when I was
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: just back for a brief trip in New York. I
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: had it with a close friend and I had it
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: with you too. It's so wild because it's not just
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: that this album sounds like Brooklyn, it sounds like New York.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Like truly, there are just no Black people in Manhattan anymore.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: And Manhattan used to be teeming with Black people. There's
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: an era where a lot of people remember that even
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: in Midtown Hell's Kitchen, like there were Lower East Side,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: so many Black people in Manhattan. And I was back
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: there and it's like, yo, as you said, I think
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: after 110, no, right? Who stole the soul, right? So-
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: It's a reflection not only of how the music changed,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: but how the city just totally changed.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Well, like if you told people that the cage, the
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: basketball courts at West 4th Street that are famous for that, right?
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: That's in the West Village, man.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: If you know New York in current terms, and I'm
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: telling you that they was hooping at the West Village,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: it took me forever to understand how that worked.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, West Village was super duper hip hop hangout too.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: There was so many underground MCs all around the West
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: Village every day.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and see, that's another thing about what New York
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: was that it is not also was a place that
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: people came to be rappers. And so you just had
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: all these people around and like a scene built up.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Like it's hard to, scenes are hard to come by
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: these days. And this is also kind of the end
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: of like things coming out, not just out of your city,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: but specifically about a scene, something within that city very often.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: MC Lyte, I forgot, she put the Cold Rocker Party
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: album out also this year too.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Like this is a crazy high level of volume. Mm-hmm.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: that was coming out. The Roots.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: So Illiduff Half-Life is my favorite Roots record. Like it's
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: one of those that the second it goes, like as
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: soon as you get into Respond React, you're like, oh,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: this is different. Because the first one was like the
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Jazz Joint, which was a very, really, really good record.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: But the same way I say on Riding Dirty, Bum
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: B was like, I'm going to show you guys that
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I am colder than all of you. He and Black thought,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: like this was their 1996. Black gets on and smokes
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: everything in front of him for like 75 minutes worth
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: of music.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's a sad album for me to look back
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: on because Malik B and Mars are now past, right?
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: Where it hit, and Mars was one of the rappers
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: on Clones. Where it hit, man, it was Razor Shark.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I prefer the first album. It was a little, or
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: I should say it's really the second album, right? But
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: the first big album that they put out. Do you
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: want more of I Get Chills When I Listen to It?
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: but I get chills when I listen to certain records
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: off this too. You're talking about a rapper who's functioning
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: at such a high level. I love Black Thought. He
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: still can, you know, cook up a verse that sounds
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: better than almost anyone, right? But I don't love this
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: era of Black Thought where he comes and he's an
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: expectation again. I loved it when he was almost, it's
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: like a cutting edge author who no one has any
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: expectations of, and he can go in any direction he wants.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Now he feels like an invited guest that you paid
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: a real serious fee to, and you know exactly, and
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: he knows exactly what is expected of him. And so
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: he just spits these like 7,000 bars, but he was
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: at his most unpredictable and whimsical back then. So those
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: two albums for me are the best black box. Yeah.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Like I felt like he was rapping in a way
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that when I'd heard that I had never heard anybody.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: That rap like that. And like the way.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Biggie does, Biggie did a decent bit of this, but
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody was better at like changing the
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: stresses on syllables and pronunciations, like to make the bars
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: fit the way that he wanted to and to throw
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the other words in there.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: Just wrecking shop. Like I thought about being Malik. I'd
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: be like, y'all supposed to go after this?
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: Again? Yeah.
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, look, God's in his own class. I
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: thought though that Malik balanced him so well. And I really,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: there are times on the album before, this is where
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: you can tell what Thoughts Evolution was. There are times
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: you can't tell them apart. There are a couple songs
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: you can't tell when the one starts rapping after the
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: other stops rapping, that they were that connected on that album.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: And then suddenly it's starkly clear, every record, who's rapping when, right?
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Like Thoughts just went to another galaxy.
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Also this year, by the way, them grimy MOP cats drop.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: And you know, DJ Premier, all producers have guys, they
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: just love their voices. And me and Primo probably have
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: more disagreements about who is worthy of Primo beats than
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I would ever have ever with any producer, except for MOP.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Except like this. What do these guys do?
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: They come from the most treacherous part of the city.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: And basically they're going to rob you.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Downtown Swinger was my joint, man. Wow. That's an
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: incredible song. This is some of the hardest tracks that
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: have ever been produced. I don't understand how this caught
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: on and how M.O.P. To me, you want to talk
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: about a group that just sounds totally Brooklyn. and should
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: have a limited audience. How did Ante Up become a
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: joint that's persisted for decades in commercials, white people love it,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: punk is up, Ante Up is up. Everyone's like, yo,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: play the song, or they're going to rob you.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: That's the answer. Yes. My brother talked about this once.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: He said he was on a cruise and they played
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Ante Up, and he was like, it set the party off,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: but this doesn't make, because my brother's whole thing is
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: that there's no greater example of player hating than robbing people.
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Like just the idea that that's what you're going to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: do is like the ultimate example of straight up player hating.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: But them having what is effectively a pop classic that
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: has persisted for 25 years and change.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: That's not even this album, but it's 25 years and change.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: Idiot!
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Kept that fool!
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Kidnapped!
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Kidnapped that fool!
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: It's not even a primo beat. That's the other part.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Like, none of it makes sense, but they had a vibe.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: It was just a real energy.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: It was just a very ominous energy that did not,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: somehow it did not feel gratuitous, but it should have been.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: To this day, Rugged Never Smooth is a song that
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: stays in my gym mix. For Alon Blaze with Jay-Z
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: is one of my favorite Jay-Z verses too. That stays
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: in my mixes when I do a cardio session. They
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: just had high energy, grimy. It's like rewatching The Godfather
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: or something. This seems real to me. I see myself here.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be like this in real life,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: but for this moment, I see myself as Michael Corleone
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: making some difficult decisions, killing some people.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Yo, where are you on Ghostface Iron Man?
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: I think it's a slight step down, but I still
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: love it. Ghosts and M.O.P. have something. It's so funny.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I heard this rapper who I'm really enjoying these days
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: named Errol Holden. And he was talking about Ghosts and M.O.P.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: And he said Ghosts and M.O.P. were rappers who rapped
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: at you, right? They're not rapping for you. They're rapping
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: at you aggressively. And it works for them because of
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: their cadence and their material and authenticity. And so Ghosts
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: always wins for me. Always. But it was a slight
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: step down for me, like most of the albums released
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: this year by Luminance.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: So I felt like Iron Man was just a little
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: too long, right?
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And it's also done.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you watched that Wu-Tang Doc, the
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Sasha Jenkins one, where they were talking about the beef
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: over RZA putting out that one album that he just
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: sold to fucking Shkreli, right?
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: And RZA's point was, I never told them when an
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: album was coming out. Like they would just constantly make music.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And then one day RZA would put it all together
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: and then boom, there was an album. And so for
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, RZA saw really both Ghost and Ray as
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: cats that needed each other.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: In order to get it done.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And so the Ghostface album, the Ghostface Iron Man feels
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: like a bit of a continuation of Only Built From
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Cuban Links. Ghostface is all over that one. And then
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: they throw Capadonna in this. And so it's like, okay,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: there's like a couple tracks too long on there. They
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: put Winter Wars on there, took it off the soundtrack
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: for Don't Be Admit It, put it on there so
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: you get the Capadonna victory tour.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: But all that I got is you.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I remember when that album came out and my brother
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: brought it home and was like, I'm about to play
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: for you The best one verse I think I have
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: ever heard in my life.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: And he plays it, and it is the.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Most heart-wrenching, evocative, like, I did not fully understand the
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Ghostface situation until that one, because that's when you realize, oh,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: this is actually, tough talk though it may be, all
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: vulnerability all the time, just in a really weird sort
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: of way.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: I've never understood how the Wu got popular. I got
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: to be honest with you. And I love them, but
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: I do not understand how this material connects with such
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: a large group. And it has to be about the energy, right?
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Because I love it. And it feels very specific. It
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: is Hood Poetics, Daytona 500. Doing forever shit like pissing
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: out the window on turnpikes, right? It was years ago.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: I have a literature background. You know, I was a
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: professor of writing fiction and nonfiction for many years. And
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: I've read a lot of literature, a lot of poetry.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: I was reading a famous poet named Charles Simic. And
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: he talked about pissing into a sink with the feeling
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: of eternity. I said, brother, Charles Simic and Ghostface are
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: lining up with the same idea because that's how much
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: of a poet Ghost is on the hood tip instinctually, man. Like, man,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: he just caught me off guard. It shouldn't have made
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: sense and it always made sense to me.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is, again, the energy on every Ghostface track.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: It's just like, he is all the way in here.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: It was also....
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: RZA, Jimmy Page is kind of like this in rock.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Geniuses who don't exactly know what they're doing.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Like it all comes together in the end, but like
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: if you really wanted them to try to explain it,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: that's probably not going to go down. RZA's ability to
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: work all those movie clips in, the way the tracks
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: would always be sequenced. So what if he's got his
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: machine set to the wrong settings and everything else?
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: They would all just come together. And again, even this record,
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: which is just a little bit too.
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: Long, right?
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: It goes.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Now to answer your question of what it was that
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: made them so successful, I will point to this. When
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica was like, people were first getting word on
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: this and what Cambridge Analytica was doing was they were
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: using like your Facebook likes and everything else to know
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: what ads and what things to suggest to you.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: That's when this idea was very new.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: And one thing that was interesting about it was they
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: felt they were capable of they could tell if you
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: were gay, even if you hadn't come out just based
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: upon your.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Your online activity.
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Which is create some dangerous stuff.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: But anyway, they said that the number one indicator that
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: you were dealing with a straight man was fandom of
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the Wu-Tang Clan. It is the straightest, malest.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Music that has ever been made.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: And whether people like it or not, ain't much in
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: this world more popular than straight men. Think about this.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: After hearing a song where the hook was, watch these
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: rap N-words get all up in your guts, girls wanted
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: the t-shirts.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: That's the only explanation for this is it's just undistilled masculinity.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: Brimming with machismo every step. Yeah. And hood poetry and machismo.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: I can't disagree with that. And about RZA, I'm thinking
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: now about Bob Power, who we talked about when he
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: was talking about Tribe and he was talking about Dilla.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: He was talking about the imperfections in hip-hop beats being
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: where the funk comes from. But that's kind of what
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: makes a great record great. And there was this grime
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: in all of the RZA stuff that I don't know
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: what to attribute it to. First of all, you've got
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: to attribute it to his vision and singular genius as well.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: When he was in his bag, never had there been
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: a producer who's been more profound of a producer. Never.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: Not one of them. He's right there with everyone when
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: he's in his bag. But also, I don't know what
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: kind of dust he was smoking. You know, I'm not
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: going to just put it out there. I think he
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: was just smoking dust all the time. But there might
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: have been something about the dust that made him see. Like,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: my homie had a, he had a home, my cousin
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: had a homeboy who used to listen to these records.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: And he would smoke laced weed while he listened to them.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: And he told my cousin, if you smoke the laced weed,
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: you hear the hidden beats. And I said, maybe this
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: dude was on the same wavelength as RZA when he
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: was making it. He could hear the.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Hidden beats in it.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And if RZA stopped smoking dust, I normally wouldn't say this,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: but he should start again.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: I try not to pay much attention to the RZA
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: music post when it mattered to me. He was coming
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: out with rock songs with a group called Faulkner about
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: New York City. I don't know what that was about.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: There was just some really troubling thing that came out
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: from his cousin the other day where she was saying
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: she went on tour with him at 17 and she
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: was actually sleeping with RZA. Yo, that was a big story. Now, allegedly,
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: she says that. But the more I learn about my heroes,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: the less I want to know. And then I just
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: go back to the music. Let's light a jade and
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: listen to the music and stop thinking about them as people. Yep.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Awkward Supper Change. Where were you on the Def Squad Cats?
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Because we had a Redman and a Keith Murray record
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: drop this year.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Keith Murray Enigma. I like that record a lot. It's
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: directly tied to the fact that I had the tape
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: in my car. But I like that one. And then
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Muddy Waters. is another it's a banger guys.
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah you can't go wrong with death squad um
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: i probably wasn't as high on death squad as some
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: of my friends were and keith murray was the ultimate
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: of that for me he sounded really good sometimes the
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: other times he was a little too astrological phenomenological and
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: numerology school and all that but but yo there has
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: never been a gullier dude who had access to a thesaurus.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Keith Murray wasn't playing around. You know, like you might
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: hear one of his rap.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Records and think he was a nerd.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like the halfway between David Wayans' character on
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: In Living Color and T.I.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're not really catching Keith Murray at fat beats.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: You might think that because of what he's rapping, but nah,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: you're catching him out in the street smoking a blunt,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: drinking too much, fighting somebody, right?
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, beating somebody with a bar stool, because that's what
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: he went down for, right?
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. But most beautiful thing in this world is
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: a wild single for somebody to have, right? It's so good.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: That's an impossible single to imagine charting these days, and
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: that was a hit.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just on the strength of how he sounds on
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the hook. I mean, that's an Eric Sermon knocker. Eric
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Sermon somehow wildly underrated as a historical figure in rap,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: which is why every interview with Eric Sermon is him
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: explaining to you all the things that Eric Sermon ever
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: did in rap, which I normally find problematic, except I
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: can't blame him because nobody else does it.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I have to say, the last few interviews I've
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: heard from him, He was saying he passed on signing
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: and producing for Nas, Big, and the Wu-Tang. Although I
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: think it was specifically Raekwon. So those are some big whips.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: He was busy. He was too big at the point,
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: I think he thought, and didn't see the vision. But
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: the other thing that really blew my mind is taking
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: nothing from his producing because he's a brilliant producer. And
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: like you said, totally underrated. It's criminally underrated. I was
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: surprised to hear him say on a review that Harry
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: Smith made a lot of the beats that we thought
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: Eric Sermon did the first couple albums. And that, in fact,
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: their first album was just them telling someone in the
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: studio what beats to make because they knew how it
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: sounded in their heads, but they didn't know the equipment yet.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: And those are some knockers, right? Those are some incredible knockers.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: And they kind of ghost produced those.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: We could have a discussion the whole other day about
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: how somehow EPMD has slipped through the cracks of the...
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: historical discourse in rap because they are incredible.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: They were incredible.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: And then had this breakup that I guess it felt contentious,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: but it never feels contentious when they talk. Now I
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: guess they've broken up and gotten back together enough times.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: But Eric Sermon kept going. That Paris Smith thing, never, never.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: He put out a record in 96. Don't ask me
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: if I've heard it, but it came out.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: Went solo on that ass, but it's still the same.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: I saw it coming. That's why I went solo. Suddenly
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: his flow aged overnight. It was like he was rapping
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: the way Kool Moe D looked. It just was old, bro.
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: What was going on?
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Well, he's a person who needed a co-star. Yeah.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: He needed, he was not enough. I mean, Eric Sermon
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't either, to be perfectly honest. He just, in that
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: split that they had of the crew, Eric Sermon got
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: a better package. Even though Paris got some good, like
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Paris got DOS effects.
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Like, it wasn't like Paris got nothing, but it just
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: didn't go to say. Last one I'll get to before
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: we get out of here. I don't think we've ever
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: talked about this one. I always wonder if Hell on
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Earth came out before The Infamous, would people say they
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: liked Hell on Earth more than The Infamous? Because Hell
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: on Earth, which I think comes out in one way
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: in a very interesting time, which is Tupac is dead,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: but we still gonna fire his ass up.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: We ain't forgot, you dead motherfucker.
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Like, drop a gentleman on there.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: But you go back and listen to Hell on Earth,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: and it also is very clear they had more money
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: to record the record. Like, it sounds cleaner, but it
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: still knocks. Like, it's still a hard-ass record.
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: Havoc was real comfortable, I think. He had found his zone.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: First album is Havoc with other outside influences. This feels
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: very much like he's in his element. And he just
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: could rap, man. P, I think, was someone that was
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: underappreciated in his heyday because there were so many heavyweights
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: who were solo, who were making noise. But the album
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: sounds great. I think The Infamous, For My Money, is
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: still a better record. It just feels like a giant
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: record in a way that... Hell on Earth doesn't feel giant,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: but it feels focused, and it feels in its own
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: way like a very dark, thematic album. It's a beautiful
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: album in a way that a violent street album can
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: be beautiful.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, The Infamous is definitely more cinematic.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: Like, I can.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I think I can more readily see the scenes that
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: are painted in The Infamous in a way that I
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: can't quite capture off of Hell on Earth. But it's
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: that thing where it's like, it's wild. We're all better
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: at what we do. Like, I probably rap better on
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: this record. I probably made better beats on this record,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: but it ain't, it's still not that record.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Dropping Jim on them is one I run all
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: the time still. It sounds so sinister.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: And look, and they got it off in time for
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Pac to hear it. It was just a little bit
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: wild that they still put it on the album. There
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: was plenty of time to jump off of that decision.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: And everyone was playing a little bit hokey pokey, left
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: foot in, left foot out, on whether or not they
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: were going to just publicly despot. They said, no, we
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: are in it. They made L.A. L.A. too. They were like, hey,
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: give us all the beef. We want it all. These
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: little niggas wanted everything, right? I got to say, I
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: got to say, man, you know I have to do it. Dr.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: Octagon and Big Time, two cool Keith albums in 96.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: Had a song called The Industry is Whack that's still
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: one of the funniest songs that you've ever heard in
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: your life. And every song on Dr. Octagon is hilarious.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Got to promote my song.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: It has been so long since I've listened to Dr.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Octagon that I had forgotten that it came out in
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: the course of this year. And being 16 and listening
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: to Dr. Octagon, I was like, what the fuck?
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: What the fuck is this? How is this real life?
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: Bo, I promise you. So I think that was the
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: first album on DreamWorks, and he got booked on Lollapalooza
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: but then skipped it. That album was actually huge. You
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: want to talk about an album huge with white people.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: When I went back to college after I dropped out
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: the first time, people used to run up on me
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: and start rapping Kool Keith verses at me because they
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: heard he was my cousin. Charlie Brown and Snoopy, check
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: out the group, like rapping in my face. There was
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: a woman with dreads, a white woman with dreads, who
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: showed up to my college apartment, knocked on the porch door,
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: and came and bought weed to smoke me out so
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: we could listen to Kool Keith together. I had to
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: turn her away. I said, this is gone too far.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: But his fans are real fans. And you know that guy, Passion,
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: the Weiss, Jeff Weiss, the rap critic, he just tweeted yesterday.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: A friend of mine, Shamira, sent it to me. He said,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: at 63 years old, Kool Keith is still making dope music.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: And brother, I've seen him touring. I've been on stage
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: with him whenever he comes through my town. and he
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: is still rocking shows, and those fans still come out.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: They don't look quite as young or as good as
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: when I remember him at 21, but they are as loyal.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: My favorite thing with you about this is, as you say,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: how totally unimpressed your family is with the idea of
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Cool Keith, your cousin, showing up to stuff.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's no insult to him. My mother has
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: 14 brothers and sisters, and it's a group of Harlem
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: and Brooklyn street players, hustlers, that sort of thing. So
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: there's a hierarchy in our family. And you got to understand,
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: back in the day, of course, in New York, we
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: had LL Cool J posters on the wall, right? And
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: then we had this ultra magnetic funk your head up poster.
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: And no one who came over to the crib knew
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: who it was. So it wasn't until I got into
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: my mid-20s, I started really listening to my cousin's music
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: more and being like, you know what? This dude is
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: brilliant and half crazy. And I fuck with him. His
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: humility around my family is also incredibly impressive. Keith comes
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: from the projects in the Bronx, man. He's a real
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: street dude. And that's what makes the space music and
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: the scat music so much wilder, you know? So love
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: to Keith, man. Love to Keith.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you tapped on something interesting and I think it's
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: a great way to wrap this. And I think that
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: 96 is a year where we start seeing the end
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: of this truly being present, which is the broad definition
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: of what it meant to be street, right? Like, Explaining
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: to people, for example, that public enemy, it takes a
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: nation of millions to hold us back.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: That's a street record.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Like street and gangster are not perfect synonyms. Gangster is
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: within the confines of what it meant to be street.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: But what it meant to be street is all over
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: the place in the I'd like Q-tip. being a dude
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: that had these connections, but was also a bit of
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: a nerd cat, like there was room for that. The
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: idea that the nerd acts white only exists in a
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: world where white people are part of the equation, right?
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: If it's all black people, then it's all black because
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: all you know was black people. And so the industry
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: at that time had a better reflection of that than
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: we wound up getting down the line. And this year
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: is something that kind of gets into what we're discussing there.
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Hip hop is still in the show business. It's
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: a culture in discussion with itself. It's self-referential. You have
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: to be part of the in-group to understand what the
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: records mean. But it's finally starting to drift away and
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: become music made by Black people for an audience that
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: isn't Black, with music that isn't Black serving as the
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: sample sources. And that gets a little tricky. But I
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: think about this all the time. It's the last thing
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: I'm going to say. People tend to think the hood
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: is just drug dealers and bullies. If it's all bullies,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: who's going to be bullied? If it's all robbers, who's
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: getting robbed? If there's nobody who's a nerd, who's making
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: all this music? Who's digging through the crates? That vision...
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: And of this idea that only people who were suburban
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: in integrated high schools were nerds is really bizarre to me.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: Sean Price is a nerd. He's a nerd that could
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: beat you up, but he does graffiti. He can dance.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: He's like, yo, let me do some art. He's got
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: a sense of humor and an encyclopedic recall of culture
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: that he works into his lyrics for humor. That's nerd shit.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: That's my man, Jason England. Check him out. Google him.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: Check out his work. You'll find him at Chronicle of
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Higher Education. See some of his stuff at The Defector.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: My brother, I appreciate you for joining us here, working
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: on this series, man.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Really, really appreciate it.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me always, man. Appreciate you.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: No problem, man.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: here on The Right Time. We do this four days
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: a week. Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Remember,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: give us five stars. You only give us four stars.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: You are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: a couple of days. Take it easy.