Latest / Hip-Hop Now Podcast / Impact Artist
Transcript
- 0:00Coming up on this week's episode of hip Hop Now podcast, it's the ten
- 0:06impact artists in hip hop history, and today hip hop celebrates fifty years.
- 0:16Let's do it. Welcome to hip Hop Now Podcast. If you from the
- 0:26future, you don't do show ass out of don't disrespect the leg leo hip
- 0:35hop. You say this day, let's get right into the business. What
- 0:40up, y'all? I am your host, Vegas. This it's hip Hop
- 0:44Now podcast. It podcasts specifically designed to keep you caught up on all things
- 0:49hip hop, music and culture that happened throughout the week. Fifty years of
- 0:54hip Hop fifty years of hip hop. Officially today, August eleventh, nineteen
- 1:02seventy three is universally recognized as the day that hip hop was born? Now
- 1:10it was it? Yeah, I guess so. In a lot of ways.
- 1:14Was hip hop really kind of in existence before then? Probably so,
- 1:18but not recognized as hip hop. One of the things that happened on that
- 1:22date that kind of makes it a day to commemorate is the birth of a
- 1:27technique, which is the break to get damn you know, a DJ technique,
- 1:34which not only fostered a DJ technique, but the MC they had at
- 1:40the party with them, you know, the people who would hit the flow
- 1:42and break and pop lock. So what occurred in that party at that time
- 1:49in particular, felt like the beginnings of something new, which is hip hop.
- 1:56And today some of y'all, y'all don't know. You call rap hip
- 2:00hop exclusively. You forget about the DJs, you forget about the breakers,
- 2:06you forget about the fashion it's all about. You forget about the graffiti artists,
- 2:12which still exists. To be honest, all of it is a part
- 2:16of hip hop culture, rap music in particular. It's just one element of
- 2:23what is the culture. So there's your brief lesson on what hip hop is
- 2:31and always will be. Fifty years of hip hop. Now, I'm not
- 2:37gonna hold y'all this list that we're doing today. Top ten, not top
- 2:46ten impact artists in hip hop history now, not top ten? Right,
- 2:55not top ten and not. The reason behind me doing this kind of a
- 3:02list to commemorate fifty years of hip hop has more to do with just acknowledging
- 3:09the impact of some hip hop artists. So what does that mean? That
- 3:15means there are people and artists who won't appear on this specific list that have
- 3:23had an impact on hip hop. I'm just choosing to point out these ten.
- 3:29So what I need you to do to keep the conversation going is to
- 3:32point out another ten in the comments section that's different from this ten. There
- 3:38are plenty of artists that we could think of that you won't hear. That
- 3:44you could say, well, I can't forget the impact of this group of
- 3:49this artist. It's an exercise and conversation, that's all it is. Let's
- 3:54get right into the business, though. So let me start by just going
- 4:01through the top ten one by one, and I'm gonna tell you why,
- 4:09and not why. I not only why I chose them, but what impact
- 4:15specifically they had on the game. No order ll cool J now some of
- 4:24y'all. Now, I consider l COOJ to be the goat. I think
- 4:29he is what Sugar Ray Robinson was to boxing, or is to boxing.
- 4:36The total package. Hip hop is not only underground barkings. Hip hop is
- 4:43not only radio play. It's not only for the guys. It's not only
- 4:46for the ladies. It's not only for a certain coast. It's all.
- 4:53It's about all of it. It's about your impact on it, everyone and
- 4:57everything. And unlike two short or E forty who had long careers just like
- 5:05LLL coop J. As far as releasing music, LLL COOJ was the blueprint
- 5:14for longevity combined with high profile success. Let's not forget LLL COUJ was introduced
- 5:23to the hip hop world in the mid eighties. From that point on,
- 5:29he had platinum hits through several decades of hip hop, as well as several
- 5:36errors of hip hop, right from the mid eighties to the late eighties,
- 5:42nineties, the two thousands, right, and then he eventually kind of fell
- 5:46off closer to the twenty tens. You know, his impact wasn't the same,
- 5:50but by then what he had done, especially when it comes to accolades
- 5:56and hits, had not been seen before in hip hop. He literally had
- 6:01hits and errors. He shouldn't have been as popular, right You hear people
- 6:08talk about, you know, the Golden Era, the Death Row eraor the
- 6:14Aftermath error, the bad Boy era, the Rockefeller rough Rider. Al had
- 6:18hits next to all of those new artists where his peers had already faded away.
- 6:28Now it's not only longevity. L COOLJ, as we all know,
- 6:32very successful on the radio without a doubt, but also Elo Coolja has a
- 6:40long history of battle rat L Coolja has a long history of just making hardcore
- 6:46hip hop right boom Bat, getting some of the best guys of today on
- 6:51one posse cut and in rhyman next to them. He has a history of
- 6:57that. So in a lot of ways is when you look at somebody like
- 7:00him, there wasn't anything like him in hip hop. Ever, there wasn't
- 7:08you could even go to things like, for example, I need love like
- 7:12you know, a lot of times they'd like to say yo. That was
- 7:15the point where rappers knew that they could make rap love songs and be successful.
- 7:21True that Houdini also kind of did it also, but LLL took it
- 7:27to a different level. LLL was kind of like, if he was a
- 7:31singer, he'd be like a pop sensation, right heartthrob kind of thing.
- 7:35But he was that for hip hop. But again, that wasn't the some
- 7:41of his parts. Anybody who calls himself a hip hop head and does not
- 7:46acknowledge l L's hardcore hip hop legacy is irresponsible. I'm just saying next rock
- 7:59him the odd How could you not start with somebody like a rock him.
- 8:05Also, his impact on the game is different from l Els right. He
- 8:11doesn't have the longevity that LL had. But what Rock Him has is he
- 8:18fathered a style of rhyming that is here till this day. You like Griselda,
- 8:26like the Locks, like Nas, like jay z right pun fifty.
- 8:33You could just keep going, as it relates to East Coast hip hop,
- 8:37really, you could just keep going and Rock Him is the blueprint for that.
- 8:43And why because in a lot of ways, I mean, you know
- 8:46the history he if you read his autobiography, which is great for any hip
- 8:50hop head, he paid attention to his craft in a way that I felt
- 8:56like, what's kind of ahead of its time. If you look at his
- 8:58right and style, it's like musical notes. And it's because he patterned his
- 9:05style in the same way that John Coltrane of jazz played his horn, and
- 9:13it worked right. It felt like a slow flowed back then, it felt
- 9:16like a lazy flow, but it was perfect for where hip hop needed to
- 9:24go because he also raised the bar of lyricism right at a time where,
- 9:31don't get me wrong, lyrics mattered, technique mattered, but there were few
- 9:37that could do it right. There was Cool g Rat, there was Big
- 9:41Dad Kade, It was karrass One who kind of known for that. Grandmaster
- 9:45cast Is probably also looking looked at it as like an early influence for a
- 9:50lot of those guys too. But at the end of the day, rock
- 9:54Him was without Rock Him. I don't think you have the nas that you
- 10:01would get or that you would eventually get. I don't think you do.
- 10:05But after influence of rock Cam, even on West Coast cats, I just
- 10:09don't think you had that attention to lyricism. On another level, it is
- 10:16when you fathered a style of rhyman that still exists to this day. You've
- 10:22made a major impact on hip hop music and culture. So nas, let's
- 10:30get to it. Man also elevated the skill level in a way that hadn't
- 10:37been seen at the time. Because sure you had Cougi Rap who would tell
- 10:45crime tales and stuff like that, right, but Cougi rap came more across
- 10:50like Mario Puzzo, right, like a lot of Godfather style, a lot
- 10:56of you know, some hood references, but not as Deep Eyes took street
- 11:01tales and combined them with poetry. See, his verses were more poetic and
- 11:07Couji Raps, Cougie Raps was like a lot of wordplay and a lot of
- 11:13you know, just straight up storytelling. But Naz's depiction of street life was
- 11:20so real and so vivid, and the way he laced his words right,
- 11:26it was poetic, and Illmatic is a testament to that. Illmatic is considered
- 11:35arguably the best hip hop album of all time. Now, I could think
- 11:39of plenty of albums that are just overall better produced. At the time,
- 11:46I felt like Illmatic was too short. Right, there was a couple of
- 11:50songs there, you know, that were cool, But in general, there
- 11:54are other albums that are just built from top to bottom better, right,
- 11:58not just better beats, but just better albums. But what made Aromatic special
- 12:03was naas right, regardless of the beats, regardless of how many songs NAS
- 12:11had, Na's old flow, Nas Nas had a flow that it made you
- 12:20want to rewind. He never sat on his punchlines. He just kept going.
- 12:26So sometimes you're like, damn, what do you say? Oh?
- 12:26What do you say? And then you would have to go back, you
- 12:30know what I'm saying. So Na's lyrically helped to elevate the game and influence
- 12:35his peers around him to be better because the admiration that Nas received at that
- 12:43time, especially to have some of the top producers producing all on his album
- 12:48and he's new to the game. There was no pattern of success that told
- 12:54them that their time and their beats were worth it for rookie. But it
- 13:00was his skill, his voice, all of those elements combined and also coming
- 13:05from the legendary Queen's Bridge that treated a mystique about Nas and allmatic that hasn't
- 13:13been seen to this day. Another thing I want to mention about Nas is
- 13:18more importantly, he's had that same longevity as lu Right, maybe surpassed him
- 13:24in a lot of ways when it comes to longevity, because now he is
- 13:31on an unprecedented run working with hit Boy King's Disease trilogy Magic two albums,
- 13:41even though I didn't really like the last one, but it wasn't whack.
- 13:45Wasn't It wasn't whack. Nas had never released dope albums that consistently. He
- 13:52might do two albums in a row and then have one that most people don't
- 13:56like, but five. This laid into his career knocking on the door of
- 14:05fifty. If he's if he isn't fifty, already unprecedented, His impact on
- 14:11the game cannot be questioned, Snoop Doggie dog Now. Before you get started,
- 14:18remember it's my list. Does it mean that other people weren't impactful?
- 14:24These are the people I'm choosing to highlight. Please leave your comments in a
- 14:28comment section below for others who you feel like belong on an impact list for
- 14:33hip hop history. Snoop Doggie Dog Now? What made Snoop different from the
- 14:39rest of the West Coast rappers? Right? Obviously coming out of the death
- 14:45Rol camp kind of somewhat coming out of the ruthless tree of gangster rap,
- 14:50Snoop was different than everybody else. He was different from Ice Que and an
- 14:58Empty ran, an Easy and Doctor dre right because Snoop was against the rapper
- 15:05who was also smooth. Snoop's music made gangster rap radio friendly, right because
- 15:16it was a groove, but the lyrics were like typical for gangster rap,
- 15:22right, and and it was it was that part about him. His appeal
- 15:28to not really compromise his integrity, his lyrical integrity as a quote unquote gangster
- 15:37rapper, but still have commercial success was somewhat unheard of, right, Like
- 15:43people liked n Way because they were rebellious, but n Way wasn't for everybody
- 15:48because everything was hard edged, you know, like hardcore hip hop in your
- 15:54face. You know, some people were offended by that. Some people were
- 15:56afraid, right, so people like Ice you scared them. But Snoop was
- 16:00smooth. He made you like him. I kind of like that joint.
- 16:06But they just miss all the gang signs and the cry walks and they in
- 16:11the set trip. They miss all of that because it sounds good. And
- 16:15I think Snoop was unique in that way. I think he was kind of
- 16:18a blueprint for you to do both. Hey, I'm against the rapper that
- 16:23you like, whereas back then, you know, most older folks for the
- 16:29most part, did not like gangster rap. Also, also with Snoop,
- 16:33you gotta look at his longevity, right, Snoop drop Doggie style, unquestionable
- 16:40classic and hip hop, right, and then he drops a follow up that
- 16:44it was a dud in the dog Father and then it goes to No Limit
- 16:49Records gets out of his death row, you know, contract, I guess,
- 16:57and goes to No Limit who whose music does not match what we had
- 17:02become accustomed to with Snoop, So most of us did not check for that
- 17:07first album. Then that second album had some joints on it, and I
- 17:10believe one joint or two had Doctor Dre And then his final album on No
- 17:15Limit, felt more like Snoop from the past, but also it's kind of
- 17:19like the preview of the Snoop you know now. And he went on to
- 17:23have a number of commercial hits and number of dope albums. He's had some
- 17:29duds, but he's released a ton of music and probably more important than anything,
- 17:33he is one of the most popular celebrities in the world. And this
- 17:40dude was a gangster rapper back when gangster rapping was not cool to the public
- 17:47eye. I'm just saying Snoop had the hell of an impact and continues to
- 17:52have one because he doesn't like ignore any endorsements at all, Like he had
- 17:56everything serio everything. Uh. Little Wayne. Now, there's a certain generation,
- 18:06right my generation, a little bit older, that didn't really understand the
- 18:11impact of Little Wayne. Couldn't really see it, right and and obviously you
- 18:17really wouldn't. You just hear it on the radio. You hear vers day
- 18:19year. It's talking about it, and that's kind of it. But you
- 18:23don't realize how many times Little Wayne has done major things in hip hop to
- 18:30kind of push the culture forward just by his contributions right hit his time with
- 18:38you know the Cash Money right, the Bling Bling Days, the Blackest Hot
- 18:44Days. You know, he stood out from the group. And then the
- 18:48switch in style Ryman style, beat style with the Carter series, which was
- 18:53highly successful for him. The mixtape run at a time where mixtape became less
- 19:00about you know, exclusives here and there and a bunch of different songs,
- 19:04and more about original content from artists for free on mixtapes. From the Drought
- 19:12to Everything. Then you can't leave out him bringing in Drake and Nicki Minaje
- 19:19and their impact on the industry. Whether you like him or not, a
- 19:25number of artists started to look like him, right, new artists that came
- 19:30out before that, There weren't many artists that had locks, right, They
- 19:34just weren't. There weren't many artists that had locks and dressed in a way
- 19:38that was almost like a rock star. Look now you got plenty of them,
- 19:42from Me Goes to even Future, Right, there's plenty of them that
- 19:48kind of give you that little Wayne vibe. Little Wayne did that at one
- 19:52point in hip hop, he was the guy and more Importantly, he's consistently
- 20:00elaborated with damn their everyone and in a lot of cases from what I hear
- 20:04for free right just because someone like a Nori wanted Little Wayne's album, but
- 20:11maybe l Wayne is pricy. Lwayne did it anyway and quickly, and these
- 20:18are the stories we've heard. So I feel like Little Wayne helped move the
- 20:23culture forward by his lyricism, putting lyricism first. Whether you like all the
- 20:30bars or not, there's plenty of times where he said some stuff right,
- 20:37dope beats radio hits, a style all his own. When it comes to
- 20:41his image and and how he promoted himself, you can't deny Little Wayne's impact,
- 20:51even on cats like Drake and to maybe to a lesser extent, J
- 20:59Cole, Definite League Kendrick. You just can't deny what he's done for the
- 21:04game, which really doesn't get talked about enough. If you ask me next,
- 21:12Little Kim Now, I know what you're saying. You're like, oh,
- 21:15why what Little Kim M Why? I tell you why all you whether
- 21:23you like it or not, all you have to do is look at the
- 21:26popularity of Megan the Stallion and Cardi B Nicki Minaj right. You can even
- 21:37go back a little bit the signings of people like Trina and Eve right,
- 21:44and I think Foxy gets a little bit of this credit as well. But
- 21:48I think Little Kim stands out for a number of reasons. It a little
- 21:55before a Little Kim. And there's no disrespect to the MC likes to the
- 21:59Queen our Teeth is of the world because we needed that. And the Salt
- 22:02and Pepper's right. Salt and Pepper brought a certain sexuality to hip hop,
- 22:07right. But honestly, hip hop is a misogynistic sport, if that makes
- 22:15any sense, if that's word or phrase whatever, but it is right,
- 22:21and it damn sure was, and it was balanced in one way, which
- 22:25was dudes rapped however they wanted about females and it was all good. Typically
- 22:30when females rapped about dudes before a Little Kim, intimately, it didn't really
- 22:38appeal to us dudes because most of the time it was safe. Let's talk
- 22:45about sex, you know, that's kind of like where it would go,
- 22:48right. It was almost like your mom instead of a woman and what she
- 22:53truly feels, you know, like, oh what a man? Okay,
- 22:57cool, that's all a game for me, that's for. But what Little
- 23:02Kim brought was she brought power to a woman expressing her sexuality in the most
- 23:08explicit way that matched the same way the guys did it. Kuji Rat was
- 23:17notorious for those kinds of records, right, same thing with the scarface did
- 23:23something that like a couple too short, all of that. Little Kim was
- 23:27like the female version of Too Short and guys who rated about their sexuality in
- 23:34the most explicit way. The one thing about him that made her step above
- 23:41was dudes liked it too. We would we would recite the lyrics and she
- 23:48would say the craziest things. And back then, you know, you didn't
- 23:52have to say pause because you didn't think that saying the phrase what all of
- 23:55a sudden Mickey game. That's just an insecurity that exists today and it's terrible.
- 24:00But Little Kim was hard edge, hardcore right with the lyrics. Yes,
- 24:08sure, a lot of these women have had ghost writers, but most
- 24:12of them can write their own raps, including Little Kim. And I don't
- 24:17know what she wrote versus what she didn't. I know a couple of things
- 24:19that she didn't write, But that's besides the point. It was about the
- 24:22presentation. It was about the package. She was doing something that made some
- 24:29people feel uncomfortable, made some women apply a double standard. Now you would
- 24:36think with men that would be the case, but most of the men I
- 24:38knew bought that hardcore album. But there was a double standard sometimes with some
- 24:45women who didn't like it because they felt like they were being too vulgar.
- 24:49But men had been doing it forever in hip hop, so it was okay.
- 24:53And I think Little Kim made that okay. Without Little Kim, not
- 24:59only you had these ships dressing like her, the whole Barbie thing. She
- 25:03did that already. She is are Even the Beehive existed before the bay Hive.
- 25:14Look it up. It's it's just facts. Little Kim's influence on hip
- 25:19hop music and culture and pop culture cannot be denied. What she said in
- 25:26her bars years ahead made it easy for you to walk down the street and
- 25:33hear a record like Doundtown right with our Little Kim. That ain't happening.
- 25:40It's just not so give her her props. Her impact is crazy, and
- 25:44whether you like it or not, that's cool. But at the end of
- 25:48the day, if if she didn't have an impact, you wouldn't see all
- 25:52these different variations of what she's already done, and all the way down to
- 25:56the photo shoot, I'm saying, all right, yeah, four more to
- 26:02go Kendrick Lamar. Now, it's easy to look at Kendrick or Drake or
- 26:11J Cole because they're like the trinity of artists who honestly touched numerous generations.
- 26:18But I think Kendrick Lamar is a step above Drake and J Cole in the
- 26:25sense that he hasn't released a whack subpar album yet. Now you may not
- 26:33personally like him because not everybody's gonna like him. That's cool, But he
- 26:37bridges the gap in a way that the other two just do not. They
- 26:42just don't. Right, And let me just rattle off a couple of things.
- 26:47He is the best example of bridging the gap, balancing gangster conscious,
- 26:52radio friendly and lyrical skill with fans that span multiple generations. When Good Kid,
- 27:02Mad City came out, it didn't feel like a young dude making against
- 27:07the Rap album from the nineties. Yet you got the feel of against the
- 27:12Rap album from the nineties, but you still got the feel of a new
- 27:18hip hop artist today in his delivery and how he presented it him having Snoop
- 27:26and NC eight appear on the album. When you look at an album like
- 27:30to Pimp a Butterfly, where it's not just boom bat beats or funk beats
- 27:37to represent the West Coast, it's jazz and blues and gospel and folk like
- 27:44elements spoken word, like all these elements of music mixed together. His flow
- 27:51is unconventional. One moment he gives you a sporadic flow in the vein of
- 27:56an eminem. The next moment he gives you a three stacks kind of verse.
- 28:00The next moment he's k died like you remember him from Good Kid,
- 28:03Bad City. He's unlimited at what he can do, and more importantly,
- 28:12concepts to have a concept album more than once, which is like a scavenger
- 28:19hunt when you're listening to understand what is the overall theme of this album.
- 28:26His last album, Mister Morale and the Big Steppers, the overall theme wasp
- 28:33and he didn't come up with the theme just to say, y'all got a
- 28:34concept is ill and the kind of theme it's like, no, I was
- 28:37actually going through this, so I decided to create songs around my experience.
- 28:45I'm just saying hip hop used to be like this on a regular basis,
- 28:53but for him to still have success and not need to drop as all often
- 29:00as his counterparts says a lot about what people feel about his music, and
- 29:06again from multiple generations. Because there are a couple of people I know who
- 29:12don't mess with anybody knew, but mess with Kendrick Lamar. Right, I'm
- 29:18talking about oldheads for the most part. Eminem. Now, I know what
- 29:26you're gonna say. I know some of y'all gonna say, we ain't playing
- 29:30that in the barbershop. Honestly, there's a lot that wasn't being played in
- 29:36the barbershop that should have been played in barbershop, and everybody wasn't white.
- 29:41But Eminem's on this list because prior to Eminem, of course, there was
- 29:45white dudes that rapped that we liked, right, of course, but not
- 29:52rhyming like this, not on this level of technique and word playing. Right.
- 29:57Eminem is also on this list because he is probably the most polarizing hip
- 30:04hop artist of all time. He is the example of if he were not
- 30:11white, would he be as successful as a rapidly rap rapper? Right hit
- 30:19the example I'll give you is if Pharaoh March was white like Eminem, would
- 30:26he be more popular, would he be just as popular? Of course he
- 30:30would, because it isn't a reflection of this country. Right. They are
- 30:37hip hop fans out there, but there's some hip hop fans who are only
- 30:41Eminem fans, not really hip hop. But what has Eminem done with that?
- 30:47Right? He's already rich as a result a lot of his fans,
- 30:52Like, for example, I did a excuse me, I did a podcast
- 30:56on a study of different artists where they the majority of their fans lie across
- 31:03the country, and it was like a heat matt and you know, like
- 31:06with me Gooes. Obviously Atlanta was lit up like crazy, and you can
- 31:10see something in New York and you know, a couple of dots in la
- 31:14or whatever. But Eminem was strongest in the Midwest. Okay, makes sense.
- 31:21But the audience, the white audience he tends to target, like in
- 31:29songs like a white America. Most of them live out there, and most
- 31:34of them tend to be his fan base. But that's his biggest fan base,
- 31:41is that and it, without a doubt, hip hop has been around.
- 31:45It has everything to do with the color of his skin. But he
- 31:51is consistently shown that he is about the culture of hip hop. It doesn't
- 31:56matter if it's just battling like this Mellie Man stuff or or wearing t shirts
- 32:05of albums that almost never get talked about, right you almost you might see
- 32:10some random dude on Twitter like, yo, this Paris album was my joint.
- 32:15You see people chime in, but it's never like trending a nothing crazy
- 32:20because most people never heard of Paris, never heard that album, and could
- 32:23care less than twenty twenty three. But Eminem doing that wearing a Noughty by
- 32:30Nature shirt do something to talk about Norty by Nature, you know, giving
- 32:32props to different cats. And I could go on and on, but most
- 32:37importantly his impact and I'm not saying all white folks, but his impact opened
- 32:45up a different door, probably based off of racing exposure for hip hop fans,
- 32:54because there's some people who became fans of other artists through Eminem. It's
- 33:01unfortunate that it has to happen that way, but it's real and the fact
- 33:06that he holds held the line for true hip hop and lyricism and technique being
- 33:12important in culture and flowers for artists like Red Man and Tretch and Pharaoh March
- 33:19and Nahs and Azy and then all these different people that you know he was
- 33:22a big fan of. Even if they're fans who will say, well,
- 33:27I'm just an Eminem fan, I'm pretty sure there are a number of people
- 33:30who now became fans of others. Just acts fifty cent. I'm talking about
- 33:36by affiliation, just acts fifty cent, just at slaughter House, just at
- 33:40their Griselda. Their popularity grew as a result of being affiliated with Eminem.
- 33:47And he did not have to have these spiders and these hardcore hip hop dudes
- 33:53as a part of his roster. He could have easily went another way.
- 33:58So he's had impact on the culture in so many ways that it's undeniable and
- 34:04you can't really ignore it. It's not the impact. Remember my rules for
- 34:08this list doesn't make him bigger than run DMC. It just means that he
- 34:16is one of people on my list of ten impact for artists. All right,
- 34:22two more, and then we out outcasts. Man, listen, I
- 34:32didn't know outcasts would become the outcast. They became outcasts at the time they
- 34:38dropped Southern Playalistic wasn't like, oh, this is so new and mind blowing.
- 34:45It was dope. It was music from somewhere else from me being from
- 34:47Brooklyn, New York. Right, But I figured Southern playalistic was what they
- 34:53were. They were always going to drop that kind of music. Then they
- 34:58dropped at Aliens. You're like, well, wait a minute, skill level
- 35:01then went up and musically this is different then Stankonia, Quemini speak a box
- 35:13love below like even Idawild soundtrack. And when you look at Outcasts, for
- 35:20one, their music reflects their name. They don't do what everybody else does.
- 35:24They do them. Also, none of the albums are the same.
- 35:30None of their albums are the same. You don't feel like, well,
- 35:32I heard this one, so this one sounds exactly the same. Sounds just
- 35:37stick to this one. No, it's all a different vibe, but it's
- 35:39still uniquely Outcast. You want to talk about influence, I mean you could
- 35:46look at a number of the different hip hop you know branches. I would
- 35:52say, as far as artists go from singing to the types of beats,
- 35:57they choose Outcasts kind of doing that before. Everybody like that kind of variety.
- 36:02And for me, back then, before I became a bigger fan,
- 36:07it was a little frustrated because typically I had an expectation for each artist I
- 36:13liked, and Outcasts will come out and just say, man, we got
- 36:17a banjo in this joint. That's that's to be a banjo's playing and the
- 36:22harmonica and I'm like, I don't want to hear this negro spiritual on the
- 36:29porch? What is this? What's elevators? Like? You know what I'm
- 36:32saying. But then I came to realize, like, man, but that's
- 36:36what's dope about Outcasts. It's always going to be different. It's always going
- 36:44to be different, but it's still going to be hip hop commercial success.
- 36:50I'm just going over some of the joints, versatility in the game, skills,
- 36:55style, musical variety like we talked about, and in a lot of
- 37:00ways the blueprint for records like to Pimper Butterfly, and honestly, the way
- 37:08Kendrick approaches rhyme and now reminds me more like of Three Stacks right, who
- 37:15helped him work on to Pimper Butterfly. So again, the impact cannot be
- 37:22denied for a hip hop group such as Outcasts and their long lasting influence on
- 37:31artists from how they present their art, to how they dressed, to how
- 37:36they carry themselves, and it's unfortunate that it stopped when it did as a
- 37:42group. But I mean we got we got a decent amount of albums from
- 37:46them, and there's none of them are whack. So there you have it.
- 37:52And lastly, Tupac Chico. I could go on and on about Tupac.
- 38:02I think, you know, I think it's easy to see why Tupac
- 38:10is so revered in hip hop and it's not one of those things it's like,
- 38:14oh, because he died tragically, he died young, you know,
- 38:17it's it's like, you know, a fascination with that. When it comes
- 38:21to pop culture, I think some some of his legend has been overblown by
- 38:28over zealous fans, some fans who I feel like probably became either became fans
- 38:34or became bigger fans once he died, which is kind of terrible. But
- 38:38as a person that was a Tupac fan cautiously in the beginning because I didn't
- 38:44like everything, but then much bigger once Me against the World came out and
- 38:49all eyes on me. There was a certain level of appreciation for Tupac,
- 38:57but his impact and why people still love him to this day has a lot
- 39:04more to do with his messaging. Now, I'm not talking about thug life.
- 39:08You know people like that too. I liked it too. I'm not
- 39:12talking about thug life, POC and Ride on My Enemies and Hennessy and whatever,
- 39:17right, or that Nah's introduced to man. I don't believe that,
- 39:22but you know what I mean. Like, his impact is so much greater
- 39:28in the conscious music that he released because it sound intimate, It sound personal,
- 39:39right, it was relatable whether you were going through what he was expressing
- 39:45on you knew someone who was Tupac always sounds like he's talking to you when
- 39:52he made those conscious records. Just to you know, go over my notes
- 39:55real quick. His mark on hip hop is unquestioned, and it's less about
- 40:02the whole death Row Doug Life thing, but more about making impact records that
- 40:10speak directly to the heartbeat of the black community. Just for example, just
- 40:19quick examples songs like Dear Mama, songs like Brenda's Got a Baby, and
- 40:25songs like I Ain't Manage You, tales that anybody could relate to, but
- 40:32are specifically grounded in the lives of the black community, in particular in the
- 40:42ghetto right, and a song like keep your Head Up is inspiring you recognize
- 40:47what's happening. Rappers didn't make songs like that. Rappers didn't make songs like
- 40:54Brenda's Got a Baby, but Tupac did. And I think in the same
- 41:00ways that l L opened the door for rappers to feel like it's cool to
- 41:06make a rap love song, especially because it hits the radio and we can
- 41:09get success. I think Tupac made rappers think about their lyrics. Now,
- 41:17was he the first to ever have a message? Now? The message,
- 41:22you know, kind of did that. But his influences, being affiliated with
- 41:28the Black Panther Party, being raised around them, and just being really good
- 41:34at speaking to what's real is what people hold on to about his legacy and
- 41:40his music. It's when you sit back and say Tupac is one of the
- 41:45greatest rappers of all time, especially for that reason. That's my list top
- 41:53ten or we said we're not we're not doing top ten hip hop artists who
- 42:00have had an impact on this music and this culture throughout its fifty years.
- 42:07I just want to give a shout out to all the hip hop heads,
- 42:09all the artists, DJ's breakers, graphers, from across the world, those
- 42:16who create hip hop films, videos and keep the music going, whether it's
- 42:22old or new, underground, commercial radio, whatever you want to call it.
- 42:27It's all a part of what we do and what we love. Especially
- 42:32myself as a content creator. I do not get a dime, you know
- 42:37what I'm saying. I mean, it's really just based off of a passion
- 42:42I've had for this music since I was a little guy, and I love
- 42:45to talk about it. So if you have a top ten less or ten
- 42:51impact artists that I didn't name that you would like to discuss, put it
- 42:57in the comments section on the video side. Rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts,
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- 43:28of this podcast goes right back into the production of this podcast. There's a
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- 43:38you know these ways to improve why fire all kinds of things so you get
- 43:44to become a producer of this podcast and that way until next time, y'all.
- 43:49I am not a critic, I'm a fan. Happy Birthday, hip Hop Pace