Latest / Hip-Hop Now Podcast / Too Many GOATS Not Enough Rhymes

Transcript

Too Many GOATS Not Enough Rhymes · Hip-Hop Now Podcast

0:01
Coming up on this week's episode of hip Hop Now Podcast, Benny the Butcher
0:06
once more Respect for the Rat, profession Alchemist thinks Prodigy is the real gold,
0:15
and my thoughts on the Alchemist's new album and a new album or project
0:22
or mixtape or whatever you want to call it. From Lloyd Banks. It's
0:29
been a week, y'all, Let's do it. Welcome to hip Hop Now
0:36
Podcast. Did you from the future? You know what to do? Your
0:43
ass out about life, so disrespect the leg like hip hop is here to
0:50
day. Let's get right into the business. What up, y'all? I
0:55
am yours Vegas and this it's hip Hop Now Podcast, a podcast specifically designed
1:00
to keep you caught up on all things hip hop, music and culture that
1:07
happens throughout the week. Fifty years of hip hop. I've done a couple
1:11
of things to cover that I think you should check it out. But before
1:15
we go there, at big shout out to the supporters over at patreon dot
1:19
com. If you would like to know what that means to be a supporter,
1:25
producer, a patron of hip Hop Now podcasts, visit the link in
1:32
the description of this episode. Just click it and then you can go ahead
1:37
and browse right, but shout out to them. But fifty years of hip
1:42
hop, you know, I've chosen several ways of bringing extra special content beyond
1:49
the normal news feed you get every week, right and perspectives, including but
1:59
not it too, a recap of each episode, episode by episode, or
2:07
recap review, whatever you want to call it. Of the final season of
2:12
Wu Tang and American Saga, I had a couple of guests on here.
2:15
We chopped it up about each episode, and then we had a finale for
2:22
the final episode where we did a live stream and people tapped in and shared
2:25
their thoughts and best episode and blah blah blah and all that good stuff.
2:29
It's real, real good fun. Early on in the year, we did
2:35
a that Time in hip Hop podcast I used to do with the homie tone
2:39
into the Dome dot com check them out, But we kind of did a
2:44
timetable, like y'all from beginning to end right fifty years of hip hop.
2:50
We highlighted a number of you know, times in hip hop and gave our
2:54
perspectives, gave our own stories about when we first you know heard the hip
3:00
hop and all that good stuff feature guests was yents from a podcast I used
3:06
to do with him called hip Hop Twitter Shout Out to him and it was
3:08
really dope, So definitely also checked out out on the YouTube channel right here,
3:15
or you can find it on an audio feed. It's there as well.
3:17
That was closer to the beginning of the year and not too long ago,
3:21
I produced a hip hop town hall with guests like Rod Digga and Tracy
3:30
Lee and did some of those same things, kind of talked about hip hop
3:34
and its impact not only as on the culture of music itself, but also
3:42
just popular culture in the world at large. And it was hosted by Lisa
3:49
Dirden, so you could check that out. Also, people ask questions.
3:53
You know, chat room was on fire. So we've done a couple of
3:55
things here hip Hop Now podcast to commemory rate fifty years of hip hop now
4:02
every day technically I'm doing that, but we have to continue to celebrate,
4:10
right because even though it has been a discussion about older cats selling out venues,
4:18
older hip hop artists selling out venues that younger artists can't, I had
4:26
some thoughts about that and maybe somewhere down the line I'll mention it, but
4:30
I'll just say it real quick. I think there's been a rise because of
4:33
fifty years of hip hop, but some of these old school cats weren't eating
4:38
like this. They just weren't. And I'm a little afraid of what happens
4:44
when the fifty yeth anniversary is over, like we see we'll pay y'all again
4:49
at seventy five, like Magic Johnson said, we ain't gonna be okay.
4:55
So I don't know, but that's my thoughts on that. So big shout
5:02
out to hip HOPDX dot com, Djbooth dot net, Double XL kind of
5:11
helped out a little bit too, and all the places where I'm getting some
5:14
of these stories from Let's Get Ready to the Baby Stock. Benny the Butcher
5:19
again, this is coming from hip HOPDX dot com. He was on the
5:26
Rap Radar podcast. But Benny the Butcher demands more respect for a rapper title
5:32
and in quotes they have people try to hate. Let's get a quote quote
5:36
though here's more of him saying what he thinks. It's not a lot of
5:41
respect on being a rapper right now. A lot of these podcasts influences a
5:46
lot of these characters. They criticize rap. They got whole platforms to criticize
5:53
rap. In a bad way. Rap is this rap? Is that ishing
5:57
on a rapper? I hate that because we are almost the bar for how
6:00
people live their lives. You'll hear somebody say I'm richer than rappers. Let
6:08
me stop y'all there, okay, any let me stop you right there is
6:15
he like, not about the first part. But it ain't just rap,
6:20
So let's stop that. It's not just rap because it is true. There's
6:27
some YouTubers people, you know, they take whatever platform there on YouTube,
6:33
twitch, whether they do an audio podcast, they take it right to social
6:39
media and say some of the same things. They make a living off of,
6:43
criticizing in a lot of ways entertainment, but it also goes to politics
6:49
and everything else, like literally not even taking a position of I do not
6:56
like. Some will claim that, but if you look at all the content,
7:01
it's predominantly them criticizing something. It's like, well, what do you
7:05
like? You know what I'm saying. So I don't disagree with him there,
7:09
but it's not just rap. So, like I said another podcasts,
7:14
stop crying because it's everybody and I don't agree with it. But I think
7:19
when you say that to them, you're saying their opinions matter. By even
7:27
doing this, by even blatantly saying this, it's saying that you need them.
7:31
You wish they were praising you. You know what I'm saying. You
7:36
wish it was more praising you and are you worthy of praise? Well,
7:41
it depends on a person's personal opinion. But in today's age, yeah,
7:46
there are plenty of people who criticize. But the influence of rappers like Richard
7:51
and a rapper, well, Benny the Butcher, that could also be an
7:57
insult, right because the people I'm assuming the people you're talking about that would
8:05
say stuff like that aren't rappers, obviously, are people who are far beyond
8:13
anything rap And at the end of the day, who wants to be richer
8:24
than a rapper? Poor people? So my thing is, if we're talking
8:30
about if you're trying to low key talking about white people are wealthy people,
8:33
they want to be wealthy. They don't be rich. I want a bunch
8:37
of chains and count money on camera and all that. Rappers, you got
8:43
to understand, you look silly when you step out of your square. You
8:48
just do. Some rappers can step out of they square and they know politics,
8:54
they know sports or whatever. You know, they may know the world
8:58
around they have something to say beyond let me get my money, because essentially
9:03
that's all you're saying. And in a lot of ways, what you have
9:07
to understand is you're not like an activist being criticized. You know, like
9:16
you're not You're you're a rapper who rap raps about a lifestyle that honestly either
9:26
leads to the grave or prison. It's just keeping keeping it above, right,
9:33
So saying why can't you get the same kind of respect, because this
9:37
is kind of where this is going. Maybe as another profession, it's like,
9:43
well, I mean, there's a lot of negative to what you do
9:46
and it's not about hip hop. Hip Hop isn't negative. Your messaging is
9:52
negative. Now, this is the thing we won't get a little bit deep.
9:58
Right in the nineties, you know, some of y'all know this,
10:01
Some of y'all heads noticed there was a point in time where us as hip
10:05
hop fans had to explain why we liked the music we liked considering what they
10:11
talked about, including saying the N word. Back then, we had to
10:15
be the explainers to our families and you know, people who knew us who
10:20
were from a different generation and a lot of times. I remember the first
10:24
time I was even asked about it, like using an N word and talking
10:28
about this and that and why would you like that? And I said,
10:31
straight up, this ain't no different than the movie. We don't watch Scarface
10:35
a million times. It's the same thing. They just rapping about. It
10:41
rags two riches, especially when you coming from poverty, and a lot of
10:46
these rappers are coming from that, so they're gonna talk about what they know.
10:52
They're not gonna switch. And honestly, even when they get out of
10:58
that situation, it doesn't go away. There are people who think, like,
11:03
you know, y'all, you ain't. You ain't really on the block
11:05
like that, So why you're rapping about that? Well, they don't mean
11:09
he out there doing it. But at the end of the day, if
11:13
you're going to consider yourself an artist and you want to be taken seriously as
11:18
an artist, I think there's a grace period for rappers from the street who
11:22
tend to talk to street stuff. Right, Let them come out and drop
11:28
whatever they want. Let them talk about the streets and talk about being in
11:31
jail, who they shot at the ops all that. Let them do all
11:35
of that let them get it out this system, because that's what every rapper
11:37
needs. It doesn't matter what your start is, you have to get out
11:41
and tell your story. And sometimes that could take three or four albums.
11:48
But at some point, when you've kind of reached that plateau, you have
11:54
to adjust what you talk about. Now, you can still make reference to
12:01
that because it hasn't changed, but if it is one for one no different
12:07
from when you were making tracks and starving to now where you in places I
12:13
will never be because you got money. Something has to change because not only
12:20
is your audience growing and you should be growing with them, but you should
12:26
be offering a different perspective from the last seventeen albums of shooting up the spot.
12:33
Okay, at some point people got tired of it, even if you
12:37
got bars with it, like people just man, I'm just stick to the
12:41
joints that had the impression on me. It's really tough to make an impression
12:46
when you've been dope or nice on a mic like that, talking about the
12:52
same things for so long. There's fatigue involved, and it's not really turning
12:58
their back on you. It's just like what else you got, that's all
13:03
you got going on you still raise the riches. Now I got money,
13:07
but okay, well kind of had money for a while too. Now what
13:11
else you got it? Go? Do you care? Like? What do
13:13
you like? Like? You know what I'm saying. So again, Bendy
13:18
Butcher was like one of my favorite rappers. Like he's Kendrick's one A,
13:24
he's one B right, put it that way, even though Conway kind of
13:28
making his way back into my But what I don't like is when you have
13:37
an album coming out and you're giving the media this because you may be better
13:43
to promote the album, but this is the thing that's going to move the
13:46
needle. Why because it moves the needles for your critics. Negativity moves the
13:52
needle on social media, so social media, YouTube, whatever it may be.
13:58
So if you feel some kind of way you're giving them more content,
14:03
They're not gonna take your advice. They don't care if you don't like them.
14:07
Monetize them, channels them, channels go crazy. I don't care.
14:11
They want a personal beat. They want you to say their name so they
14:15
could get rich. So to me, I feel like, yo, be
14:18
quiet, man, say it. Some unfortunate you know that some can't see
14:24
what I'm trying to do but I can. I can't stop. I gotta
14:28
keep moving and try to make great music and hopefully people like it. Just
14:33
humble yourself, mam. Don't be making no demands of people who won't have
14:35
to listen to you. They don't. I don't care. If there's a
14:39
nerd beyond a keyboard going in. He don't have to do anything you say
14:45
just because you said it right, So forget them, like I said in
14:48
the other podcasts, focused on your craft or please understand, there will be
14:54
no sympathy for you being a rapper. And I don't care who what influence
15:01
hip hop has on people outside of it. They don't have to take the
15:05
same risk as you. They don't have the same situation. Same people saying
15:09
that they gotta walk around with a hundred dudes, They walk right into Walmart
15:13
by themselves with the same money as you. So think about that. I
15:20
don't know if that helps or not, but I forget I you say it.
15:26
Alchemists thinks that Prodigy is the real goat. Now let's see where if
15:37
I could find a quote. I'm going clean, sweet man Prodigy across the
15:46
map. That's my greatest rap of all time broke rules. You know Nas.
15:50
Of course it was always Nasa P. But I used to always tell
15:54
Big Twin we would talk about it. P used to break rules. So
16:04
let's talk about the gold conversation, right, So first of all, you
16:10
know who I say the goat is. I did a whole episode on it,
16:14
and I asked me to read to read them. That is it.
16:17
That is the reason why I find it Hip Hop Now podcast. It's a
16:21
golt episode and I'm referring to LLL cool J and pants, leg up,
16:27
whatever, blow tities or whatever you want to throw at it to try to
16:33
knock it down and say he's not the goat because of these things when your
16:37
goat was wearing an all brown outfit. But whatever, I make the case
16:44
breaking down why right, goat means greatest of all time? Now, Muhammad
16:52
Ali kind of made greatest of all time famous because he said I'm the greatest
17:00
in the world. I'm the greatest of all time, blah blah blah whatever.
17:03
But then L made the term goat the acronym that was always the greatest
17:11
of all times, but nobody used goat. He made that a thing dropped
17:15
the whole album called goat, right, And at the time I was kind
17:21
of like, you're not the goat, like you know what I'm saying.
17:23
But now we live in an age where you hear people say like he's one
17:27
of my goats, but greatest of all, like the greatest, like number
17:33
one, one, that one, two, three, four, five one.
17:41
I blame no child left behind, you know what. Okay, I'm
17:48
going to love too far. But the whole notion of everybody gets a trophy,
17:53
the participation Award, I blame that because it's like, if you lose,
18:03
you're not the worst thing, You're not the scum of the earth.
18:04
If you lose, no matter what it is, you know, you compete
18:07
it, right, but you weren't the winner. And sometimes there's only going
18:15
to be one winner, and people pretending, well, we want to try
18:18
to know. Watch the super Bowl, watch the World Series, watch the
18:25
World Cup all watch all of the boxing championship, watch all of it.
18:29
Only one person when team or whatever is recognized in a competitive sport, and
18:36
hip hop is one of those, so there's no goats, there's just one
18:42
person. Now, I'm not saying that alchemists can't say that Prodigy is the
18:52
goat because he could say what he wants. But I will say this,
18:57
if I had to really think of about it, Like if someone asked me,
19:00
do you think Prodigy us to go? I couldn't just say, oh,
19:03
nah, I think LL is a goal. I could just tell you
19:06
why I don't think Prodigy used to go. I think Prodigy had a point
19:11
in time in his career where he was one of the best, but never
19:19
never did. And I'm just gonna speak for and why never did I come
19:26
across a conversation where he studied he stuck around in the King of New York
19:36
conversation. I think there was a time where he was kind of like,
19:38
but what about P. But there was a point in time where it was
19:44
pretty clear where it was like NAS, Big jay Z inserted himself and much
19:51
later he wasn't even round enough long enough at that point to even consider it
19:59
being those three. But obviously later he kind of proved he belonged in the
20:03
conversation. But at the point in time in which it was a King of
20:07
New York conversation, Prodigy was like, well, what about P. But
20:14
it's not to the level of Big or NAS, right, P saying P
20:22
broke rules Honestly, I have no idea what he means by that, But
20:29
what I will say is there's a podcast. And I only say this because
20:34
this is the only place I heard the audio from. Doesn't mean it's exclusive,
20:38
but there's a podcast made by w NYC. That's what you could type
20:42
in your podcast joint called Infamous or something like that. And it's really centered
20:52
around Prodigy's health, but it doesn't when you listen. It's not exactly only.
21:00
It's not exclusively about sickle Cell and him growing up with that. A
21:04
lot of it is about telling his story, so sickle Cell is a big
21:08
part of that story. But they also talk a lot about him from a
21:14
rap standpoint, and they have excerpts of him talking about how he felt at
21:19
those times in his rap career. And I remember Prodigy saying that when they
21:26
dropped their original first album, Juvenile Hell, not the infamous Juvenile Hell,
21:33
he said to himself when he heard nas that that's what he needed to do
21:41
because on Juvenile Hell, him and Havoc's approach was more or less the rap
21:48
of that time, that early nineties time with the Energy and Infamous was more
21:55
of the new wave, you know, the way you approached to be you
21:59
know, the the energy, your cadence, everything NAS influenced that. You
22:04
can't Nasa, you can't be the greatest because Muhammad Ali saying that Sugar Ray
22:11
Robinson influenced him. Sugar Ray Robinson was like on his way out and Muhammad
22:18
Ali was on his way in. Nas was getting started. He only had
22:22
aromatics, so they were peers. So if you're not better than your peers,
22:29
or your peer comes into the game already having a formula for what you
22:36
need to do next to become the dude who alchemist considers himself the goat,
22:41
how can you be the goat if he gave you the blueprint right because you
22:48
wasn't rapping like this. That's why that line by h nas on Etha about
22:57
jay Z you know rule you ever since you used to rap like the food
23:02
snakers, NAS design your blueprint. Who you're kidding? There's a lot of
23:06
truth to that and in a lot of ways, And I'm not making a
23:10
case for NAS over everybody, but just just as an example, Na's never
23:15
really changed the way he rapped. Really maybe now you know he's older,
23:19
but when he got into the game, he rapped the way he rapped.
23:23
Biggie rapped differently, right, Biggie was like Hype with his rap prody G
23:30
and them had a different flow too, and so did jay Z. So
23:36
it's tough to kind of call somebody to go based off of what came after,
23:41
because of course Progy has classic verses, features songs, but also your
23:49
solo album didn't live up to expectations, and that doesn't make it whack.
23:55
But again, you got to compare yourself to your peers, and I think
24:00
even amongst his peers, he's not better than him, and he's just not.
24:07
But you cannot talk about that ever without talking about Mob Deep. That
24:12
without Mob Deep in that era, it's just it's just nas. Like Queensbridge
24:22
was like, oh nas is it? But then Mob Deep came and helped
24:26
like the thumb, like like the influence is there, but it's like Alan
24:33
Ovison, Yeah, your influences is there on other rappers, but when it
24:40
comes to your peers, they just have more championships than you. It is
24:45
what it is, man. And lastly, so this week, if you're
24:55
from the future, you know what to do. Make them on, get
24:56
on out that exit, get your ass out of here. You already listen
25:00
to the stuff. You already know what happened. But this week two projects
25:04
will release. Right on Halloween. Lloyd Banks released the fourth album in the
25:12
series. I believe Halloween Havoc for the the seventy two hour something, the
25:22
seventy two hour whatever. I have no idea what that means. I really
25:25
don't care. I think that means he recorded all of that in seventy two
25:29
hours, and that's why he said that, which is cool. But okay,
25:37
if I had one knock on it, I thought the other covers,
25:40
the other three were dope, and this one is kind of like, Okay,
25:42
it's gonna get the Orange Brandon, but that's not what matters. I
25:47
personally think this release from Lloyd Banks is better than his album YEP. I
25:56
think one people sleep on this series if you haven't heard his Halloween Havoc series,
26:03
which is Halloween Havoc is kind of a play on the WCW pay per
26:08
view or whatever, which is now the ww E pay per view whatever.
26:12
From back in the days it was WCW and they were dope, and this
26:18
was before he actually started to drop albums again, but nobody was checking for
26:22
it. I think this project was put him kind of in people's cross heads
26:29
because of the simple fact that you know, he started releasing albums like oh
26:33
yeah, Lloyd Banks. He was nice and blah blah blah. Snati checked
26:36
for stuff. But back when I heard like Halloween Havoc too, you know,
26:41
I was like, yo, people need to listen to this. So
26:44
Halloween Havoc four is fifteen tracks, forty seven minutes, and I think what
26:52
I like most about it that I could say was better than the album.
26:56
It's just beats and bars, and I like the beats a little bit more.
27:04
I think Lloyd Banks can sometimes be at a quiet taste because he is
27:11
extremely monotone and his flow does not change. And that's not a bad thing,
27:17
but it does not change. And I think for some people's attention span,
27:22
if they can't lock in on the lyrics, it can all start to
27:26
sound the same. Right. It's difficult for you to extract emotion from these
27:33
tracks because he's straight down the middle with it, Like his voice is not
27:38
really changing. You don't know if he's happy about it, he's sad about
27:41
it, you don't know. But when I put it on, I was
27:48
like, I like this joint, like this this one. Like what I
27:52
described about him being monotone in that way, that's what the albums did for
27:56
me. For the most part, I would like wind up skipping of the
28:00
joints that I don't know impacted, like when they hit they grab my attention.
28:07
I think on this mixtape, I hesitate to say mixtape because I just
28:12
don't know what that means anymore. But I just found that this grabbed my
28:18
attention a little bit more than that album. And I've been listening to it
28:22
for the past couple of days because I think it's dope, and honestly,
28:27
that's that's my impressions. But sorry, it's not elaborate, but I think
28:33
you should check it out. So if you're a Lloyd Banks fan, you
28:37
already know you know. If you ain't hear it, go listen to it.
28:40
I think you enjoyed if you're not, And all those reasons I named.
28:45
As far as his performance, it trusts me is exactly what you thought
28:49
it was. It's the same, it's the same voice and flow. So
28:55
that's that. And the other project that was just released, Alchemists Flying High
29:02
Part two. Now, these are like EPs where Alchemist does like four songs
29:07
or whatever, and then there's four instrumentals from those four songs, so this
29:15
is ten songs. So there's you know, five songs and ten instrumentals and
29:21
then clocks in around twenty seven minutes. Action Bronson's on here, Gang Green,
29:27
Conway Currencies on here, and Flying High. Part one was cool,
29:36
but I kind of didn't like it was kind of boring, you know what
29:38
I mean? Flying High too, though, I think it's much better,
29:44
and I don't know if that's because it has the rappers I like on it,
29:48
so therefore the beat so a little bit different because you when he started
29:53
reaching, I think the first Flying High had Larry June and you know,
29:59
Poldy Jane, and I'm not a fan of their flows more than anything,
30:04
so it made it a little boring to me. But I'm a big Currency
30:08
fan, I'm a big Conway fan. I could. I like Action Bronson
30:12
and I like Gang Green. So it's kind of like I just felt like
30:18
it was a it was a better project to me. Now, if this
30:22
was all one big album right called Flying High, maybe I'd maybe be half
30:30
in half or whatever. But I'm kind of glad it's not because Part one
30:34
was kind of like oh yeah, this is this is I, And then
30:37
I moved on this one. I'm like, oh nah, I could rock
30:41
with this. I have something I could listen to for a while. So
30:45
I think both both those albums are worthy of any hip hop head checking them
30:48
out for numerous reasons. You know, you got beat, you got bars,
30:52
you got variety, you got legendary producers like alchemistig got you know,
30:57
rappers is Caliber, Lloyd Banks and Conway, like, you get kind of
31:03
everything. So there you have it. That's gonna do it for me.
31:07
You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, spill threads, whatever
31:11
all at Vegas World. I n see and subscribe to the channel on YouTube,
31:18
Like comment, what did you think about those projects? If you heard
31:21
them? Do you is Prodigy your goat? Are their goats or one goat?
31:25
I don't know. Leave your comments in a comment section below. Also
31:30
know, if you know, y'all, I don't really have no time to
31:32
watch videos. If that's you, well, it's available on audio form.
31:36
It's always been available on audio form on whatever podcasting platform you listen to.
31:41
So if you like using apples, use that. If you like Spotify,
31:45
it's there also, So all you gotta do is search for hip Hop Now
31:51
podcast, Subscribe, review if you like, and stay locked into weekly hip
31:56
hop content until next time. Y'all. I'm not a critic. I'm a finger pleas