Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / 1996 Hip Hop Series: Jason England on Biggie’s Blueprint: The Hidden Impact on Jay-Z & Nas | 02.24

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1996 Hip Hop Series: Jason England on Biggie’s Blueprint: The Hidden Impact on Jay-Z & Nas | 02.24 · 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 Beaumontie Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: get your podcasts. 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 you are
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday. We have got
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: part three of our series of the year 1996 in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: rap music. Joining us again is the homie Jason Anglin.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Check him out at The Defector and some other places.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You Google his name, stuff comes up.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: That's a robe. You have peeped this accurately.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I'm comfortable, man. I'm in my home. A man must
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: feel comfortable, especially when he hops on with somebody like you, man.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: And the sunglasses, too.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: You know what's funny, man? They say in the Sopranos
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: that the lowest form of discourse is remember when. But
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: my homies were sending me screenshots of your comment section.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: I said the lowest form of it. A discourse is
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: a common section. I felt like Jay-Z, man. When I
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: rock shades, it ain't to impress you. What the fuck
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: niggas coming on my show?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Because you're sitting indoors with sunglasses on.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: That is the answer to the question.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: I've never been cooler than when I'm by myself.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: All right. So be sure to check out our previous episodes.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: We got Jason.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: We got the homie with DJ Wally Sparks, who was
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: on for the last episode. This episode is kind of
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: built in a... almost a counterintuitive foundation where we all
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: agree that 1996 was the year of Tupac. And maybe
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: it's just because it's associated with him or it's tied
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: to him. The second biggest figure of the year, 1996,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: is it feels like the one dude in rap who
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: did not put a record out in 1996.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: And that was Biggie Smalls.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We'll talk more about the other people surrounding him, but
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: you kind of look back and you realize that People
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: did not know, obviously, because there was no way to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: really predict the future, but we would wind up with
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a series of guys who were doing, and a couple
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of women, to be honest, who would wind up doing
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: an audition for who was going to be next for
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: running New York rap. But Biggie was such a big
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: deal that in the year that he does not put
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: out an album, he still loomed over everything. And the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thing that I never had the greatest handle on, because
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I was in Houston, and so Biggie Smalls was a thing,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: but I always say that the West coast really begins
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: around Birmingham in terms of rap, right? Biggie was somebody
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that people were aware of. And also I used to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: talk to a girl who told me that she wanted
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: to shoot Biggie Smalls in 1996. Like that's how invested
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: she was in the Tupac situation. But once you got
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: farther East and farther East and farther East, I don't
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: think I fully got until he died, how big a
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: deal he was to people more local.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's tough to describe. Again, so much of
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: this is context and being in the moment. And I
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: think that's what people don't get about music when they
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: get upset and they talk about, well, this year was better,
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: or this artist is better. People still rap. The rap
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: mattered more. And in New York in particular, things were fracturing.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: And that's what a lot of people don't understand. And
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: I know I don't want to jump ahead and talk
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: about it was written in Nas, but I was there
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: and I was there for the reactions. And I was
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: there for the split in hip hop where you have
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: a genre that's progressing nationally and globally in terms of
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: having these aspirations to sell more records. But in a
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: lot of ways, it's losing its footing in terms of
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: its original community. And the people who used to blow
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: these records up are feeling like we're getting squeezed out
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: and the sound is changing. The metaphor for me came
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: to me yesterday when I got a piece of an article,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: a link to a thing on Twitter about maybe a
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Reese family member where he says, The Reese's pieces are changing.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: We messed up the recipe. A lot of people in
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: New York are like, hey, the recipes change it and
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: the Reese's cups don't taste the same. But at the
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: same time, more people are buying it. So you have
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: this dual aspiration where it's like, I want to be
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: the best MC in New York, right? And the other
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: thing is, I want to bring New York back to
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: its prominence because the West Coast is selling all these
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: records and people are becoming stars. And of all people
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: to step into that void, you have this giant dude
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: with a lazy eye who seems to be the coolest
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: dude on the planet. And we did take kind of
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: a journey with him, because he comes out with Party
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: and Bullshit and Dolly My Baby, and he's this kind
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: of yelling rapper who turns into this super smooth, cool,
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: charming rapper, and he was captivating.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And with the fractured nature of New York rap is interesting,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and again, we'll get more into that later, but.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Especially then, like.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Living here, I understand it a little better, how the
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: boroughs are different cities.
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Like, historically, they were different cities. All became one city, but...
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn rap is something completely different than Queens rap. It's
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: something completely different than whatever Harlem rap there was. It's
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: different than the Bronx. And then out of nowhere, these
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: dudes popped up out of Staten Island, right? And then
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: just showed up. Like I always say, the legend of Nas,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that the golden child is in the Queens Brig projects.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And occasionally somebody would make the trip over because word
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: had just got around that there was this dude that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: was out there. And it wasn't terribly different with Biggie,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: who also then I think like, The idea that you
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: signed to Uptown Records, which is really an R &
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: B record, even like the rapper they got over there
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: is Heavy D, which is not the same thing.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Puff leaves. Andre Harrell lets Puff take Biggie with him.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Puff's got this vision of where this is going, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: he's got the super hardcore rapper and the idea of,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: but we can also smooth.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: This out just a little bit.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And what you get is Ready to Die, which has
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: a heavy dose of Tupac in it, right?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Like, listen back to it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, okay. I see why Puck. claim that
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: this was his right um but the imagery of dying
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and everything else okay so you've got that added to
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: it the album i think at least it feels to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: me had greater momentum than anybody could have really predicted
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that it was going to have it goes well into
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: 95 big carries this over with the junior mafia record
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and so i mean he wrote that right right like like.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: You go look at the credits and it does not say.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: That but c's always said big wrote all my raps
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: right Okay, you get that. That one's got singles. It's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: not a great record. Get Money takes you into 96, right? Like,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: that one's rolling. The singles are the breakout for Lil' Kim.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Tupac is now all over Big. And I think the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: part that I don't have the greatest handle on is,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: as Tupac is, you.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Know, waging war seemingly with.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: An entire city, does that change the way that Biggie
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: is received by people who may not have necessarily embraced him?
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: But you got to pick a side.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: I don't, New York always rode with big, you know,
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: and I give a different perspective because I say, you know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: I spent all this time in East Harlem. My family's
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: all throughout East Harlem. I used to stay up there.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: And so you have a little bit of a different
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: thing because Pac was there. He was in Harlem a lot,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: especially East Harlem. He had a little rah-rah on his records.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: You know, the wife he had that moved when the
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: marriage was annulled, she lived down the block from me
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: on 126th Street. So people loved Pac there. but they
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: didn't hate Big. That never happened. So there's no different perception.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of people, I knew people who,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: you said you knew a woman who wanted to shoot Big.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: I definitely knew people who really hated Tupac in New York.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: No doubt about that. I don't think anyone jumped ship
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: on Big. They were like, respond. It was viewed as
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: this sort of, by a lot of people, as a
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: line in the sand in a war. And then you
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: get all those diss tracks that come out of all
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: the other people who caught strays from Pac's rage, right?
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: So you had a whole bunch of New York rallying
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: around Big and wanting him to say something, being very
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: disappointed that he was remaining quiet.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I think that is a forgotten part, too, is that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: other than kick in the door, you don't have the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Big diss record that goes back in the other direction. Like,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: that was a rap beef that has a great diss
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: record but was not a battle. Like, when you think
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: about that, we never talk about Tupac Big as a battle.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: It's just a beef.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: I think the first time he threw a shot at
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: him in response was on the song with Jay-Z where
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: he says, if Faye had twins, she probably had Tupac's,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: which was more self-disparaging.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was about to say. I did
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: not feel like that was a Tupac diss. That is
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: something I personally would have kept to myself.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: But right there, you hit on something that I think
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: made him distinct. And there's a tradition of these dudes.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: You have a tradition of nimble, bigger dudes in hip-hop,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: and they become kind of lovable. But what Big was,
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: was he was the cool comedian. There's a tradition in
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: him in terms of Sean Price right now would be
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: like 38 special, where it's like, yo, the dude was
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: always quick with a joke and it's what made him
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: so lovable because he was smooth, but he was also
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: not above mocking himself. And that's something I think we
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: lost as a tradition in rap.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he....
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Calling Big fat wasn't really going to go too far. Like,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: he's already got this one taken care of. Like, oh,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're... really got me this time.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: This whole thing is yeah i i'm those things and
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: yet i still took your woman and i'm still uh
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: vasashi and gucci down so what's your excuse right so
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: you lose with that insult.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I did uh well not me but uh we did
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: an interview with big not with big but fat joe
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: on highly questionable you know fat joe's got all the
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: stories and um He tells this story about being in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the studio and Faith called and Faith is cussing him out.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: And there's no way for me to tell this story
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: without direct quotes. That's a warning for my dear, sweet mother.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And he's like.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And Faith's on the phone.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Faith like yeah yeah i can tell and i know
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: you in there with them ugly bitches that i die.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: In fact joe said to big go how you know
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: they're not model bitches.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: How dare you and you know what at that point
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the argument has to end right He has raised a very, very,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: very fair, reasonable question that is also outright hilarious.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: But we get to the place of where he is
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in 96. And at this point, you're right. I feel
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: like the 95 Source Awards are the solidification that he
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: is the king of New York as it stands.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And we saw that after he died. That was the
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: whole question. It's like, who next will be the king
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: of New York?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: But it's crazy, especially at a time where so much
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: music was coming out so rapidly from so many people,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: how big his 94 and 95 had to be to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: still loom so large over the following year.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Well, he's the in-house rapper for the second biggest or
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: arguably biggest, right? It depends on how you feel. I
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: haven't looked up the sales between Death Row and Bad
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: Boy in that moment. But let's say he's the in-house
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: rapper for the best and biggest hip-hop label at that point, right?
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: So he's all over every remix, every single for R &
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: B songs, right? So, like, Big ruled the clubs. He
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: ruled the streets. He's still, while it's a factor, he's
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: all over those mixtapes. He's rapping over the Death Row beats, infamous.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: So-called freestyle on these mixtapes. So like Big is everywhere
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: and it's always dope. The other thing you got to
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: give him, and this is a reference that's going to
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: date me, but this was the smoothest flow I heard
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: since Special Ed before he fell off. When Special Ed
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: first came out, he just had an immaculate flow. Big
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: had an immaculate flow. So he's butter smooth. He's got
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: a commanded voice and he's on everything. And so he
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: was able to take 96 off Not that he didn't
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: do anything, but, you know, he didn't have an album out, right?
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: But it was like he was still out because all
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: of these songs were playing at parties and clubs all
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: the time. He was ubiquitous.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And the smoothness of the flow is interesting because you
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: can listen within Ready to Die, right? Like, these are
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: songs that are recorded at different points in time. Big Papa,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the flow of Big Papa does not sound at all
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: like the flow that you're getting on, like, the first
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: half of that record, right?
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Like, it's all.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It's almost in some ways like he was a different person.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And no, none of us really like the diddle right now.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But that was the genius of Diddy was figuring out
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: how to conceptually merge those two things. And so as
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: we get into the year and we start seeing all
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: these different rappers from the East Coast and the directions
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: they're going in, somehow Biggie Smalls was in every one
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: of those lanes.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. My friends sometimes disagree with me. Some of them
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: have agreed with me. The weird thing about Big, and
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: this is a larger conversation we've had, is he almost
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: skirts the line between player and nerd. Which is to say,
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of MF Doom in Big. Doom did
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: not have Big's flow by any means. But the references,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I think about the what with Method Man. You never
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: knew the direction in which he was going. He was
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: a funny dude. He made vague and weird references. And
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: yet he still brought in hard street shit. And that's
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: what made him so good for me.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: All the other people that were around him, we have
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: generally operated under the premise that he is the one
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: that wrote their rhymes. Now, of course, nobody likes to
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: say that somebody else wrote their raps, right?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So after the fact, like Lil' Kim.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Is always adamant, hey, my pit is nice, I was
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: good after Biggie died, da-da-da, everything else. I have always,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: for the entirety of my life, operated under the presumption
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: that that Lil' Kim hardcore record was written by Biggie Smalls.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And in many places, in many cases, in many spaces,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: we know what it sounds like. It's like when you
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: listen to License to Ill, and you're like, oh, Run
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: wrote that verse. Like, you know Slow and Low is
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a Run DMC song. You just know it when you
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: hear it. That Lil' Kim album has that, which makes
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it the most ironic record ever made. Because you and
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: I were talking about this just a minute ago. The
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: reference tracks exist of Biggie Smalls rapping like Lil' Kim,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and those are a mindfuck.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Especially in the pause era.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: I think people know how to process that. But yeah,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: it is, it is strange. I mean, look, he's like,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: he's the thing that we fault authors for where it's like, man,
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: this was unbelievable. There are parts of the book that
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: are good, but he just cannot inhabit the mind space
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: of a woman. Well, big could at least a woman
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: from the hood. It seemed like he kind of nailed
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: it on that record. If you believe he wrote those verses,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: which allegedly.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Hey, look, uh when i was all with wally we
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: were talking about uh doc and ellie joined put in
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: your mouth and i was like hey man that one
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: smokes him out like you learn a lot about you
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: learn a lot about who's at the club with that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: one that little kim hardcore album if that is your
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: jam so am i that one that one has been
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: smoking him out for.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: 30 years hey i i this is a true story
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: i can't mention his name but one of the most
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: prominent plastic surgeons in new york i happen to be
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: friends with his son for a long time And he
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: told me that his father was in there fixing up
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: those celebrities and socialites to Lil' Kim's record and to Eminem.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: And I was trying to picture this man on Park
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Avenue doing plastic surgery to Lil' Kim hardcore, and it
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: blew my mind. So if you had an inner freak,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: she was bringing it out for you.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk more about this later. We'll take
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: a break a little later.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: But the observation to me about 1996 that becomes interesting
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is that little did we know Because just about everybody
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: on the East Coast that was somebody put out a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: record that year, New York in particular. Like, it's a
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: long list of people, a wider range of whose was
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: good and whose was not. But they all came out,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: including Jay-Z, from whom we had not really heard before
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: up until this point. Everybody that would be auditioning to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: be the king of New York after Biggie Smalls, they
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: all seemed to put out a record in 1996. But
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: what we didn't know at the time was that they were...
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: They were all kind of sort of the kiddie table,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: except no, now you all are going to be fighting
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: for everything in just.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: A year and a half.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: That Jay-Z album is a fascinating one because what you
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: start to get because rap gets so popular is you
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: get what we have now with LeBron, Kobe, MJ, which
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: is the Stan Wars start to emerge. So Reasonable Doubt
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: comes out. And in New York, among a set of
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: people I knew who listened to rap, pretty phenomenal album. Now,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: depending on who you're a fan of, people give it
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: too much credit or no credit at all and say
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: it was irrelevant, right? Because it wasn't hit nationally quite
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: the way Big was and the way Nas hit initially
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: nationally when it was written, right? But man, that's a
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: remarkable record. You could do an entire show just on
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Reasonable Doubt and Jay-Z's evolution after that. But Reasonable Doubt
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: doesn't really give him any claim for the throne, right?
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: He realizes that too. And that's why the next record
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: is so pop-oriented because he had those aspirations in a
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: way I don't think Nas really did. Jay-Z wanted to
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: be the guy from New York very much, right?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: That's why it'll always be our number one Jay-Z record, right?
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Because Jay-Z was all... He made very self-conscious records through
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: about 2003.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, self-conscious in the sense that.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: The obvious capitalism of it, it was so craven and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: obvious what he was trying to do and it often
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: led to some really bad records. And I don't mean
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: bad records in terms of bad albums, but volume one
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: is spectacular except for when it sucks. And every place
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: where it sucks is where he's absolutely trying to give
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: a song to somebody, right? Like, this track is for you.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I know what girls like. City's Mine, all of this, right? Like,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: when it was clear that he was trying to do
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: a thing, the thing he was trying to do on
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Reasonable Doubt was.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Make a record that East Coast dope dealers are going
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: to listen to and say is a diary of their lives.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Just you watch.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And if you have ever met an East Coast dope
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: dealer of that time, they talk about that record like
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: they wrote it. And he's also more fun and loose
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and relaxed on that record than he.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Is at any other time. Like what the cool is
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: of him.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: You know, he's got jokes later on, but there's nothing
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that comes across like, OK, I'm getting weeded now.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I know I contradicted myself, but I don't need that now.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Or even 22 twos. He never sounds like that guy again.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: But on that record, that's the one that made so
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: many people just sit up and pay attention.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: He's I remember I think it was Khalid Mohammed who
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: called him a scoundrel early on.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: And there's something about that that resonates with me. And
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: yet I find myself throwing that album on all the
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: time because in that moment, that's when he was his
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: most sincere. So I agree. And it sounds like New
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: York to me. And something you said earlier about Akanele
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: really stuck with me too, because you have this awkward
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: phase where people are sort of moving in step and
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: switching their styles up and step with their ambition and
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: the idea of a larger audience. Akanele came out doing
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: frog sounds, right? Nothing wrong with being overweight. Everything's great.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: And then suddenly he's got the club jam of all
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: club jams, right? The strip club jam and the party
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: closer that lasts for all these years. And Jay-Z, similarly,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: he comes out doing a faster style, starts to switch
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: it up with In My Lifetime and the remix to it,
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: which my cousin's a huge Jay-Z fan from day one.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: So I'm sitting there, I'm listening to it on underground
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: radio on Bobbito, And then you get Reasonable Doubt, which
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: was just him finally coming to his own. Everyone has
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: that moment where they find their niche. The gels, this
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: is my voice, this is my style. And that was it.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And to have seen his evolution, from original flavor and
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: jazz-o to this, it was like, yo, this dude has arrived.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: And that was absolutely, for me, his best record. And
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: you're right, after that, there's an attempt that is so
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: contrived to reach so many different markets that even though
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: the albums overall have enough songs that hit, it felt
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: like he stepped on the product to me.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like he and DMX both, this, you made
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it at 27, right? Like 27, the age where most
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: people as dope as Jay-Z, 27, that's the year you're
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: supposed to die.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: That's the year that he broke out.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And there were, like I say, there were so many
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: steps along the way, so many incarnations of Jay-Z before
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: they finally figured out on the back end. Now, of course,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You know, he was a little busy in that time
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: working on a few other things that helped make the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: future rap career possible. But I remember when that record
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: came out and when I would get like the little
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: vestiges of the conversation that would come from.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: The East, like it got like four hits.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Four mics I want to say in the source and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it was a really dope record but like the year
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: before Mobb Deep the Infamous was a really dope record
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: right like it was it it was not an instant
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: classic it was a record that ultimately became a classic
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: as we heard more and we came to appreciate it
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: more but there was no way for us to know
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: like we said at that time that no actually this
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: dude's gonna be battling for the throne like in a.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Year yeah and Ski Beats deserves some props too because Man,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: what was he doing on that record? That was a moment.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, he did Luchini in the same year.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: He basically produces, the Camp Lowe record doesn't come out
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: until 97, but he does, I think the majority of
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Reasonable Doubt, if not the majority, a significant proportion of
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Reasonable Doubt. And he does that whole Camp Lowe record
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: that for me is the best record that anybody did
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: in 97.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: He was on fire, right? And which one is it?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Is it feeling it that Jay Jack from Camp Lowe
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: in a, in a, a tale that became his oldest time,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Jay-Z hearing a beat with something that somebody else already
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: had and immediately try to figure out how to take.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Hey, you know what? I respect it here. He said, Hey,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: these funny talking dudes are not getting this. This is
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: too dope for them. That's and I love Camp Lowe.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: No slight to them. That album is a personal classic
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: for me. the first album but yeah he said that's
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: gotta be mine and apparently he agreed.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And it was the start and it also I.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Had never really thought this much about exact how much
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: about this though I am sure the Wu had thought
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: about this the Wu started with the mafioso imagery, right?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Which then carries us into 96 with Jay-Z and the
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: guy that we'll talk about on the other side. But
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Jay really was the first to put the visual aesthetic
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: to it, right?
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Like those, I'm sure he thinks he looks, he looked
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: ridiculous now, right?
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: But like the old Tommy good era suits and everything else,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: like not as a spin on it was, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: like the street dreams video doing from casino or whatever.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: But the, the Wu I felt like was dealing with
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: a degree of irony in the way that they presented,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: presented like the Wu Gambino situation. Nah, Jay was trying
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to lean all the way in on it, which actually,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: as I look back on it, it kind of worked,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: but it really now looks more like a dude that's
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: trying to fit. He had not figured out what the
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: aesthetic was because aesthetics aren't really his bag.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: And, and, you know, you, you've made the point to
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: me before, and I'm sure to broader audiences of how,
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: It wasn't just Puff, but Jay-Z too. They changed the
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: way people felt in terms of rooting for the underdog
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: in rap and in general in Black communities because he
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: came into the game having been busy all those prior years,
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: accumulating money. And Puff came in the game wanting to
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: accumulate that much money and then touching that much money.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: And it set a new standard for what we expected
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: out of rap records and what we expected out of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: ourselves in terms of our relationship to material items and wealth.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's the irony of Drake started from the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: bottom at once was that he did not, but also
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: don't nobody respect.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: That no more.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Like everybody, Jay made it to where you had to
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: start off rich. Nobody respects your broke ass. If you
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: don't have any money right now, Why am I listening
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: to you, right? Which, I mean, that puts you in
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: a bind because, hey, man, Katz was like, go look
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: at that, especially that early woo.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Those are broke motherfuckers, man, right?
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And that was a big part of it was, hey,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: we broke and now we coming to get it. Some
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: people like still carry that all down the line, but
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. Jay-Z is the beginning of, if you
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: don't have money right now, why are you talking to me?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: which meant that nobody could talk to you unless they
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: pretended like they had money. So now some 19-year-old kid
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is showing up in front of you with the biggest
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: diamond-encrusted chain ever, and you know he ain't got no money.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: Yep, yep. And you could even have that, and it'd
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: be real. And as we saw on Imaginary Player, Jay-Z
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: will still tell you, beat it, cocksucker.
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: It's not the latest iteration of that. It's not more
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: iced out than mine. You know, if there's no mannequins
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: on board your flight, switch your plane, he says, which
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: is insane to hear a man say.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: What's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6? And
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: in that year, people were driving Ford Expeditions in their
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: videos and feeling like they had conquered the world. Like,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it is very interesting to look at the cars that
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: were getting flossed in videos in like 1995. A Mazda
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: 929 would go a long way back then until Jay
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: told everybody they was broke.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: This is 100% true, man. And you felt that in
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: New York, in the culture, there were people who... When
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: some of these records debuted, the people who used to
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: promote these records on the underground, you could hear in
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: their voice that they felt.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: Awkward about, like, wait, what is he talking about? This
• 26:04
  Speaker 6: is not what we talk about, right? This is not
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: what hip hop is. Although to an extent, hip hop
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: always was aspirational. It didn't flaunt the aspirations in people's
• 26:14
  Speaker 6: faces to make them feel bad about themselves.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Going from the dope man funding your operation to the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: dope man being not a on the street dope boy.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: The guy is also the dope MC.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: That's a paradigm shift.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Special Ed has two records that I think about a lot.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: One is I Got It Made and the other is Mission.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Those two records were understood in real time as over
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: the top parodies. We start to get in 96... we
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: get to the point where those records can sell as
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: just straight narratives, right? And that to me was, I
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: remember thinking about it then. That was the major shift.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: This record doesn't play ironically anymore.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: All right, coming up next, we got more from New
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: York in 1996.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Ever wanted to go to the NBA finals?
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• 28:22
  Speaker 1: It's the biggest time of year for college basketball. Great moments,
• 28:26
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• 29:31
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• 29:39
  Speaker 1: we are back with J. Englund talking about 1996 in rap,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: what was going on in New York. And I talked
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: about how Biggie wasn't there, but all the competitors for
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Biggie were.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: And this is an album that has become.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Polarizing that was not polarizing before that we all acknowledge.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: I thought was pretty good, but not great.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: And as not as it was written, that somehow is
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: one that people swear up and down to me as
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: a classic. And they always thought it and they a
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: goddamn lie because I was here and nobody was saying
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: that shit in real time.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: I don't want to touch this.
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: I've been watching the Nas stand bass for decades now.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Like the MAGA movement evolve into a monster force. So like, listen,
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: they will go back and they will retroactively declare, you know,
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: whatever records were classic and how, if the record wasn't good,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: that actually it's just because the earlier version that was
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: supposed to be released, if you take two tracks off,
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: it makes it a classic as well. And that gets
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: weird to me because I am a fan of Knott's.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: So I followed him realistically. This album was weird. It
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: was weird in real time because a lot of people
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: didn't know how to feel about it. I was listening
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: when Stretch and Bob started rolling the tracks out on
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: the legendary underground show they had, and they were a
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: little bit ambivalent on how they felt on some of
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: these tracks. They were breaking rules. Now people look back
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: on it and they think it's silly to have these rules.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: But you come out with a single with the hottest
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: pop princess on it singing, repurposing a classic chorus from
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Curtis Blow while rapping over a repurposed Houdini beat. And
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: that was against the rules and people didn't know how
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: to feel. Now, in a more broad landscape, it just
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: made his name bigger, right? But I thought the album
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: had some weird records on it that didn't quite hit.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: When I revisited, some of them really hit still, and
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: they stayed up, but it was totally uneven. But the
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: reason it's considered a classic now is not just the
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: fan base that's so strong and big enough that they
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: just are everywhere and relentless and spamming the opinion of it,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: but so many MCs claim that it's better than Illmatic,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: which shocked me. There are actual MCs who are dope,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: who are like, nah, this was the one that hit
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: for me, not Illmatic. And I am baffled by that.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: So my question for a lot of those people is,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: was it was written your first Nas album?
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of people don't want to admit that
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: they were, I mean, I was not on Illmatic immediately.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't live in the kind of place where that
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: was going to happen, right? Like you weren't just going
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: to stumble into Too Many Cats in Houston. listening to Nas,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: there was a concerted effort made by the record company
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to make sure that Nas had a number one record.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And that one was all over the place. He had
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: a budget to work with, all of those things. And
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: so I think for a lot of people, you get
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: your first record, especially if you weren't really into like
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: basement type of East Coast beats. where you can't appreciate
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: how incredible the soundscape is on the first record. The
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: next record is a track master's record. And if that's
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: what you're into, that's fine. That is not what I'm into.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: That is not what I've ever been into, which is
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: not to say that they didn't put out some heat.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Like the message is the first full track on there.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: And it's like, Oh, let's go.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Got you.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Right. He's wrapping his ass off. It's a perfect sample
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: to sting joint, everything else he's going. Um, but it
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: is an, it's an, To me, it's an uneven record
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: from a dude, and Questlove has written about this, how
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the 95 Source Awards in.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: A lot of ways broke Nas, right?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: That he went and he basically walked home with nothing
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: but his dick in his hand and Biggie won everything.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And he looked at how Biggie and Puff were going
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: about this and it was like, oh, okay, that's what
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I need to do to be the guy? Okay, I'm
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: going to make a much more commercial sounding record with
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a little bit of what the Wu had already done
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: with the Gambino situation, right?
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: And yes, they noticed.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: They absolutely noticed. And sprinkle that all together. And also,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: on one hand, it's super dope. I'm on the East Coast,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: and I got a Dr.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Dre beat. On the other hand, it was Dr. Dre's
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: midlife crisis.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Nas is coming?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: All eyes.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Nas is coming was like, the whole way we're like,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: so it's going to get dope.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: It's going to, it didn't. It didn't happen. Oops.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: And then Street Dreams has the same beat as All
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Eyes On Me. And it's like, and you heard the
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: one and he ripped it and it made the other
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: one just pale in comparison unless you were a super
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: Nas fan. And I felt like man, this really fell
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: flat as an album. That's how I felt at the time.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: But there was that awkwardness, and you talked about Big Loom,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: and obviously Big influences that album simply by his success.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: But that awkwardness in the East Coast and the shift
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: to like, hey, there's a market that we're after now,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: and everybody wants to be king in New York. It's
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: heard in the music, not just in how the music
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: changes for certain people, but you brought up the, like,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: everybody was hating on each other, you know? Jay Root
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: drops an album that year where the opening single is
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: him repurposing the Junior Mafia beat and hating on Big
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Hip Hop, right? The Roots drop and they got Never
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Do comes out, right? Or is that right after that?
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: It's like the commentary about the shift is in the music.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Da Woo is like, whoa, he's biting Nas' album cover. Right.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: What's going on? Like everyone is angry and you feel
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: that sense of competition and everyone wants to accuse the
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: other people of breaking all the rules while they also
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: break the rules that were set up. These somewhat nonsensical rules.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: I think we can say now very similar to baseball
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: where you have these unwritten rules where you can't celebrate
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: and you got it. Like some of this was nonsense.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: Oh, you can't use that. You can't say that line
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: because someone said it before. But that really was a thing.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: And everyone was enforcing that on everyone else except themselves.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: That is an interesting thing about rap, and we're going
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: to talk about this more when we get to kind
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: of the boom bap episode, which is once it became
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: clear what was possible, right, and people had greater ambitions,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: It became harder to keep it in house because there
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't so much money in the house.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And you had also seen by.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Then enough people had actually like stumbled on the great
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: success that it was like, OK, well, what if we
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: actually tried to do it? But you take a cat
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: like Nas, you don't know how to do that. Like,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: that's not what his brain had ever been configured toward. So,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the beginning of a five-year period
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: of Nas just trying to figure out what it is
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: that he wants to be, even though what he was,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: we seem to love, but we also don't have a
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: great deal of evidence that we would have continued to love.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. In some ways, the culture failed an incredible, prodigious poet, right?
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: And in other ways, when it was written, Drops it
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: changes what everyone thinks is allowed on that scene of MCs.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: And this is also what creates a vacuum in the underground.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Nas very much came out as an underground rapper. What
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: it meant in New York back then, right? You have
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: all these cats on the underground who are breaking records
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: on Stretcher Bob, where suddenly they're like, this is not
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: the place for us anymore. And that leaves a really
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: huge void which was filled by raucous, which was then
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: filled by deaf jokes and the people on the underground
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: changes and the organic nature in the relation to the
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: street in New York changes in terms of the definition
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: of the underground. So there's a whole reordering of everything
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: in rap in New York, and it was fascinating to
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: be there and watch.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Right, now another cat who dropped in this year, and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I know we don't think of him
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: necessarily as a competitor to the throne of who's gonna
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: be the king of New York, but became a giant
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: star in some ways that his origins did not imply
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: would happen, and he did it through video, and that's
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Busta Rhymes. Like, 96 is when you get the woo-ha,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I got you all in check video, we talked about
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that a little bit on the singles episode, But that
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: video was a game changer in terms of truly using
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the medium to create a persona. Because I said on
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: the last episode, and a lot of my friends hit
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: me up and were like, let me think about this,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: which proves that I was right, which is there is
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: no classic Busta Rhymes out. There are a lot of
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: great Busta Rhymes singles that we all acknowledge that he
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: could rap, but He emerged as a multimedia star and
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a multimedia figure at this point, five years removed from
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: being like underground hero.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, Busta was, I think, a sob story when
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I think of him. The case of the PTA, of course.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: I think of the scenario remix. But the thing about
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: him was his voice back then. It was, I don't
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: know if I really want to hear an album full
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: of Busta verses, but the voice is undeniable. And then
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: he credits Puff once again. to saying, hey, you need
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: to stop yelling so much.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to do it all the time, dawg.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Switch it up a little bit. And then suddenly you
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: get this dude who realizes, and it's the dance hall
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: influence of his background and everything else. It's like, yo,
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: I can do anything. I can actually, I can rap
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: rhythmically slow, fast. It's so bizarre that across the decades,
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: the thing that he's most known for in pop culture
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: now is rapping at the speed of light.
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: It's like, That verse doesn't go anywhere that he did, right?
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: It's always present. There's always someone imitating it online or
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: he's at a show doing it. when he started off kind.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Of rah, rah, rah, right?
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Like that's how we knew him and what his origins were.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: And then you're right, he becomes a persona. And sometimes
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: he's taking that the wrong way. You know, he doesn't
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: like it when people say that. Like he's animated and
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: it's his energy because he is incredibly talented, right? But
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: what he did, like you said, is he sold an
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: entire experience not too dissimilar from Missy Elliott. You get
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: the whole bag. You get some rapping. You get some dancing.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: You get some coordinated movement and some visuals. And yeah, man,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: he became a spectacle in the very best way.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: He continued like looking back on it 30 years later.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's just because when we see him, he
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: still got split star with him.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: And like the idea of the hype man went away.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: But he still feels like the true the truest connection
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: to what we thought of as an emcee. Like emcee
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: means move the crowd type of situation and continue that
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: all the way through.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: With different means and mechanisms. Like, Busta was never really.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Like, Nas was trying to turn into cool mafioso guy, right? Like,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Jay-Z obviously was trying to make this transition into being
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: billionaire guy. Busta Rhymes always seemed to be like, what
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: I am is a live-ass MC.
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: You can't deny Busta that, man. He's live, he gets
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: the crowd going, and he can rap. He's a talented rapper.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: And I do think that gets lost in the discussion
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: of how animated he was and how much energy he
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: and Spliffstar have. But man, they set the party off.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think that's also because not everybody is
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: great at making records.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: He's really good at rapping.
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Tell Busta, hey, come back in six months and let
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: us hear the best 15 tracks that you got and
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: somebody might have to come and save the day. You
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: know what I mean? Rap is like hoop very much
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: so in that regard. But you got some guy that
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: you look at in the gym just dribbling around and
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: making it happen.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool. But now it's five on five. And oh,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Coach, what are we supposed to do? LL Cool J
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: is a guy that need coach to tell him what
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to do.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like Nicolas Cage. I saw Nicolas Cage in
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: a couple good movies. And he acted well. The Coen
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: brothers know what to do with him, right? But if
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: you let him loose on his own, he becomes totally ridiculous.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: He single-handedly taught me the value of a director. It's like, oh, okay,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: there's a person with a vision who knows how to
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: use your talent so that you look better than you
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: do on your own. And absolutely, I think he fits
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: that bill at times. He also spans so much history.
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: the leaders of the new school got their name from
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Chuck D.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Busta Rhymes got his name from Chuck D.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: Yes!
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: They go so far back that he touches Chuck D.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Moves on, you got Puff in the mix, Dilla, Dr. Dre, Neptunes.
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: He's rapping with Chris Brown. It's like this man's a
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: living artifact.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: He's a connector. Two degrees of Busta Rhymes. Jesus.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Now, let me tell you this one guy where I
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: have been trying to decide whether I wanted to put
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: him in this episode or in the more boom bap episode.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: But I actually think he fits, even though he's not
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: from New York.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: He's from New Jersey. And that's Redman because Muddy Waters
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: comes out.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: In 96.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: And something that I think a lot of people don't
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: know is that it wasn't so great for Def Jam,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: like around 93, 94, the West Coast is starting to emerge.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Def Jams are getting a little bit wobbly.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And two people that really, really get a lot of
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: credit for Def Jam right in the ship that people
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: would not think of.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: One is Warren G, interestingly enough. And the other one
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: is Redman.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: And I never thought of Redman, again, this is maybe
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: just a function of being in Houston.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I loved Redman. I never thought of.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Redman as being, like, wildly popular because he didn't seem
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: like the type of rapper that would be wildly popular, except...
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Come to find out, actually, Redman was that dude. And
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: people across the board, like, I feel like Redman had
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: an argument for being Dakota's dude in the game around
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: this time. In a way, again, that you described, the
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: humor being the backbone of what he was doing in
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a way that you just don't hear anymore.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, man. He had that old dirty bastard sort of
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: like dirty, authentic, loud, and obnoxious thing going on. Like,
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: what was Q-Tips coming down the block, man? Loud as fuck.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: You would swear Redman was inside the truck.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and somehow it had broad appeal. It had broad
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: appeal to the mainstream. Street dudes loved it, but white
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: dudes loved Redman too. It's crazy. A lot of people
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: had Redman on their list as one of their favorite MCs.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: I have never totally figured it out, which is not
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: to downplay him. He's dope. I'm just saying, I never
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: figured out why that reached so many people because it
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: seemed antithetical to what would be popular in the mainstream, right?
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: But yeah, he obviously, like, he made a big impact
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: and the album started getting weird. Muddy Waters is a
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: weird album.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: But it's more normal than the one that came before it,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: which is my favorite one. But There's a Dark Side
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: is so weird. He says he can't go back and
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: listen to it. He was like, I was just going
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: through some things and using a lot of dope. I
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: can't really tell you what was going on there. Muddy
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Waters is a strange record though.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: The Rockefeller remix is one of my favorite records of
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: all time. Comes off that. The sound of it, the
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: way he's rapping, it feels very specific. to an era
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: and it feels like a fever dream within that era, man.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: I love that record.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: So my thought on that popularity of Redman, especially with
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: white boys, I think it goes to, I mean, obviously
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: it's a combination of factors, right? One of them that
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I think is very easy for us often to act
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter, but it does.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: He's really, really, really good, right?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Like his ability to rap and to write I just don't,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: it's like, what more could you ask for out of
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: a rapper? He had a million different flows, right? Like,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: however you wanted somebody to attack this beat, he had that.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: He had an obvious presence when he's on the mic
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: or when you see him in video and all of
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: those things.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: Again, he is hilarious.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And then the next part, somehow through the course of time,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest and most important producers in the
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: history of rap music has become wildly underrated. and it's
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: a big part of the Redman success, which is I
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: got these Eric Sermon beats behind me. I don't know
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: how it reached this place where we don't act like
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Eric Sermon is like top 10 ever, even if he's
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: not your top 10 favorite.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Top 10 most important? No question. And that's who Redman's
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: got behind him along with his own beats.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. My original favorite group was EPMD, man. I had
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: their second album. I had a bulky yellow Walkman, and
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: I took it everywhere. I listened to it front to back.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: And yeah, it shocks me that Eric Sermon flies under
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: the radar now. You know, he's getting a little bit
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: more love because I feel like when he resurfaced in
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: the Diddy documentary, people are like, oh yeah, there's Eric Sermon.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: He was kind of a significant figure, right? But yeah,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: you're right. He's got the beats behind him and he
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: has two other key factors. The videos were kind of
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: a big deal when they would roll out. He'd always
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: have a star or a fledgling star in his video, right?
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: And they'd be funny. And then He smoked weed and
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: he was, he became a Cheech and Chong kind of guy,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: especially when he teamed up with Meth.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Y'all was about to say, him and Meth meeting each other,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: how much more money did they make just because being
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: one of those guys, you need a sidekick and neither
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: was the sidekick, just to be clear, right? But they
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: both were the sidekick and that took them to all
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: kinds of places because you needed two of them.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: What a weird story Meth is too because Meth came
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: out with star quality to me, almost a Snoop level
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: of star quality. And then it felt like he fumbled
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: it a little bit. Like, I thought he was going
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: to be bigger than he was. And then on the
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: back end of his career, here he is a star
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: again in a different way. Like, he has an incredible narrative.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: Now he's a workout master who is on TV and
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: a sex symbol at a ripe old age or whatever
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: he is in his 50s, right?
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: And by the way, stop cussing like 15 years ago.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Right. But so the difference.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: To me between Method Man and Red Man is Red
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Man can give you three verses on a song.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Method got a hot one for you.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: If you only, some people, this is why it's always
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: interesting getting into the Andre Big Boy conversation, is that
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I have heard Big Boy repeatedly give you three verses
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: and kill it. I've just never heard Andre do that.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: He's never made the decision that that's what he's going
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: to do. Those are vastly different skills. This is when
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: guys leave groups. Like, basically, other than NWA, when the
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: group breaks up, it don't really work no more because
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: not everybody's built to give you three. Of the Wu-Tang...
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: you would not have said Ghostface was the best coming off.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: The first record.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: To me, as a solo artist, he is clearly the
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: best of all of them because he's the best equipped
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: to give you three. Even out of Raekwon, who's at
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: his best when Ghostface is with him.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Ghost is the one that could give you three.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And so with Redman, he was that character, but also
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: able to write complete songs.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: I agree. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: in 96 there was someone who could give you three.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: as well. Now they might be from outer space, but
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: I got to give it up. Dr. Octagon, Cool Keith,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Magnetic MCs. It wouldn't be right if I was talking
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: about hip hop and didn't mention my blood cousins. So Keith, man,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: I want to say, hey, you can give him 25 verses.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: You're tracking. You probably have.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, we're going to have more time to talk
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: about Keith when we get to that next episode that
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: is a bit more in line with the weirdos and
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: the likes. But you are absolutely correct. What I love
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: about Redman, hey, we talked about this. There's like the
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: lack of sense of humor that we see in rap now.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: But he also, he to me, mainstreamed.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: Dr.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Dre was able to take the sound of Funkadelic.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: And put it into rap.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: He wasn't the first.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Like, Daylight was the first one to take one of
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: those samples, but it's obviously different on the West Coast records.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Redman, to me, was the clearest successor. I mean, Funk Dr. Spock, right?
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: But in terms of creating the visual aesthetics... of a
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: P-Funk record. He's the one that can do it. Like,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: There Is A Dark Side, that is a P-Funk record.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: In every weird old way that a George Clinton record
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: was ever made, that was him. And so even with
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Muddy Waters, he brings it back again.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: You know, like, it is there.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, There Is A Dark Side is one of the
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: weirdest albums that's ever been released in here, for sure.
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: And more people probably need to go back to that.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: I will add one thing. I will say one of
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: the groups that made one of the weirdest P-Funk albums...
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, to me, one of the greatest albums ever.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: It is hilarious. And depending on how you like your
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: politics and religion, maybe too weird. But X-Clan to the
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: East Blackwards is an album that contains a whole lot
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: of P-Funk.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: My brother Jay is rapping really well about some of
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: the craziest shit you've ever heard in your life.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: X-Clan is a group that history decided we're not going
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: to talk about that very much.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: But was a huge deal.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: It was a huge deal, and the whole record bangs.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: The entire record is full of dope beats, including one
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: of the best samples of that Tom Tom Club song.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: That is incredible.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: When you hear Eminem talk about how much he loves
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the X-Clan... Just think about what that means, guys.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: Just think about what that means.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Eminem out here jamming X-Clan like, he ain't talking about me.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Brother J is like, how can Polar Bear swing on
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: Vox with a gorilla? And he's jamming to it. You're
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: a gas ace and you're bound to get slapped.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that just used to be a little bit
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: more room to be playfully ridiculous.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Right? Like, how no rapper got good jokes anymore.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Totally beyond me, man. But look, that's half of what
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: we were looking at in the East in 96. We're
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: going to come back later and talk more of that
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks. That's my man, Jason England.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Google him.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Check him out and some of his stuff at Defector
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: and a few other places, Chronicle of Higher Education and more.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: My brother, I appreciate you. We got one more to go.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: Hey, thank you for having me, always.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: for joining us here on The Right Time. We do
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: this four times a week. Ryan Brumley handed everything behind
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line 323-596-7767. Remember,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: follow The Right Time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: give us five stars. You only give us four stars.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: to you guys in a couple of days.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: Take it easy.