# 1996 Hip Hop Series: Jason England on Biggie’s Blueprint: The Hidden Impact on Jay-Z & Nas | 02.24

An episode of [The Right Time with Bomani Jones](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/982639043), 24 Feb 2026, 53 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/370fc844-36bd-4f61-8b8f-b4bb010de39a/63d9b05d-bbd8-48f7-81d1-b4bb01169025/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=919a7cbe-003c-4146-b592-b4bb010de3a5

In the latest episode of The Right Time's 1996 Hip Hop Series, Bomani Jones and Jason England break down Notorious B.I.G.'s impact on the year 1996 despite not putting out an album. Later, they discuss Biggie's imprint on artists like Jay-Z, Nas, Redman and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[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.
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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.

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