← The Right Time with Bomani Jones
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
00:55:32
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:48]
B
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- [00:49]
A
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- [01:06]
B
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Right Time, A Wave original. My name is Bomani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. It is Time Machine Tuesday. We have got part three of our series of the year 1996 in rap music. Joining us again is the homie, Jason England. Check him out at the Defector and some other place. You Google his name, stuff comes up. That's a robe. You. You have. You, you have. You have peeped this accurately.
- [01:43]
C
I'm. I'm comfortable, man. I'm in my home. A man must feel comfortable, especially when he hops on with somebody like you, man.
- [01:49]
B
And the sunglasses, too.
- [01:50]
C
Oh, always. You know, it's funny, man. They say in the Sopranos that the lowest form of discourses. Remember when. But my homies were sending me screenshots of your comment section. I said the lowest form of discourse is a comment section. I felt like Jay Z, man, when I rock shades. It ain't to impress you. What the. Commenting on my.
- [02:10]
B
Because you're sitting indoors with sunglasses on. That is the answer to the question.
- [02:15]
C
I've never been cooler than when I'm by myself.
- [02:19]
B
All right, so be sure to check out our previous episodes. We got Jason. We got the Hobie with DJ Wally Sparks. He was on for the last episode. This episode is kind of built in a. Almost a counterintuitive foundation where we all agree that 1996 was the year of Tupac. And maybe it's just because it's associated with him or is tied to him. The second biggest figure of the year, 1996, is it feels like the one dude in rap who did not put a record out in 1996, and that was Biggie Smalls. We'll talk more about, like, the other people surrounding him, but you kind of look back and you realize it that people did not know, obviously, because there was no way to really predict the future. But we would wind up with a series of guys who were doing and. And a couple of women, to be honest, who would wind up doing an audition for who was going to be next for running New York rap. But Biggie was such a big deal that in the year that he does not put out an album, he still loomed over everything. And the thing that I never had the greatest handle on because I was in Houston, and so Biggie Smalls was a thing. But I always say that the west coast really begins around Birmingham in terms of rap. Right. Biggie was somebody that people were aware of. And also, I used to talk to a girl who told me that she wanted to shoot Biggie Smalls in 1996. Like, that's how invested she was in the Tupac situation. But once you got farther east and farther east and farther east, I don't think I fully got, until he died, how big a deal he was to people More local.
- [03:55]
C
Yeah, yeah. It's tough to describe you.
- [03:58]
A
I.
- [03:58]
C
Again, so much of this is context and being in the moment. And I think that's what people don't get about music. When they get upset and they talk about the, well, this year was better, or this artist is better, or people still rap, the rap mattered more. Right. And in New York, in particularly, things were fracturing. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. And I know I don't want to jump ahead and talk about it was written and Nas. But I was there. And I was there for the reactions. And I was there for the split in hip hop, where you have a genre that's progressing nationally and globally in terms of having these aspirations to sell more records. But in a lot of ways, it's losing its footing in terms of its original community. And the people who used to blow these records up are feeling like we're getting squeezed out and the sound is changing the metaphor for me. Came to me yesterday when I got a piece of an article, a link to a thing on Twitter about maybe a Reese family member, where he says, the Reese's Pieces are changing. We messed up the recipe. A lot of people in New York are like, hey, the recipe is changing, and the Reese's Cups don't taste the same, but at the same time, more people are buying it. So you have this dual aspiration where it's like, I want to be the best MC in New York, right? And the other thing is, I want to bring New York back to its prominence because the west coast is selling all these records and people are becoming stars. And of all people, to step into that void, you have this giant dude with a lazy eye who seems to be the coolest dude on the planet. And we did take kind of a journey with him because he comes out with partying bullshit and Dolly My Baby, and he's this kind of yelling rapper who turns into a super smooth, cool, charming rapper. And he was captivating.
- [05:36]
B
And with the. The fractured nature of New York rap is interesting. And again, we'll get more into that later. But especially then, like, living here, I understand it a little better how the boroughs are different cities, right? Like, historically, they were different cities, all became one city. But Brooklyn rap is something completely different than Queens rap is something completely different than. Than whatever Harlem rap there was, is different than the Bronx. And then out of nowhere, these dudes popped up out of Staten island, right? And then just showed up. Like I always say, the legend of Nas, that the golden child is in the Queensbrig projects. And occasionally somebody would make the trip over because word had just got around that there was this dude that was out there. And it wasn't terribly different with Biggie, who also then I think, like, the idea that you signed to Uptown Records, which is really an R and B record, even, like, the rapper they got over there is Heavy D, which is not the same thing. Puff leaves Andre Harell lets Puff take Biggie with him. Puff's got this vision of where this is going, and he's got the super hardcore rapper and the idea of. But we could also smooth this out just a little bit. And what you get is Ready to Die, which has a heavy dose of Tupac in it, right? Like, it's. Listen back to it. You're like, oh, okay, I see why Pac claimed that this was his right? The imagery of dying and everything else. Okay, so you've got that added to it. The album, I think, at least it feels to me, had greater momentum than anybody could have really predicted that it was going to have. It goes well into 95. Big carries this over with the Junior Mafia record. And so, I mean, he wrote that, right? Right. Like. Like, you go look at the credits and it does not say that. But C's always said BIG wrote all my raps. Right? Okay, you get that. That one's got singles. It's not a great record. Get Money takes you into 96. Right? Like, that one's rolling. The singles are the breakout for Lil Kim. Tupac is now all over Big. And I think the part that I don't have the greatest handle on is as Tupac is, you know, waging war seemingly with an entire city. Does that change the way that Biggie is received by people who may not have necessarily embraced him? But you got to pick a side.
- [07:54]
C
I don't. I don't. New York always rolled with Big, you know, And I give a different perspective because I say, you know, I spent all this time in East Harlem. My family's all throughout East Harlem. I used to stay up there. And so you have a little bit of a different thing because Pac was there. He was in Harlem a lot, especially East Harlem. He had little Rah Rah on his records. You know, the wife he had right with, the marriage was an old. She lived down the block from me on. On 126th Street. So people loved pot there, but they didn't hate Big. That never happened. So there's no different perception. There's. There are a lot of people. I knew people who. You said you knew a woman who wanted to shoot Big. Like, I definitely knew people who really hated Tupac in New York. No doubt about that, right? Like, nobody. I don't think anyone jumped ship on big. They were like, respond. You know, it was viewed as this sort of by a lot of people, as a line in the sand in a war. And then you get all those diss tracks that come out of all the other people who caught strays from Pac's rage. Right. So you had a whole bunch of New York rallying around Big and wanting him to say something, being very disappointed that he was remaining quiet.
- [08:59]
B
I think that is a forgotten part, too, is that other than kick in the door, you don't have the BIG diss record that goes back in the other direction. Like, that was a rap beef that has a great diss record, but was not a battle. Like, when you think about that, we never talk about Tupac, BIG as a battle. It's just a beef.
- [09:19]
C
I think the first time He. He threw a shot at him. In response was on the song with Jay Z where he says, if they had twins, she probably had, which was more self disparaging.
- [09:29]
B
Yeah, that's what I was about to say. I did not feel like that was a Tupac diss. That is something I personally would have kept to myself.
- [09:35]
C
But right there, you hit on something that I think made him distinct. And there's a tradition of these dudes. You have a tradition of, like, nimble, bigger dudes in hip hop and they become kind of lovable. But what Big was, was. He was the cool comedian. There's a tradition in him. In terms of Sean Price right now, it would be like 38 special, where it's like, yeah, the dude was always quick with a joke, and it's what made him so lovable because he was smooth. But he was also not above mocking himself. And that's something I think we lost as a tradition in rap.
- [10:06]
B
Yeah, he. He calling Big Fat. Wasn't really gonna go too far. Like, he's already got this one taken care of. Like, oh, we're gonna talk about how. Yeah, yeah, you really got me this time.
- [10:21]
C
His whole thing is, yeah, I'm those things. And yet I still took your woman and I'm still Versace and Gucci down. So what's your excuse? Right? So you lose with that insult.
- [10:33]
B
I did. Well, not me, but we did an interview with Big. Not with Big, but Fat Joe on highly questionable. You know, Fat Joe's got all the stories, and he tells this story about being in the studio. And Faith called, and Faith is cussing him out, and there's no way for me to tell this story without direct quotes. That's a Warner for my dear sweet mother. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Faith's on the phone.
- [10:57]
C
Faith.
- [10:58]
B
Like, yeah, yeah, I can tell. And I know you in there with them ugly. Da, da, da. Fat Joe said to Big, God, how you know they not model bitches?
- [11:11]
C
How dare you?
- [11:13]
B
And you know what? At that point, the argument has to end, right? He has raised a very, very, very fair, reasonable question that is also outright hilarious.
- [11:24]
C
Yeah, yeah, but no, but we get
- [11:26]
B
to the place of where he is in 96, and at this point, you're right. I feel like the 95 Source Awards are the solidification that he. He is the king of New York as it stands. And we saw that after he died. That was the whole question. It's like, who next will be the king of New York? But it's crazy, especially at a time where so much music was coming out so rapidly from so many, so many people. How big his 94 and 95 had to be to still loom so large over the following year?
- [11:57]
C
Well, he's the in house rapper for the, for the second biggest or arguably biggest, right? Depends on how you feel. I haven't looked up the sales between Death Row and Bad Boy in that moment, but let's say he's the in house rapper for the best and biggest hip hop label at that point, right? So he's all over every remix, every single for R B songs, right? So like Big ruled the clubs, he ruled the streets. He's still, while it's a factor, he's all over those mixtapes, he's rapping over the Death Row beats. Infamous so so called freestyle on these mixtapes. So like BIG is everywhere and it's always dope. The other thing you got to give him and, and this is a, a reference that's going to date me. But this was the smoothest flow I heard since Special Ed before he fell off. When Special Ed first came out, he just had an immaculate flow. Big had an immaculate flow. So he's butter smooth. He's got a commander voice and he's on everything. And so he was able to take 96 off. Not that he didn't do anything, but you know, he didn't have an album outright but it was like he was still out because all of these songs were playing at parties and clubs all the time. He was ubiquitous.
- [13:03]
B
And the smoothness of the flow is interesting because you can listen within Ready to Die, right? Like these are songs that are recorded at different points in time. Big Papa. The flow of Big Papa does not sound at all like the flow that you're getting on like the, like the first half of that record, right? Like it's all, it's almost in some ways like he was a different person and there. No, none of us really like the diddle right now. But that was the. The genius of Diddy was figuring out how to conceptually merge those two things. And so as we get into the year and we start seeing all these different rappers from the east coast and the directions they're going in, somehow Biggie Smalls was in every one of those lanes.
- [13:43]
C
Yeah, I, my friends sometimes disagree with me. Some of them have agreed with me. The weird thing about Big, and this is a larger conversation we've had is he. He almost skirts the line between player and nerd, which is to say there's a lot of MF Doom in Big Doom did not have Big's flow by any means. But the references I think about the what with Method man, you never knew the direction in which he was going. He was a funny dude. He was, he made vague and weird references and yet he still brought in like, you know, hard street shit. And that's what made him so good for me.
- [14:19]
B
All the other people that were around him, we have generally operated under the premise that he is the one that wrote their rhymes. Now, of course, nobody likes to say that somebody else wrote they raps, right? So after the fact, like Lil Kim is always adamant, hey, my pit is nice. I was good after Biggie died, da da da. Everything else. I have always, for the entirety of my life operated under the presumption that that Lil Kim hardcore record was written by Biggie Smalls. And in many places, in many cases, in many spaces, we know what it sounds like. It's like when you, when you listen to License to Ill and you're like, oh, Run wrote that verse like you, you know, Slow and Low is a Run DMC song. You just know it when you hear it. That Little Kil album has that, which makes it the most ironic record ever made because you and I were talking about this just a minute ago. The reference tracks exist of Biggie Smalls rapping like Lil Kim. And those are a mind especially in the pause era.
- [15:15]
C
Yes, I think people know how to process that. But yeah, it is, it is strange. I mean, look, he's like, he's the thing that we fault authors for where it's like, man, this was unbelievable. There are parts of the book that are good, but he just cannot inhabit the mind space of a woman. Well, Big could at least a woman from the hood. It seemed like he kind of nailed it on that record. If you believe he wrote those verses, which allegedly.
- [15:41]
B
Now the thing, hey, look, when I was all with W, we were talking about the Aelli joint to put it in your mouth. And I was like, hey, man, that one smokes him out. Like, you learn a lot about, you learn a lot about who's at the club with that one, that Lil Kim hardcore album. If that is your jam, so am I. That one, that one has been spoken about for 30 years.
- [15:59]
C
Hey, I, I, this is a true story. I can't mention his name, but one of the most prominent plastic surgeons in New York. I happened to be friends with his son for a long time and he told me that his father was in there fixing up those celebrities and socialites to Lil Kim's record into Eminem. And I was trying to picture this man on Park Avenue doing plastic surgery to Lil Kim hardcore. And it blew my mind. So if you had an inner freak, she was bringing it out for you.
- [16:27]
B
We're going to talk more about this later. We'll take a break a little later. But the observation to me about 1996 that becomes interesting is that little did we know because just about everybody on the east coast that was somebody put out a record that year, New York in particular, like, it's a long list of people, a wider range of whose was good and whose was not, but they all came out, including Jay Z, from whom we had not really heard before up until this point. Everybody that would be auditioning to be the king of New York after Biggie Smalls. Yeah, they all seem to put out a record in 1996, but what we didn't know at the time was that they were, they were all kind of sort of the kitty table. Except no, now you are, you all are going to be fighting for everything in just a year and a half.
- [17:16]
C
Yeah. That Jay Z album is a fascinating one because what you start to get because rap gets so popular is you get what we have now with LeBron, Kobe, MJ, which is the Stan wars start to emerge. So Reasonable Doubt comes out and in New York, among a set of people I knew who listened to a pretty phenomenal album. Now depending on who you're a fan of, people give it too much credit or no credit at all and say it was irrelevant. Right. Because it wasn't hit nationally quite the way Big was in the way Nas hit initially nationally when it was written. Right. But man, that was a, that's a remarkable record. You could do an entire show just on Reasonable Doubt and Jay Z's evolution after that. But Reasonable Doubt doesn't really give him any claim for the throne. Right. He realizes that too. And that's why the next record is so pop oriented, because he had those aspirations in a way I don't think Nas really did. Jay Z wanted to be the guy from New York very much. Right.
- [18:15]
B
That's why it'll always be our number one Jay Z record. Right. Because Jay Z was all. He made very self conscious records through about 2003. And I mean self conscious in the sense that the, the obvious capitalism of it. It was so craven and obvious what he was trying to do. And it often led to some really bad records like, and I don't mean bad records in terms of bad albums, but volume one is spectacular except for when it sucks. And every place where it sucks is where he's absolutely trying to give a song to somebody, right? Like, this track is for you. I know what girls like. City's Mind, all of this, right? Like, when it was. When it was clear that he was trying to do a thing. The thing he was trying to do on Reasonable Doubt was, I'm going to make a record that east coast dope dealers are going to listen to and say is a diary of their lives. Just you watch. And if you have ever met an east coast dope dealer of that time, they talk about that record like they wrote it. And he's also more fun and loose and relaxed on that record than he is at any other time. Like, what the cool is of him. You know, he's got jokes later on, but. But there's nothing that comes across like, okay, I'm getting weeded now. I know I contradicted myself, but I don't need that now, right? Or even 22 twos. He never sounds like that guy again. But on that record, that's the one that made so many people just sit up and pay attention.
- [19:39]
C
He's. I remember, I think it was Khalid Muhammad who called him a scoundrel early on, right? And there's something about that that resonates with me. And yet I find myself throwing that album on all the time, because in that moment, that's when he was his most sincere. So I agree. And it sounds like New York to me. And something you said earlier about Akanelli really stuck with me, too, because you have this awkward phase where people are sort of moving in step and switching their styles up and step with their ambition and the idea of a larger audience. Akanelli came out doing frog sounds, right? He dropped the Bombay. Nothing. Nothing wrong with being overweight. Everything's great, you know, like. And then suddenly, he's got the club jam of all club jams, right? The strip club jam and the party closer that lasts for all these years. And Jay Z, similarly, he comes out doing a faster style, starts to switch it up with in my Lifetime and the remix to it, which. My cousin's a huge Jay Z fan from day one. So I'm sitting there, I'm listening to it on underground radio on Boo, and then you get reasonable doubt, which was just him finally coming to his own. Everyone has that moment where they find their niche. The gels. This is my voice. This is my style. And that was it. And have seen his evolution, you know, from original flavor and jazz o to this. It was like, yo, this dude has arrived. And that was absolutely, for me, his best record. And you're right after that, there's like, an attempt that is so contrived to reach so many different markets that even though the albums overall have enough songs that hit, it felt like he stepped on the product to me.
- [21:12]
B
Yeah. And like, he and DMX both this. You. You made it at 27, right? Like, 27. The age where most people as dope as Jay Z. 27. That's the year you're supposed to die. That's the year that he broke out. And there were, like, I say there's. There were so many steps along the way, so many incarnations of Jay Z before they finally figured out on the back end. Now, of course, you know, he was a little busy in that time working on a few other things that helped make the future rap career possible. But I remember when that record came out and when I would get, like, the little vestiges of the conversation that would come from the east, like, you got like four. Four mics, I want to say in the source. And it was a really dope record. But, like, the year before Mobb Deep, the infamous, was a really dope record, right? Like, it was that. It was not an instant classic. It was a record that ultimately became a classic as we heard more and. And we came to appreciate it more. But there was no way for us to know, like we said at that time, that, no, actually, this dude's gonna be battling for the throne, like, in a year.
- [22:18]
C
Yeah. And Ski Beats deserves some props too, because, man, what was he doing on that record? That. That was a moment.
- [22:26]
B
And I mean, he did Luccini in the same year, like, he does.
- [22:29]
C
He.
- [22:29]
B
He basically produces the Campo record doesn't come out till 97, but he does, I think, the majority of Reasonable Doubt, if not the majority, a significant proportion of Reasonable Doubt. And he does that whole Camp Low record. That, for me, is the best record that anybody did in 97. He was on fire. Right. And which one is it? Is it feeling it that Jay Jack Fru. Camplo in a cl. In a. A tale that became his oldest time. Jay Z hearing a beat with something that somebody else already had and immediately trying to figure out how to take it.
- [23:01]
C
Hey, you know what I respected here? He said, hey, these funny talking dudes are not getting. This is too dope for them. That's. And I love Camp Low. No slight to them. That album is a personal classic for me, the first album. But yeah, he said, that's. That's gotta be mine.
- [23:21]
B
And it was the start. And it also. I had never really thought this much about exact how much about this though I am sure the woo had thought about this. The woo started with the Mafioso imagery, right. Which then carries us into 96 with Jay Z and the guy that we'll talk about on the other side. But Jay really was the first to put the visual aesthetic to it. Right. Like those. I'm sure he thinks he looks, he looked ridiculous now. Right. But like the old Tommy Good era suits and everything else like NASA spin on it was, you know, like the Street Dreams video doing from Casino or whatever. But the, the woo I felt like was dealing with a degree of irony in the way that they presented. Presented like the Wu Gambino situation. Nah. Jay was trying to lean all the way in on it. Which actually, as I look back on it, it kind of worked. But it really now looks more like a dude that's trying to figure he had not figured out what the aesthetic was because aesthetics aren't really his bag.
- [24:23]
C
And you know, you, you've made the point to me before, and I'm sure to broader audiences of how it wasn't just puff, but Jay Z2. They changed the way people felt in terms of rooting for the underdog in rap and in general in black communities. Because he came into the game having been busy all those prior years, accumulated money, you know, And Puff came in the game wanting to accumulate that much money and then touching that much money. And it set a new standard for what we expected out of rap records and what we expected out of ourselves in terms of our relationship to material items and wealth.
- [25:02]
B
Yeah. No, it's the irony of Drake started from the bottom at once was that he did not. But also don't nobody respect that no more like everybody, Jay made it to where you had to start off rich. Nobody respects your broke ass. If you don't have any money right now, why am I listening to you? Right? Which I mean that, that puts you in a bind because hey man, cats was, it was like, go look at that. Especially that early Woo. That was some broke man, right? And that, that was a big part of it was, hey, we broke and now we coming to get it. Some people like still carry that all down the line. But you're absolutely right. Jay and Jay Z is the beginning of if you don't have money right now, why are you talking to me? Which meant that nobody could talk to you unless they pretended like they have money. So now some 19 year old kid is showing up in Front of you with the biggest diamond, diamond encrusted chain ever. And you know he ain't got no money.
- [26:02]
C
Yep, yep. And you could even have that and it be real. And as we saw an imaginary player, Jay Z will still tell you, beat it, cocksucker.
- [26:10]
B
Yes.
- [26:10]
C
It's not the latest iteration of that. It's not more iced out than mine. You know, if there's no manicures on board your flight, switch your plane, he says, which is insane to hear a
- [26:23]
B
man say, what's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6? And in that year, people were driving Ford Expeditions in their videos and feeling like they had conquered the world. Like, it is very interesting to look at the cars that were getting flossed in videos in, like, 1995. A Mazda 9 to 9 would go a long way back then until Jay told everybody that was broke.
- [26:49]
C
This is 100% true, man. And you felt that in New York, in the culture, there were people who. Who when some of these records debuted, the people who used to promote these records on the underground, you could hear in their voice that they felt awkward about, like, wait, what is he talking about? This is not what we talk about. Right? This is not what hip hop is. Although to an extent, hip hop always was aspirational. It didn't flaunt the aspirations in people's faces to make them feel bad about themselves.
- [27:17]
B
And, yeah, like, going from the dope man funding your operation to the dope man be not a on the street dope boy. The. The. The guy is also the dope mc. Yeah.
- [27:31]
C
Whoo. Yeah.
- [27:32]
B
That's a paradigm shift.
- [27:33]
C
Yeah. Special Ed has two records that I think about a lot. One is I Got it Made and the other is Mission. Those two records were understood in real time as over the top parodies. We start to get in 96, we get to the point where those records can sell as just straight narratives. Right? And that, to me, was. I remember thinking about it then. That was the major shift. This record doesn't play ironically anymore.
- [28:01]
B
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- [28:34]
C
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- [29:23]
B
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and 9pm Eastern only on ESPN, ESPN2 and the ESPN app.
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All right, we are back with Jason England talking about 1996 in rap. What was going on in New York and I talked about how Biggie wasn't there, but all the competitors for Biggie were. And this is an album that has become polarizing that was not polarizing before, that we all acknowledged, I thought was pretty good, but not great. And as n as it was written, that somehow is one that people swear up and down to me as a classic and they always thought it and they a goddamn lie because I was here and nobody was saying that shit in real time.
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C
I don't want to touch this. I know. I've been watching the Nas stand base for decades now, like the MAGA movement evolve into a monster force. So, like, listen, they will go back and they will retroactively declare, you know, whatever records were classic. And how if the record wasn't good, that actually it's just because the earlier version that was supposed to be released, if you take two tracks off it makes it a classic as well. And that gets weird to me because I am a fan of Nas, right? So I followed him. Realistically, this album was weird. It was weird in real time because a lot of people didn't know how to feel about it. I was listening when Stretching Bob started rolling the tracks out on the legendary underground show they had. And they were a little bit ambivalent on how they felt on some of these tracks. They were breaking rules now. Now people look back on it and they think it's silly to have these rules. But you come out with a single with the hottest pop princess on it, singing, repurposing a classic chorus from Curtis Blow while rapping over a repurposed Houdini beat. And that was against the rules. And people didn't know how to feel now in a more broad landscape. It just made his name bigger, right? But it was. I thought the album had some weird records on it that didn't quite hit when I revisited. Some of them really hit still, and they. And they stay up. But it was totally uneven. But the reason it's considered a classic now is not just the fan base that's so strong and big enough that they just are everywhere and relentless and spamming the opinion of it. But so many MCs claim that it's better than Illmatic, which shocked me. There are actual MCs who are dope, who are like, nah, this was the one that hit for me, not Illmatic. And I am baffled by that.
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B
So my question for a lot of those people is was it was written your first NAS album, right? Because a lot of people don't want to Admit that they were. I mean, I was not on Illmatic immediately. I didn't live in the kind of place where that was going to happen. Right. Like, you weren't just going to stumble into too many cats in Houston listening to Nas. There was a concerted effort made by the record company to make sure that Nas had a number one record and that one was all over the place. He had a budget to work with all of those things. And so I. I think for a lot of people, you get your first record, especially if you weren't really into, like, basement type of east coast beats where you can't appreciate how incredible the soundscape is on the first record. The next record is a track master's record. And if that's what you're into, that's fine. That is not. Not what I'm into. That is not what I've ever been into. Which is not to say that they didn't put out some heat. Like, the message is the first full track on there, and it's like, oh, let's go. Got you. Right. He's rapping his ass off. It's a perfect sample to Sting Joint. Everything else he's going. But it is an. It's an. To me, it's an uneven record from a dude. And Questlove has written about this, how the 95 Source Awards in a lot of ways broke Nas, right? That he went and he basically walked home with nothing but his dick in his hand. And Biggie won everything. And he looked at how Biggie and Puff were going about this and it was like, oh, okay, that's what I need to do to be the guy. Yeah, okay. I'm going to make a much more commercial sounding record with a little bit of what the Woo had already done with the Gambino situation. Right. And yes, they noticed. They absolutely noticed and sprinkled that all together. And also, on one hand, it's super dope. I'm on the east coast and I got a Dr. Dre beat. On the other hand, it was Dr. Dre's midlife crisis.
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C
Yeah, yeah, Nas is coming. Yeah, Whole house.
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B
Yeah, Nas is coming. Was like the whole way, we're like, so it's gonna get dope. It's gonna. It. It didn't. It didn't happen.
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C
Oops. And then Street Dreams has the same. Same beatism.
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B
All eyes on me.
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C
And it's like. And you heard the one and he ripped it and it made the other one just pale in comparison. Unless you were a super nasdaq. And I felt like, man, this really fell flat as an album. That's how I felt at the time. But there was that awkwardness. And you talked about Big Lumen, obviously big influences that album simply by his success. But that awkwardness in the east coast and the shift to like, hey, there's a. There's a market that we're after now and everybody wants to be king of New York. It's heard in the music, not just in how the music changes for certain people. But you brought up the woo. Like everybody was hating on each other. You know, J. Ruber drops an album that year where the opening single is him repurposing the. The Junior Mafia beat and hating on Big and Puff. Right. The roots drop and they got. Never do comes out right. Or is that right after that? It's like the commentary about the shift is in the music. The woo is like, whoa. While he's biting NASA's album cover. Right. Like, what's going on? Like, everyone is angry and you feel that sense of competition and everyone wants to accuse the other people of breaking all the rules while they also break the rules that were set up. These somewhat nonsensical rules, I think we can say now, very similar to baseball, where you have these unwritten rules where you can't celebrate. And you got to like, some of this was nonsense. Right? Oh, you can't use that beat. You can't say that line because someone said it before. But that really was a thing. And everyone was enforcing that on everyone else except themselves.
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B
That is an interesting thing about rap. And we go talk about this more when we get to the kind of the Boom Bap episode, which is once it became clear what was possible. Right. And people had greater ambitions, it became harder to keep it in house because there wasn't so much money in the house. Right. And you had also seen by then enough people had actually like, stumbled on the great success that it was like, okay, well, what if we actually tried to do it? But you take a cat like Nas, he don't know how to do that. Like, that's not what his brain had ever been configured toward. So, I mean, this is the beginning of a five year period of Nas just trying to figure out what it is that he wants to be, even though what he was, we seem to love, but we also don't have a great deal of evidence that we would have continued to love it.
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C
Yeah. In some ways, the culture failed. An incredible, prodigious poet. Right. And in other ways, when it was written drops, it changes what everyone thinks is Allowed on that scene of MC saying, like. And this is also what creates a vacuum in the underground. Nas very much came out as an underground rapper. What it meant in New York back then, right? You have all these cats on the underground who are breaking records on Stretch about where suddenly they're like, this is not the place for us anymore. And that leaves a really huge void which was filled by raucous, which was then filled by def Jux and the people on the underground changes. And the organic nature in the relation to street in New York changes in terms of the definition of the underground. So there's a whole reordering of everything in rap in New York, and it was fascinating to be there and watch right now.
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B
Another cat who dropped in this year, and I don't know. I know we don't think of him necessarily as a, like, competitor to the throne of who's going to be the king of New York, but became a giant star in some ways that, like, his origins did not imply would happen. And he did it through video. And that's busta rhymes. Like, 96 is when you get the Wuha, I got you all in check video. We talked about that a little bit on the singles episode. But that video was a game changer in terms of, like, truly using the medium to create a Persona. Because I said on the last episode, and a lot of my friends hit me up and were like, let me think about this. Which proves that I was right, which is there is no classic Busta Rhymes album, right? There are a lot of great Busta Rhymes singles that we all acknowledge that he could rap. But he emerged as a multimedia star and a multimedia figure at this point. Five years removed from being, like, underground hero.
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C
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Buster was, I think, a sob story when I think of him. The PT case of the pta, of course, I think of the scenario remix. But the thing about him was his voice back then. It was. I don't know if I really want to hear an album full of bust of verses, but the voice is undeniable. And then he credits Puff once again to saying, hey, you need to stop yelling so much.
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B
You ain't got to do it every. All the time, dog.
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C
Switch it up a little bit and. And then suddenly you get this dude who realizes. And it's the dance hall influence of his background and everything else. It's like, yo, I can do anything. I can actually. I can rap rhythmically slow, fast. It's so bizarre that across the decades, the thing that he's most known for in Pop culture now is rapping at the speed of light, right? It's like that verse doesn't go anywhere that he did, right? It's always present. There's always someone imitating it online or he's at a show doing it. When he started off, kind of ra ra, ra, like, that's how we knew him and what his origins were. And then you're right, he becomes a Persona. And sometimes he's taking that the wrong way. You know, he doesn't like it when people say that. Like, he's animated and it's his energy because he is incredibly talented. Right. But what he did, like you said, is he sold an entire experience. Not too dissimilar from Missy Elliott. You get the whole bag. You get some rapping, you get some dancing, you get some coordinated movement and some visuals. And yeah, man, he became a spectacle in the very best way.
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He continued, like, looking back on it 30 years later. And maybe it's just because when we see him, he still got Spliff Star with him, right? And, like, the idea, the Hype man went away, but he still feels like the true, the truest connection to what we thought of as an mc. Like, MC means move the crowd type of situation. And continued that all the way through with different means and mechanisms. Like, Buster was never really, like, Nas was trying to turn into cool Mafioso guy, right? Like, Jay Z obviously was trying to make this transition into being billionaire guy. Busta Rhymes always seemed to be like, what I am is a live ass mc.
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C
Yeah. You can't deny Bust of that, man. He's live, he gets the crowd going, and he can rap. He's a talented rapper. And I do think that gets lost in the discussion of how animated he was and how much energy he and Spliffstar have. But, man, they set the party off.
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B
Yeah, but I think that's also because not everybody is great at making records. He's really good at rapping.
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C
Yeah.
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Tell Buster, hey, come back in six months and let us hear the best 15 tracks that you got. And somebody might have to come and save the day. You know what I mean? Like, that's a it. Rap is like hoop, very much so in that regard. But you got some guy that you look at in. In. In the. In the gym just dribbling around and making it happen. Okay, cool. But, like, now it's five on five and, oh, hey, I don't know, like, hey, Coach, what we supposed to do?
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C
Yeah.
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B
LL Cool J is a guy that need Coach to tell him what to Do?
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C
Yeah, yeah. It's like Nicholas Cage. I saw Nicholas Cage in a couple good movies. And, and he, he acted well. The Coen brothers know what to do with him. Right? You know, but if you let him loose on his own, he becomes totally ridiculous. He single handedly taught me the value of a director. It's like, oh, okay, there's a person with a vision who knows how to use your talent so that you look better than you do on your own. And absolutely, I think he fits that bill at times. He also spans so much history. The leaders of the New school got their name from Chuck D. From Chuck.
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B
Busta Rhymes got his name from Chuck D. Yes.
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C
They go so far back that he touches Chuck D moves on. You got Puff in the mix. Dilla, Dr. Dre, Neptunes. He's rapping with Chris Brown. It's like this man's a living artifact. Yeah, he's a connector. Two degrees of Busta Rhymes.
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B
Now let me tell you this one guy where I have been trying to decide whether I wanted to put him in this episode or. Or in the more Boom Bap episode. But I actually think he fits. Even though he's not from New York. Right. He's from New Jersey. And that's Red man, because Buddy Waters comes out in 96. And something that I think a lot of people don't know is that it wasn't but so great for Def jam. Like around 93, 94, the West coast is starting to emerge. Def Jams are getting a little. A little bit wobbly. And two people that really, really get a lot of credit for Def Jam right in the ship that people would not think of. One is Warren G, interestingly enough. And the other one is Redman. And I never thought of Redman again. This is maybe just a function of being in Houston. I loved Red Man. I never thought of Redman as being like, wildly popular because he didn't seem like the type of rapper that would be wildly popular. Except come to find out, actually, Rentman was that dude. And people across the board, like, I feel like Redman had an argument for being the coldest dude in the game around this time in a way, again, that you describe the humor being the backbone of what he was doing in a way that you just don't hear anymore.
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C
Yeah, man, he had that old dirty bastard sort of like dirty authentic, loud and obnoxious thing going on. Like, what was Q Tips coming down the block, man. Loud as fuck. You would swear Redman was inside the truck.
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B
Yes.
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C
Yeah. And somehow it had broad Appeal. It had broad appeal to the mainstream. Street dudes loved it. But white dudes love Red man too. It's crazy. A lot of people had Redman on their list as one of their favorite MCs. I have never totally figured it out, which is not to downplay him. He's dope. I'm just saying. I never figured out why that reached so many people. Because it seemed antithetical to what would be popular in the mainstream. Right. But, yeah, he obviously, like, he made a big impact. And the album start getting weird, right? Muddy Waters is a weird album, but
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B
it's more normal than the one that came before it, which is my favorite one. But there's a dark side is so weird. Like, he says he can't go back and listen to it. He was like, man, I was just going through some things. He used a lot of dope. I don't. I can't really tell you what was going on there. Muddy Waters is a strange record, though.
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C
Yeah. The Rockefeller Remix is one of my favorite records of all time. Comes off that, man. That is like, the. The sound of it, the way he's rapping, it feels very specific to an era, and it feels like a fever dream within that era, man. I love that record.
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B
So my thought on that popularity of Red man, especially with white boys, I think it goes to. I mean, obviously, it's a combination of factors, right? One of them that I think is very easy for us often to act like it doesn't matter, but it does. He's really, really, really good, right? Like. Like his ability to rap and to write, I just don't. It's like, what more could you ask for out of a rapper? He. He. He had a million different flows, right? Like, however you wanted somebody to attack this beat, he had that. He had an obvious presence when he's on the mic or when you see him in video and all of those things again, he is hilarious. And then the next part, somehow, through the course of time, one of the greatest and most important producers in the history of rap music has become wildly underrated. And it's a big part of the Rhettman success, which is. I got these Eric Sermon beats behind me. I don't know how it reached this place where we don't act like Eric Sermon is, like, top 10 ever. Even if he's not your top 10 favorite, top 10 most important, no question. And that's who Redman's got behind him, along with his own beats.
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C
Yeah, that's my original favorite group was epmd, man. I had. I had their second album. I had a bulky yellow Walkman and I took it everywhere. I listened to it front to back. And yeah, it. It shocks me that Eric Sermon flies under the radar now. You know, he. He's getting a little bit more love because I feel like when he resurfaced in the Diddy documentary, people are like, oh, yeah, there's Eric Sermon. He was kind of a significant figure, right? But yeah, you're right. He's got the beats behind him. And he has two other key factors. The videos were kind of a big deal when they would roll out. He'd always have a star or fledgling star in his video, right? And they'd be funny. And then he smoked weed and he was. He became a Cheech and John kind of guy. Especially teamed up with Meth.
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B
And yeah, I was about to say, him and Meth meeting each other, how much more money did they make? Just because being one of those guys, you need a sidekick. And neither was the sidekick, just to be clear. Right. But they both were the sidekick. And that took them to all kinds of places because you needed two of them.
- [48:52]
C
What a weird story. Methods too, because Meth came out with star quality to me, almost a Snoop level of star quality. And then it felt like he fumbled it a little bit. Like I thought he was going to be bigger than he was. And then on the back end of his career, here he is a star again in a different way. Like that is. He's has an incredible narrative now. He's a workout master who is on TV and a sex symbol at a ripe old age or whatever. He is in his 50s, right.
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B
And by the way, stop cussing like 15 years ago.
- [49:21]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [49:23]
B
Right. But so the difference to me between Method man and Red man is Red man can give you three verses on a song. Method Meth got a hot one for you. If you only some. Some people. This is why it's always interesting getting into the Andre Big Boy conversation is that I have heard Big Boy repeatedly give you three verses and kill it. I've just never heard Andre do that. He's never made the decision that that's what he's going to do. Those are vastly different skills. This is when guys leave groups like, basically other than nwa, when the group breaks up, it don't really work no more because not everybody's built to give you three of the Wu Tang. You would not have said Ghostface was the best coming off the first record. To me, as a solo artist, he is clearly the best of all of them, because he's the best equipped to give you three. Even out of Raekwon, who's at his best when Ghostface is with him. Yeah, Ghost is the one that could give you three. And so with Redman, he was that character, but also able to write complete songs.
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C
I agree. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge in 96 there was someone who could give you three as well. Now, they might be from outer space, but I. I got to give it up. Dr. Octagon, cool magnetic MC. It wouldn't be right if I was talking about hip hop and didn't mention my blood cousin. So Keith, man, I want to say, hey, you could give him 25 verses. You probably have.
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B
Oh, man, we. We gonna have more time to talk about Keith when we get. When we get to that next episode. That is a bit more in line with. With the weirdos and the likes, but you are absolutely correct. But that what I love about Redman, A we talked about this. There's like the lack of sense of humor that we see in rap now. But he also, he to me, mainstreamed. Dr. Dre was able to take the sound of funkadelic and put it into, you know, put it into rap. He wasn't the first, like, Dayl was the first one to take one of those samples. But it's obviously different on the west coast records. Redman, to me, was the clearest successor. I mean, funk Dr. Spock. Right. But in terms of creating the visual esthetics of a P Funk record, he's the one that could do like. There's a Dark side that is a P Funk record in every weird old way that a George Clinton record was ever made. That was him. And so even with Muddy Waters, he brings it back again, you know, like it is there.
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C
Yeah, yeah, there is A Dark side is one of the weirdest albums that's ever, ever been released in hip hop for sure. And more people probably need to go back to that. I will add one thing. I will say one of the groups that made one of the weirdest P Funk albums where I mean, and to me, one of the greatest albums ever. It is hilarious. And depending on how you like your politics and religion, maybe too weird. But X Clan to the East Blackwards is an album that contains a whole lot of P Funk. Yes, Brother Jay is rapping really well about some of the craziest shit you've ever heard in your life. Yeah.
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B
X Clan is a group that history decided we're not going to talk about that very much. But was a huge deal.
- [52:39]
C
Was a huge deal. And the whole record bangs. The entire record is full of dope beats, including one of the best samples of that TomTom Club song. That is incredible.
- [52:52]
B
When you hear Eminem talk about how much he loves the X Clan, just, just, just think about what that means, guys. Right? Just think about what that means. Eminem out here jamming S Clan like,
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C
he ain't talking about me. Brother J is like, how could polar bear swing on vines with a gorilla? And he's jamming to it. Give a damn face and you're bound to get slapped.
- [53:18]
B
Yeah, no, that, like, there just used to be a little bit more rude to be playfully ridiculous, right? Like how. No. How no rapper got good jokes anymore. Yeah, totally. Beyond me, man. But look, that's what, that's half of what we were looking at in the east in 96. We're gonna come back later and talk more of that in a couple of weeks. That's my man, Jason England. Google him. Check him out. And some of his stuff at Defector and a few other places. Chronicle of Higher Education and more. My brother, I appreciate you. We got one more to go.
- [53:48]
C
Hey, thank you for having me. Always.
- [53:50]
B
I appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the Right Time. We do this four times a week. Ryan Brumley handled everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line. 323-596-7767. Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe like, Rate us. Review us. Give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.
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