Jason A. England on How A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees & Mobb Deep Defined 1996 | 03.10

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Right Time with Bomani Jones

Episode: Jason A. England on How A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees & Mobb Deep Defined 1996
Release Date: March 10, 2026
Host: Bomani Jones
Guest: Jason England

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Episode Theme & Purpose

This “Time Machine Tuesdays” episode continues Bomani’s deep-dive series on hip hop in 1996, focusing on the transitional period of New York rap and its intersection with pop culture, authenticity, commercialism, and shifting definitions of "the street." Joined by critic and writer Jason England, they explore how seminal albums by A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, Mobb Deep, and others defined a pivotal year, marking the end of a freer, more underground era and the transition into hip hop’s mainstream dominance and commodification.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hip Hop’s Transitional Era (Early 90s to 1996)

• Distinction of 1996: Not just "boom bap"—a broader aesthetic evolved before the fully commercial "shiny suit" era of 1997 (Puff Daddy/Biggie/Nas).
• Artistry vs. Commerce: In 1996, classic albums were often created without a focus on pop success. Afterward, commercial single requirements became standard for everyone.
• Quote [04:18, Bomani]: “Nobody was too hardcore to make a dance record, right. 96, it feels to me...we got a lot of super dope classic albums...not made with the gaze of pop success.”

2. A Tribe Called Quest — "Beats, Rhymes and Life"

• Evolution of Their Sound: Transitional moment—and with J Dilla’s influence, sound evolved but was initially misunderstood by fans.
• Changing Reception: As Tribe grew in success, they became “an expectation,” raising impossible standards and changing group dynamics.
• Q-Tip’s Persona: Negotiation between his street credibility and the media’s “nerd”/bohemian labeling.
• Quote [09:50, Jason]: “There was this tension both in the group between Tip and Fife, and also with Tip and his ambitions...they’d become an expectation. And that meant we set a standard...impossible to live up to.”

3. The Fugees — "The Score"

• Most Unexpected Blockbuster: The Score shattered genre boundaries and audience expectations, breaking out with cross-cultural, international appeal.
• Lauryn Hill’s Stardom: Carried the album—supremely talented, confident, changed the visibility of women in hip hop.
• Pop Sensibility: Wyclef’s production genius, though sometimes considered corny or “try-hard,” opened rap to new audiences.
• Quote [16:15, Jason]: “Really fascinating record. For me personally, I couldn’t stand it...I thought it was a sellout record. It was an obvious pop record...but I can understand that context now. They pushed and expanded that audience with that album.”

4. The Shifting Media & Scene

• End of the Hip Hop In-Between: 1996 marked where artists had to “choose a lane”—commercial or underground.
• Media’s Role: Certain artists stopped getting serious attention as outlets shifted.
• Lost Boys, J. Rude the Damaja, Cellar Dwellers: Groups/MCs who thrived on old models saw their space shrinking.
• Quote [21:21, Bomani]: “After this point, it feels like you either had to go in...a commercial lane...or...Rocket Records...like you had to make a decision.”

5. Other Major Albums & Scenes

De La Soul — "Stakes Is High" [29:50]

• Prophetic Album: Warned where the game was headed. Remains deeply respected but somewhat underappreciated.
• Unique, Unreplicable Sound: Alongside Outkast, De La Soul stood as one-of-one.
• Quote [30:34, Jason]: “Daylight made three of the best albums I’ve ever heard in rap history...so unique...nobody else could have made this album.”

Helter Skelter — "Nocturnal" [33:45]

• Boot Camp Clik Movement: For a moment, NYC debated if BCC or Wu-Tang was the city’s best.
• End of the Local "Scene" Era: After this, hip hop scenes became less place-specific.

Roots — "Illadelph Halflife" [36:46]

• Artist Breakthrough: Black Thought and Malik B’s chemistry peaked, Black Thought’s technical rap skills shone.
• End of Whimsy: Black Thought’s style became more “expected,” less surprising.

M.O.P. & Grimy NYC Sound [39:54]

• Undiluted Brooklyn: Songs like “Downtown Swinga” delivered raw energy still recognizable today (“Annie Up” became a universal anthem despite its aggressiveness).
• Quote [41:05, Bomani]: “There’s no greater example of player hating than robbing people...my brother’s whole thing was robbing people is just that.”

Ghostface & Wu-Tang — "Ironman" [42:20]

• Vulnerability & Poetics: RZA and Ghost’s genius at making tough talk vulnerable and poetic. Energy and masculinity were key to Wu-Tang’s wide appeal.
• Quote [47:14, Bomani]: “The number one indicator that you were dealing with a straight man was fandom of the Wu-Tang Clan. It is the straightest malest music that’s ever been made...after hearing a song where the hook was, ‘watch these rap n words get all up in your guts,’ girls wanted the T-shirts.”

Redman, Keith Murray, Death Squad; Eric Sermon & EPMD [49:14]

• Death Squad Output: Redman’s “Muddy Waters,” Keith Murray’s “Enigma”—street but playful, with vocabulary and primal street energy.
• Eric Sermon’s Legacy: Underrated as a historical producer; EPMD gets little modern credit.

Mobb Deep — "Hell On Earth" [52:45]

• Evolution & Context: Cleaner but darker, more focused that “The Infamous,” embraced their sound and grim urban storytelling.

Dr. Octagon (Kool Keith) & The Outsiders [55:03]

• Cult Classics: Albums like “Dr. Octagonecologyst” pushed boundaries of “street” and “nerd” identities in hip hop.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Hip Hop’s Loss of Experimentalism:
  “We're seeing...the very tail ends of a comet of an era right here. It's almost like you're holding a funeral for a certain era of hip hop.” — Jason England [06:48]
• On Lauryn Hill’s Energy:
  “She always sounded just like a rapper, but not like she was rapping like a man...feminine energy that still went through all of that.” — Bomani Jones [19:15]
• On the Many Definitions of 'Street':
  “Street and gangster are not perfect synonyms. Gangster is within the confines...but what it meant to be street is all over the place.” — Bomani Jones [58:01]
• On the End of an Era:
  “Hip hop is still in this year Joycean. It's a culture in discussion with itself...” — Jason England [58:54]
• On New York’s Changing Landscape:
  “You're not the home team anymore for hip hop after this year, really. And it sounds like Brooklyn for sure.” — Jason England [35:33]

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Important Timestamps

• A Tribe Called Quest / Dilla / Changing Rap Expectations: 05:00–11:40
• The Fugees / Lauryn Hill / Pop Expansion: 14:10–21:00
• De La Soul’s Prophetic Influence: 29:50–33:20
• Helter Skelter & The End of Local Scenes: 33:45–36:25
• Roots / Black Thought’s Ascent: 36:46–39:54
• M.O.P. / Hardcore NY Sound: 39:54–41:46
• Wu-Tang/Ghostface Ironman & Wu’s Masculine Energy: 42:20–47:22
• Eric Sermon/EPMD/Death Squad: 49:14–52:45
• Mobb Deep — "Hell on Earth": 52:45–54:53
• Kool Keith & Dr. Octagon: 55:03–58:01
• Definitions of “Street”: 58:01–59:26

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, nostalgic, irreverent, smartly critical—Bomani and Jason blend personal anecdotes with sharp analysis.
• Frequent references to lived experience (“I was in Wilmington NC, 16 going on 17...”), wide pop cultural awareness, and playful humor (“I have to say...the last few interviews [Eric Sermon]...was saying he passed on signing and producing for Nas, BIG and the Wu-Tang...those are some big whiffs!”).

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Conclusion & Takeaways

1996 represents a fundamental turning point in hip hop—where regional, organic scenes and broad definitions of authenticity gave way to the pressures of mass-market expectations and commercialization. The albums and artists examined stand both as relics of a freer era and as blueprints for the genre’s pop ascendancy. The episode serves as a loving “funeral” for a lost creative landscape, while also celebrating the lasting greatness and audacity of its music and personalities.

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For Further Listening/Reading:

• Bomani recommends revisiting Beats, Rhymes and Life, Stakes is High, The Score, Illadelph Halflife, Nocturnal, Hell on Earth, and Ironman for deeper appreciation.
• Jason England’s work can be found online and in various culture publications.

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Podcast available wherever you listen, with full video on YouTube. Subscribe and rate—“give us five stars, you only give us four stars, I’m inclined to believe you are a hater!” [00:42 / 60:14]

Transcript

[Bomani Jones]

Shot clocks, big shots, upsets, aces TGL Playoffs are here. First Atlanta drives starts their repeat run against Los Angeles Golf Club. Then Rory's Boston Common golf and Tigers Jupiter Lynx face off in their playoff debuts.

[Jason England]

Who will advance?

[Bomani Jones]

Keep up its playoffs. Tune in Tuesday, March 17 at 6:30pm and 9pm only on ESPN and the ESPN app.

[Jason England]

Toogood Co. Co coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk and contain 3 grams of sugar per serving.

[Bomani Jones]

That's 40% less than the 5 grams per serving in leading traditional coffee creamers

[Jason England]

for a r delicious experience.

[Bomani Jones]

Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold,

[Jason England]

bold or frothy, two good coffee creamers

[Bomani Jones]

make every sip a good one. Two good coffee creamers, real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle. 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 Tuesdays. We are here with part five of our series on the year 1996 in hip hop. Thanks to my man Wally Sparks, who was on for the last episode. We talked about the emergence of the south in 1996. Now back with us with some sunglasses on inside the homie Jason England. He has returned. I see you have also given us a new backdrop.

[Jason England]

Oh, yeah, you know, back again like tag team. And since Eminem's Infinite came out this year, try to keep it Slim Shady. New pair, though. New pair. Keep guessing.

[Bomani Jones]

Back again like tag team. Boy, that is an immediate change. The radio station bar right there. Hey, man, the tag team boys, they stumbled on gold, didn't they? We'll get to 1996 in a minute, but for those who don't remember this about 1992, and this was the best part. There was whoop, there it is. And then there it is. There it is. And so what was interesting to me is Whoop, There it is got no play in Houston, but whooped, there it is by 95 South, I believe it was. That one was the Houston joint. I didn't know that. The one that was in the top five was a completely different record. So, yeah, I don't, I don't know how that worked out, who coordinated what, but it was a whoop and a whoop. There it is.

[Jason England]

Yeah, whoop, there it is. Oh, my ballot. I was in Wilmington, North Carolina, doing a summer Program. I remember there was a women's hoops program and a women's cheerleading program there. And I was 16 going on 17. I fell in love with a woman named Tamikia. And that song was one of the anthems of the summer. I didn't. I didn't hear that one out of D.C. either. But they made all the money, right? They were even in commercials recently, like, last couple of years, right?

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah.

[Jason England]

Tag team made all the money.

[Bomani Jones]

And they jumped that off. Cause one of them was the DJ at Magic City, and they. That was like the Magic City call was like. Was. Was. Woop, there it is. It's impossible for me to imagine a time when, whoop, there it is. Was not Cordy and played out, but, you know.

[Jason England]

I know. Wait, do you remember Daisy Dukes?

[Bomani Jones]

Yes.

[Jason England]

Girls at the Daisy Dukes.

[Bomani Jones]

Yes.

[Jason England]

Around that same time, someone had remixed it and they had a song called look at Fat Girls.

[Bomani Jones]

Fat Girls doing Daisy Dukes. Wrong. And I have to say, certainly coming from a flawed perspective, one might argue problematic. But funny. Funny is a completely different discussion.

[Jason England]

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

[Bomani Jones]

So 1996 is an interesting year in that I think this is the best way. I've been trying to figure out, like, the right terms to talk about, like, the wing of albums that I wanted to talk about for 1996. And like, boom bap feels inappropriate because I think. I think a boom bap rap is a very, very, very specific. And what we're talking about is a little bit broader than that. But what I mean by what I'm talking about is. And this is the best way I can make the point, for those of you who don't remember, it was this cat named Mike Geronimo, right? Mike Geronimo had a joint, came out in 95 called Master I See I'm so high, you so high I be getting right, Right. Like, it was a rap. It was very much a Rap City song, Right. It would be in the top 10 or whatever, but it was. I want to say that's like, like, like, like B minus type Jordan. Like boot camp. Click. One of them butt shot, I think, is the one who produced that one. But anyway, that's the aesthetic that we're talking about. 1997 comes around small, fucking got on a shiny suit and a puffy beat on a Kelly Price hook and he dancing and singing in the video. Right. In 1996, there was not an expectation that your album had to have a club song, Right? That was part of. You talk about this a lot. The first single off of it was Written by Nas in 96 being if I ruled the World. He had made a compromise at that point. Like it was him feeling like, this is what, you know, this is what I need to do to aspire to the heights of success that I wish to have. After 96, it didn't even feel like people were doing that because it's like, oh, this is where I wish to go. It was like a requirement for everybody. Like, that is maybe the biggest Puffy Biggie influence in all of this, is that nobody was too hardcore to make a dance record, right. 96, it feels to me, and if I'm overstating this, let me know. But we got a lot of super dope classic albums out here that were not made with the gaze of pop success. And I think there were very few records after this year that were done with that sort of outlook.

[Jason England]

One thing I say, just to give them this proper credit, it was Buck Wild, not Buckshot, who did Master Master. I see. But yeah, it's crazy. I think about this not just in 96, but let's. Let's go way back. This is what made Hip hop for me so incredible as a genre. It was like punk rocking that you didn't know where it was going ever. So when Tribe first comes out and they have an album about a small person in a weird hat and they're in El Segundo looking for a lost wallet, I didn't know it was capacious. Like, where could a record start and stop? And it was dope because it sounded great, right? It had no marketing aim like that. And you talk about the radio, like legitimately. We joke a lot about my cousin Cool Keith and his multiple aliases in his alt career, but him and ultra Magnetic, they 1-212-1212. That was on the top 10 radio prime time in New York City. They used to play records like that, which made the scene totally different. So, yes, we have the very last whiffs of this. We have like, groups like the Cellar Dwellers are still trying to come out in 96, you know, but there's no real lane for them except the underground. And then like you said earlier as we were talking up here, Tribe comes out and they kind of put out one of the last records where. And even though they did have like a somewhat radio single, still like a regular Tribe album, because they were the ones who kind of set that in motion, where it was like, yo, if you have a movement and a sound, then you can break an album. And I think that was the end of it right there. We're seeing the vert like a comet, the very tail ends of a comet of an era right here. And it's a really depressive era to look back on. In some ways. It's almost like you're holding a funeral for a certain era of hip hop.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. Like the Tribe Build is interesting because Beats, Rhymes and Life is the fourth Tribe album. So we start with people's instinctive travels past the rhythm, be the apple bomb, Can I kick it? Left My Wilderness, Nel Segundo. And there really had been no record like that up until this point. The next time out is Low End Theory, which Bob Power just died in the week that we are recording this rest in peace to him. And I think I was talking about this with a man, Ben Hamin, on his podcast for all nerds the other day. One of the things that's interesting about Bob Power was Bob Power, who was a famous engineer like d'. Angelo. Brown Sugar is basically d', Angelo, and Bob Power, like, a lot of that guitar work on there is Bob Power, all of this. But he said the only rap he listened to was the rap he worked on, which is a testament to what it was to do rap back in the day in the sense that it was so free form that this white man could be the one helping you get all the sounds that you want without really having a strong familiarity with the genre, because the genre was still so free form that it could be there. But Low End Theory is one of the best sounding records that anybody has ever made. And it is Q Tip who, to me, is the epitome of rapping like a producer, which is to say he raps like an instrument. Right? Like all the flows on A Tribe record are laid down and vocally produced to be instruments as part of the aesthetic of Q Tip, the genius that he has put together. And so they take these jazz records and they make this incredible record with Low End Theory, then come behind after that with Midnight Marauders, which they're also rising in chart success as they do this. And Midnight Marauders is a bit more. It. It's. It's a bit grittier than, like Low in Low End Theory, I think had more whimsy to it. And I don't feel like Midnight Marauders really has any whimsy to it at all. But they went as far as they were going with that sound. J Dilla, who at the time was going by JD he emerges in 95 with those far side tracks with Running with Drop, a couple other joints. Now 96 comes. He does this album with Tribe together. Tribe has gotten so big now that they are like, it's the number one record. This D. This record debuted at number one, but we wasn't that thrilled with it, which I can't tell even going back and listening to it, it's hard to get. It doesn't feel like the problem was the record. It just felt like the. The times were changing on them, but they were like, we always did this for us anyway.

[Jason England]

Yeah. I think the times were changing on them. And then with Dilla's edition, they were changing on what people expected from the Tribe record. And it is. I was one of those people where I was like, yo, this doesn't sound right to me. Initially grew on me slightly, and then when I went back to it a decade later, I was like, oh, I was out of my mind. The sound is dope. It's just like anything else. You can't have too much. And we've talked about this in terms of people in places and also music and celebrity. You want to be a pleasant surprise rather than an expectation. Once you become an expectation, people get bored of you. When you're a pleasant surprise, people are always happy to see you. Tribe just loomed so large that I felt like they'd become an expectation. And that meant we set a standard for them that was impossible to live up to. And I think they were outgrowing things, too. You talked about how gritty Midnight Marauders sounded. And I think there was this tension both in the group between Tip and Fife, and also with Tip and his ambitions. And the fact that. And I talked with my homie Shaka about this. The definition of what street or nerd was and real was yes. People had kind of pigeonholed Q Tip, almost like he was a bohemian nerd rapper. And Tip is like, look, but I'm out here. I got chicks, I got hands. I'm really from these streets. I'm hanging with real street dudes.

[Bomani Jones]

I just did give up the goods last year.

[Jason England]

Y' all acting like you don't know who I am. And I think that his ambition and maybe even his insecurity. And I don't mean that negatively. I mean just the insecurity between who he really was and who people started to view him as bothered him. And that changed things, too. I mean, that's why he goes off and he does a solo, I think.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. And it really, like I said, it really jumps off. Put the vibrant thing comes out. Because what makes vibrant things so amazing to look back on is that beat is. That's. That's. That's a Dilla beat. It is a slapper. It comes up, everybody like. It is the opposite of scared of girls music made by an ultimate Scared of Girls producer. All of that is there, but we ain't want that from you.

[Jason England]

No.

[Bomani Jones]

Right. You out here with no shirt on and a fur coat. Yeah, we don't want that for you.

[Jason England]

Arguably my favorite hip hop figure ever, I think a singular genius when I really sit with it. Those formative years, for me, he was somebody who, for me, was a role model, where it was like, all right, you don't have to put on airs. You can be from this sort of urban environment. You can still do artistic stuff. And so when I saw him like that, and then when I saw him, like, kind of in that era hanging out with what they call him, like, the Pussy Pack or the Pussy Patrol, it was him and Toby Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio, and he was breaking cameraman's cam, paparazzi's cameras. I said, this is not the guy. I had put him on a pedestal, and this was unfair to him. I had an idea of who Q Tip needed to be. He had gone in a totally different direction.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, yeah. He was like, no, no, no, no, no. And it's. It's an interesting thing. I once saw 50 Cent Wants edited an issue of Double XL, and he did an interview with Talib Kweli, and Talib was explaining. He was like, yo, I wish I could come up with hooks in the stuff that you want to do. Which is to say, in many cases, your favorite underground rapper is not there because he wants to be. He has simply not figured out his path to. To be in the guy that's in the video with all the girls by the car. Right. Q Tip, it. It took him a long time to get there, but he figured it out and he got there. But you're right, Beast RS in life. I look back on it and I listen to it in, like, retrospective. It's like, no, no, no. It was. It was fine. I just think what happened was it was such a cluttered, chaotic year, and so much had come out that for you to rise up and really stand as, like, oh, this is a super dope record. We already talked about this. By the time Beats Rhymes in Life comes out, Tupac has already dropped and given us a banger. A bunch of other records that we're going to talk about. Like, the Busta Rhymes emergence has already taken place. By the time these Rhymes in Life Comes out Too Short. Getting it out number 10. I was like, like, all kinds of things have finally come out. And now it's like, yo, the Jay Z has come out. We have so many new things that are stimulating us. And then you get to the Tribe record and you're like, you know, I just. Like. It came out the same day as Riding Dirty. It wasn't even the best record to come out that day.

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Too Short, man. I think about him a lot in terms of people who supposedly couldn't rap. I always think about him saying, they say the dog can't rap, but my bank account approved that. That was my guy. I mean, I think that maybe more than the other guys who get credit for the more popular ones, he was the one who opened my ears to west coast music. Yeah. It was just so fun.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. He knew, like, he made very good music, was. It depends on what you mean by a great rapper, right?

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

He's got some. He's got some incredible verses, right? Like. Like. Like, I don't know how much rapping he was doing, but he's got some incredible verses. Now I'm gonna go through some of these records really chronologically. Right. And the first one I want to talk about. And this is a record that you and I have talked about a lot off Air. And I think it's really interesting with the way that it looms large and the magnitude of it. And by the way, came out the same day as All Eyes on Me. To me, the most unexpected, blockbuster record in the history of the rap of rap, the Fugees. The score comes out in February of this year. Okay. The record Is a Universe is universally considered to be a classic. Fuji Lie come out into 95. That was, like, the first single. What jumped this record off is their cover of Killing Me Soft. Yeah. Killing Me Softly. Right. Like that comes out. Lauryn Hill is a giant star. The stardom comes from here. But it is wild how this record is viewed as such a classic. And I'm inclined to agree that it's a classic, but I don't hear people play it. I don't hear people talk about it. If you ask people to start running through all the jams on it, it's not really that easy to do. And. And a record with three rappers, and one of them is good. She's great. She's all time good. Then one of them is there, and the other one always went last because if you went first, you wouldn't listen to the rest.

[Jason England]

Really fascinating record for Me personally, I couldn't stand it. I thought it was a sellout record. It was an obvious pop record. They were sampling in you. I'm talking about my views back then. You know, I understand why it's. It's like. Like all things, they exist in a larger context, and I can understand that context now. I was the audience for rap for a long time. That audience expanded and they pushed and expanded that audience with that album. So, yeah, it came out of nowhere because most of us were not expecting something like that to have broad appeal. It just. It didn't have knockers the way we thought of knockers, but it did have knockers the way that a larger audience, whites, black people from different countries who were becoming a larger base of consumers, too, understood and saw themselves in music. And Lauryn Hill, just a phenomenal talent that's a one on one. You want to talk about a comet, There you go. She's a comet, right? And you could ride that comet to great success. And to give Wyclef his credit, Wyclef has made a lot of questionable music for me, a lot of questionable personal decisions, and sometimes just seems a bit like a cornball. But you can't say he had no ear for music and he wasn't producing his ass off. He understood a sort of pop sensibility, and he took it and he let that group ride it to commercial success that we never saw coming. The stuff that happened after with some of his solo stuff. I know you're a fan of his first solo album, but, yes, it just got confusing to me. Where he was getting funded for it. Is the money coming from? Where is it coming from? Like Dark Government, it felt like a money laundering scheme. But he was. He was on. On his. On that first album.

[Bomani Jones]

So part of what's funny to me is when I think of the sound of this record outside of, like, Ready or Not is, which is, to me the only track on that record that really sounds like they spent a lot of money on it, Right. I don't hear it as a pop record as much. I do hear it very often. One thing Wyclef was is a little bit of a try hard, right? Like, ooh, I want to put one thing white. I say one thing Wyclef loves to do is make sure, you know that he listens to white people music, right? Like, he. Like, he really wants to make sure that you understand that that's sampling in you, right? Like, I just want to make sure that you understand that I be over there too. Like, I Thought that it was still pretty squarely within a, like, very particular east coast sort of aesthetic that they were going for. It also has, for my money, the greatest interlude in the history of rap music, which is the Chinese restaurant that never stops being hilarious. There was no way to see it coming. And I can't believe, like, who thought who. Who Wyclef is. Wyclef is Skit Guy. I will give him that. Like, if he just. All he did was tell jokes, it probably would have worked out a little better for him in the end. But to me, it's all about the comet. That Lauryn Hill was such a supernova in this moment because, look, she sang all right on there.

[Jason England]

Like, she.

[Bomani Jones]

She was all right. Like, this isn't it. Like. Like, she. She not a legend in two Games. Like Pee Wee Kirkland, okay? Like, she is a rapper who could do a little bit of singing, but rapping. I felt like she could have been the greatest rapper of all time, and she decided she wanted to keep doing that. She was perfect in every single way. And she had this interesting thing of. Rap is a very masculine genre. And she always sounded just like a rapper, but not like she was rapping like a man, you know what I mean? Like, it was a feminine energy that still went through all of that, on top of the fact that she was bad and she was better at rapping than every single one of them. Like, she. Nobody's ever carried the rest of them. I felt like quite like she carried everything on that. And just about always with verse two, right? Because, you know, she was going to have to get a really high up there, so y' all to be cool with what was coming after that.

[Jason England]

She had an absolute irreducible confidence that bolstered her voice. So, like you said, it's not masculine, but it's so confident. I think Rod Diggitt has that MC Light had that you stood at attention anytime you heard their verse come on, right? And she had on top of that, you know, she's young, she's gorgeous, she's confident, she can sing. I mean, this was very lamentable for a fan that she decided she didn't want to keep going with this for many reasons that are personal. Right. It seemed like the sky was. Was the limit for her. And this is someone who came out of a scene where, you know, when Wyclef and when they were making those early songs, no one cared about Boof Boff and Mona Lisa. Can I Get a Day? They're beefing, they're competing With Natural Elements, who no one even remembers, but I love Natural Elements. It was a college rap group or a rap group that was on those college stations, and then beefing with J Rue to Damage it very, very openly, right? And then all of a sudden, they can't even get a conversation with Fujis, right? Fujis don't have to talk to anybody now. Tupac's dissing them, Right.

[Bomani Jones]

J Rue's another dude that had an album come out this year, Right. And again, the idea that someone like J. Rude to Damage it could be famous.

[Jason England]

Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

That kind of stops at this point, Right. Like, after this point, it feels like you either had to go in and I'll use it was written as the example and call that a commercial lane for purposes of this discussion, or you had to go the Rockets Records, Right. Way, right? Like you had to make a decision. You're trying to get yourself some money or not, which direction you gonna go in. And a dude like J. Ruder, Damage it could just exist as JRU the Damager, and we would all know who he was off of a couple of tracks.

[Jason England]

Well, part of it, too, was that the media that covered hip hop cared. So that first album, people discussed it as a potential classic, and so people paid attention. Second album came out, nobody Cares As Much. It's like Jay with Reasonable Doubt. One of the interesting things about Reasonable Doubt and how it was unrecognized by so many people is that it didn't get reviewed until Dream Hampton snuck it in and attached it to the it was written review, right? So no one knew about it. No one knew to talk about it until they were told to know that those. Those channels don't. They stop existing in that way and they serve commercial purposes that hurt J Ru. But also flat out, some of these records started sounding a little bit stale. They weren't quite as good as the debuts. There were several in this year specifically. Right. But that one you came out with Playing Yourself over the. J Rue comes out with Playing Yourself over the repurposed, sort of reimagined Junior Mafia beat. It was provocative because of what it was covering, but it wasn't a great record to me. Right. He comes out with Whatever is another record on there which uses the same sample as Give up the Goods and Give up the Goods sample. The way they flipped it was just a little bit better, and it was a better record, right? So, like, There Was Me, not the Paper is an incredible beat, and there's a remix to it that's also incredible. But there were just A few highlights, and that was it. It was a very forgettable album. Made me very sad because it kind of faded away after that.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, yeah. The ultimate in between on those two lanes that I was talking about, these guys, they got a career where every song that was good you heard on the radio, and if it didn't make it to the radio, it was not good. But this was the year. The Lost Boys. Lost Boys put out four monster singles on that record, right? The rap group with two dudes who I don't really. Well, at least one, I don't really know what he do. Another one who just pop up and be loud every now and then, the DJ and the most unlikely, like, pop rap maestro in Mr. Cheeks. Yeah, but them tracks is hard. Like, for the most part, that stuff was banging.

[Jason England]

Yeah. I liked one of the ones that wasn't a single. To get up and clap your hands. That was an incredible song. But they were wild because people have to remember. People make fun of Staten island and they talk about how the woo came out of nowhere. When you're coming from Southside Queens, that might as well have been Staten island to a lot of people in New York, right? It was way out there. So for them to come out of there. And Lost Boys being a street crew as well as just their group name, they came and they bum rushed with a whole crew, and they had serious ties to the street and they had this authenticity, this incredible energy and the. I think that the sum was greater than the talent. Maybe Cheeks wasn't rapping his ass off on every song, but he was generating a feeling. That album was everywhere in New York. It almost reminds me of Onyx's first album, where it's like, this came out of nowhere. And I don't think people would believe you if you're like, yo, these were the biggest rappers in the world for half a second, right? Like, seriously, you couldn't go anywhere in New York without hearing this music. And of course, the most comical bar of all time for me, you know, when he said, shorty want to be a lawyer? She said, you want to be. In other words. In other words, shorty studied law. Yes.

[Bomani Jones]

That song is the. The narrative of Renee is preposterous. It is utterly ridiculous. There is no explanation how or why she got shot any of this. Like, they was just like, yo, we got to do something for these girls. I got an idea. Okay, let's go. It also, I think, is an interesting record in explaining what a single could or could be that changed over years. Like Easy Mo B's got two of those big singles on that record, right? Like the idea that a dude with his style has singles for you. This is this, this. It couldn't happen like that for much longer though.

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. But Cheeks made a comeback, right?

[Bomani Jones]

He, he did camera action that was a smash. He found like he is the most unlikely of all of this. Like he found himself a little bit, a bit of a lane because after Freaky Todd died, they decided they couldn't be the Lost Boys no more. I think that whatever they were, they could have continued, but they that's how they felt. Okay, there we go. But hey, coming up next, we got more from the year 1996. Ever wanted to go to the NBA Finals? Well, now's your chance. Courtesy of FanDuel. All you have to do is use your profit boost on an NBA future and you'll be entered for a shot to win an NBA Finals trip for two NBA futures. Let you lock in your pick for who you think will go all the way, whether it's a team to win the championship or a conference title. Visit FanDuel.com Bomani to get started, play your game with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA, 21 plus and

[Jason England]

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[Jason England]

Phenomenal sound and record, man. You know, everybody talks about daylight, so I'm not going to say that they're forgotten group and their albums not being on stream and played a little bit of a part and the albums falling off people's radar because they just weren't played every day the way everything else was. But I think somehow still a little bit unheralded, still a little bit underrated

[Bomani Jones]

like I would say by black people. The white people who like to say they like rap or who they love,

[Jason England]

De La Soul, they do that. This is true this is true. But, I mean, Daylight made three. Three of the best albums I've ever heard in rap history. And people don't talk about them. And something about them reminds me of Outkast, which is to say. And I was talking with a friend about this. Certain groups are unbindable. You cannot replicate them. MCs don't even try. What they had was so their own, so out there, so unique. Right. And so whenever I listen to this album, that's what I'm thinking to myself. Like, man, this is just like, nobody else could have made this album. Just like the first two. No one could have made these albums.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, Pause. The news is there's one guy that sounds like that, right? And what's. What we so dope about a pause bar is when he drops it in there, he'd be like, yeah, why wouldn't I have thought of that? Right? Like, he's like. He's not smashing Adams here, but it's always the right line and the meter that he would typically use or when he drops in on the flow. The timing is so different than just about anybody else that would be out there. Like, you know, he was one of one. Then you had Dave in there with him, and Dave was kind of like, perfect compliment sort of situation. It did not feel. It didn't feel the same as it did with Tribe, where there was a clear A and B. Yeah, right. I thought it was clear that Paz was the better rapper, but Dave served a. It felt like a different purpose.

[Jason England]

Yeah. It depended on the song and how I felt about them. And conceptually, I think they remain unraveled. You know, I think about a song like, not on this album, but Bitty's in a BK lounge. But they were rapping about anything and everything, and it was compelling. It pulled you in, it made you laugh. Their skits were incredible. Daylives are one on one. I'm happy that they're kind of catching this swan song right now. I just saw that tiny desk performance, and their new album out had some songs on it I really enjoyed.

[Bomani Jones]

So speaking of another great interlude on an album, because this is also, by the way, the last. This is the year before the interlude thing got out of hand and everybody thought they were a comedian and they had to have, like four or five of them. But that's the one I still need to find. When they got that clip of that white man rap. I don't like it. I don't like it. It's just N words talking.

[Jason England]

I referenced that all the time, man.

[Bomani Jones]

Say, say, me and my partner, we've been. For years, we have been like, yo, we have got to get nt.com off the ground. Like, we. We gotta make it happen. Because that's just all it was. And then the problem is nt.com is just podcast. The whole world. That's all it is. That's. Somebody needs to redo that.

[Jason England]

Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

Don't like it.

[Jason England]

Bunch of them talking.

[Bomani Jones]

Just. Yeah, they just talking. That's all.

[Jason England]

Twitter. Twitter is the epit.

[Bomani Jones]

Exactly. That's what we need. That when they changed it to X, no, partner, it was a name just sitting here right in the tuck, waiting on you. In words. Talking.com. got it for you. Oh, I had forgotten also, this was when the Helter Skeleton Nocturnal album came out. Love that album because this is the year before the.

[Jason England]

The.

[Bomani Jones]

The Boot Camp Click album that disappointed us all came out that one in the. The ogc, the Storm. Ooh, that was tough. That was tough. But the Helter Skeleton Nocturnal. Bang Helt.

[Jason England]

Skeleton Nocturnal is an incredible album. Operation Lockdown still gets played to this day, probably weekly for me. Sean Price had one of the greatest reinventions ever when he reemerged on the solo tip. And Rocknest Monster is just an incredible voice. And I mean, I think bars from them all the time. And that was a group that, once again, we said this before. People act like it's crazy to say when the movement was strong with boot camp, they were compared to the Wu Tang. And it was questionable in New York who the better crew was. And then we saw who the better crew was. Right? But the star power and the talent in that group. If you go back and listen to Nocturnal, you hear it very clearly. You have one of the dopest voices in rap. And you got a dude who's incredibly underrated, with a sense of humor, who's just barring you to death, who inspired a whole generation of rappers. Sean Price's influence remains even with the young kids coming up today in a way that like an MF Doom does. And it shocked me, but I think that speaks to the legitimacy and authenticity of his personality and his talent.

[Bomani Jones]

And that music sounded like a New York that no longer exists. Like, I think you and I talked about this when I watched He Got Game not that long ago. And I would looked at it and it was like I had been to New York a little bit in that time period, and I remember how that felt. But I remember watching those shots of Coney island, the basketball court, and being like, oh, okay, this is what the rap sounded like. Like when I first moved here, somebody told me they were like, yeah, you gonna have them cold rainy days. You throwing that mob deep, infamous. And it's gonna make sense. But I also think records could. Sounded like a New York record. This is also the end of you being able to do that. And that just be what you had to do.

[Jason England]

Yeah. You're not the home team anymore for hip hop after this year, really. And it sounds like Brooklyn for sure. And this is a conversation I had when I was just back for a brief trip in New York. I had it with a close friend and I had it with you too. It's so wild. Because it's not just that this album sounds like Brooklyn, it sounds like New York. Truly. There are just no black people in Manhattan anymore. And Manhattan used to be teeming with black people. There's an era where a lot of people remember that even in midtown Hell's Kitchen, like, there were Lower east side, so many black people in Manhattan. And I was back there and it's like, yo, as you said, I think after 1:10. No. Right. Who stole the soul. Right. So it's a reflection not only of how the music changed, but how the city just totally changed.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, well, like, if you told people that the cage, the basketball courts at west fourth street that are famous for that. Right. That's in the West Village, man. If you know New York in. In current terms, and I'm telling you that they was hooping at the West Village. It took me forever to understand how that worked.

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. West Village was. Was super duper hip hop hangout too. There was so many underground MCs all around the West Village every day.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. And see, and that's another thing about what New York was, that it is not also was a place that people came to be rappers. And so you just had all these people around and like a scene built up. Like, it's hard to. Scenes are hard to come by these days. And this is also kind of the end of like things coming out, not just out of your city, but specifically about a scene, something within that city. Very often. MC Light, I forgot she put the Cold Rocket Party album out also this year too. Like, this is a crazy high level of volume that was coming out the roots. So Illidove Half Life is my favorite roots record. Like, it's one of those that the second it go, like, as soon as you get into respond, react, you're like, oh, this is different. Because the first one was like the jazz joint, which was a very really really good record. But the same way I say on Riding Dirty Bun, B was like, I'm going to show you guys that I am colder than all of you. He and Black thought, like, this was there. 1996. Black gets on and smokes everything in front of him for like 75 minutes worth of music.

[Jason England]

Yeah, it's a sad album for me to look back on because Malik B and Mars are now passed. Right. Like, yeah, it had where it hit, like. And Mars was one of the rappers on Clones. Where it hit, man, it was razor sharp. I prefer the first album. It was a little. Or I should say it's really the second album. Right. But the first big album that they put out. Do you want more? I get chills when I listen to it, but I get chills when I listen to certain records off this too. You're talking about a rapper who's functioning at such a high level. I love Black Thought. He still can cook up a verse that sounds better than almost anyone. Right. I don't love this era of Black Thought where he comes and he's an expectation again. I loved it when he was almost. It's like a cutting edge author who no one has any expectations of and he can go in any direction he wants. Now he feels like an invited guest that you paid a real serious fee to and you know exactly. And he knows exactly what is expected of him. And so he just spits these like 7,000 bars. But he was at his most unpredictable and whimsical back then. So those two albums for me are the best of Black. Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

Like, I felt like he was rapping in a way that when I'd heard that, I had never heard anybody that rap like that in like the way Biggie does. Biggie did a decent bit of this, but I don't think anybody was better at like changing the stresses on syllables and pronunciations. Like to make. To make the bars fit the way that he wanted to and to throw the other words in there. Just wrecking shop. Like, I thought about being Malik. I'd be like, y' all supposed to go after this again?

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, look, Garth's in his own class. I thought though, that Malik balanced him so well. And I really. There are times on the album before this is where you can tell what thoughts Evolution was. There are times you can't tell them apart. There are a couple songs you can't tell when the one starts rapping after the other stops rapping, that they were that connected on that album. And then suddenly it's starkly clear every record. Who. Who's rapping when I like, thought just went to another galaxy.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. Also this year, by the way, them grimy mop cats drop a, you know, DJ premiere. All producers have guys, they just love their voices. And me and Primo probably have more disagreements about who is worthy of primo beats that I would ever have ever with any producer. Except for Mop.

[Jason England]

Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

Except like this. Who are. What are these guys? Do they come from the most treacherous part of the city and basically they're going to rob you.

[Jason England]

Yeah. Downtown Swinger was my joint, man. Wow. That's a. That's an incredible song. This is some of the hardest tracks have ever been produced. I don't understand how this caught on and how mop that. To me, you want to talk about a group that just sounds totally Brooklyn and should have a limited audience. How did Annie up become a joint that's persisted for decades? In commercials? White people love it. Punk is love. Annie up is. Everyone's like, yo, play the song. Where they gonna rob you? That's the anup.

[Bomani Jones]

Yes. Yo, that's. My brother talked about this once. He said he was on a cruise and they played Eddie up and he was like, it set the party off. But this doesn't make. Because my brother's whole thing is that there's no greater example of player hating than robbing people.

[Jason England]

Yeah. Yeah, right.

[Bomani Jones]

Like, just. That's the idea that that's what you're going to do is like the ultimate example of straight up player hating. But them having what is effectively a pop classic that has persisted for 25 years in change. That's not even this album, but it's 25 years and change.

[Jason England]

Yeah. Kidnapped, kidnapped that fool, yeah oh, oh,

[Bomani Jones]

oh yeah, yeah, yeah it's not even a primo beat. That's the other part. Like, none of it. Yeah, none of it makes sense, but they. They had a vibe. It was just a real energy. It was just a very ominous energy that did not. Somehow it did not feel gratuitous, but it should have been.

[Jason England]

To this day. Rugged Never Smooth is a. Is a song that stays in my gym mix. Four Alarm Blaze with Jay Z is one of my favorite Jay Z verses, too. That stays in my mixes when I do a cardio session. They just had high energy, grimy. It's like re watching the Godfather or something. This seems real to me. I see myself here. I don't want to be like this in real life, but for this moment, I see myself as Michael Corleone making Some difficult decisions. Killing some people. Yes.

[Bomani Jones]

Yo, where are you on Ghostface Iron Man?

[Jason England]

I think it's. It's a slight step down, but I still love it. Ghost is. Ghost and Mop have something. It's so funny. I heard this rapper who I'm really enjoying these days, named Errol Holden, and he was talking about Ghost and Mop, and he said Ghost and Mop were rappers who rapped at you. Right. They're not rapping for you, they're rapping at you aggressively. And it works for them because of their cadence and. And their material and authenticity and. And so Ghost always wins for me, Always. But it was a slight step down for me. Like most of the albums released this

[Bomani Jones]

year by Luminaris, so I felt like Iron man was just a little too long. Right. And it's also done. I don't know if you watch that Wu Tang doc, the Sasha Jenkins one, where they were talking about the beef over RZA putting out that one album that he just sold to fucking Shkreli, right?

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

And Rizza's point was, I never told them when an album was coming out, like, they would just constantly make music, and then one day RZA would put it all together, and then, boom, there was an album. And so for whatever reason, RZA saw really both Ghost and Ray as cats that needed each other in order to get it done. And so the Ghostface album, the first Ghostface Iron man, feels like a bit of a continuation of Only built from Cuban Links. Ghostface is all over that one. And then they throw capadonna in this, and so it's like, okay, there's like a couple tracks too long on there. They put Winter wars on there. Took it off the soundtrack for Don't Be a Minutes, put it on there. So you get the Capadonna Victory Tour, but all that I got is you. I remember when that album came out and my brother brought it home and was like, I'm about to play for you the best one verse I think I have ever heard in my life. And he plays it, and it is the most heart wrenching, evocative. Like, I did not fully understand the Ghostface situation until that one, because that's when you realize, oh, this is actually tough talking. Though it may be all vulnerability all the time, just in a really weird sort of way.

[Jason England]

I've never understood how the Wu got popular. I got to be honest with you, and I love them, but I do not understand how this material connects with such a large group. And it has to be about the energy, Right. Because I love it and it feels very specific. It is hood poetics, Daytona 500 doing forever shit like pissing out the window on turnpikes, Right? It was years ago. I have a literature background, you know, I was a professor of writing fiction and nonfiction for many years. And I read a lot of literature, a lot of poetry. I was reading a famous poet named Charles Simmit, and he talked about pissing into a cell with the feeling of eternity. I said, brother, Charles Simic and Ghostface are lining up with the same idea. Because that's how much of a poet Ghost is on the hood tip instinctually. Man, like, man, he just caught me off guard. It shouldn't have made sense. And it always made sense to me.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. And that is, again, the energy on every Ghostface track. It's just like he is all the way in here. It was also rza. Jimmy Page is kind of like this in rock geniuses who don't exactly know what they're doing. Right? Like. Like, it all comes together in the end. But, like, if you really wanted them to try to explain it, that's probably not gonna go down. Riz's ability to work all those movie clips in the way the tracks would always be sequenced. So what if he's got his machine set to the wrong set settings and everything else? They would all just come together. And again, even this record, which is just a little bit too long, right? It goes. Now, to answer your question of what it was that made them so successful, I will point to this. When Cambridge Analytica was like, people were first getting word on this. And what Cambridge Analytica was doing was they were using, like, your Facebook likes and everything else to know what ads and what things to suggest to you. That's when this idea was. Was very new. And one thing that was interesting about it was they felt they were capable of. They could tell if you were gay even if you hadn't come out just based upon your. Your online activity, Right. Which is create some dangerous stuff. But anyway, they said that the number one indicator that you were dealing with a straight man was fandom of the Wu Tang Clan. It is the straightest malest music that's crazy has ever been made saying, whether people like it or not, ain't much in this world more popular than straight men. Think about this after hearing a song where the hook was, watch these rap n words get all up in your guts. Girls wanted the T shirts.

[Jason England]

Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

The only explanation for this is it's just undisputed masculinity.

[Jason England]

Yeah. Yeah, Bremen with machismo every step. Yeah. And hood poetry and machismo. I can't disagree with that. And about rza, I'm thinking now about Bob Power, who we talked about. And when he was talking about Tribe and he's talking about Dilla, he was talking about the imperfections in hip hop beats being where the funk comes from. That that's kind of what makes a great record great. And there was this grime in all of the RZA stuff that I don't know what to attribute it to. First of all, you got to attribute to his vision and singular genius as well. When he was in his bag, never has there been a producer who's been more profound of a producer. Never. Not one of them. All right? He's right there with everyone when he's in his bag. But also, I got to know what kind of dust he was smoking. You know, I'm not going to just tell. I think he was just smoking dust all the time. But there might have been something about the dust that made him see. Like, my homie had a. He had a home. My cousin had a homeboy who used to listen to these records, and he would smoke laced weed while he listened to him. And he told my cousin, if you smoke the lace weed, you hear the hidden beats. And I said, maybe this dude was on the same wavelength as RZA when he was making it. He could hear.

[Bomani Jones]

And if RZA stopped smoking dust, I normally wouldn't say this, but he should start again.

[Jason England]

I try not to pay much attention to the rhythm music post when it mattered to me. He was coming out with rock songs with a group called Faulkner, about New York City. I don't know what that was about. There was just some really troubling thing that came out from his cousin the other day where she was saying she went on tour with him at 17 and. And she was actually sleeping with Rizza. Yo, that was a big story. Now, allegedly, she says that, but the more I learned about my heroes, the less I want to know. And then I just go back to the music. Let's light a J. Yep. And listen to the music and stop thinking about them as people. Yep.

[Bomani Jones]

Awkward subject change. Where were you on the Death Squad Cats? Cause we had a Red man and a Keith Murray record dropped this year. I love that Keith Murray Enigma. I like that record a lot. It's directly tied to the fact that I had the tape in my car, but I like that one. And then Muddy Waters is another. It's a banger, guys.

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. You can't go wrong with Death Squad. I probably wasn't as high on Death Squad as some of my friends were, and Keith Murray was the ultimate of that for me. He sounded really good sometimes, and other times he was a little too astrological, phenomenological and numerological and all that, but. But, yo, there has never been a gullier dude who had access to a thesaurus. Keith Murray wasn't playing around. You know, like, you might hear one of his rappers.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. He's like the halfway between David Wade's character on A Living Color and TI.

[Jason England]

Yeah. And you're not really catching Keith Murray at fat beats. You might think that because of what he's rapping. But now you catching him out in the street smoking a blunt, drinking too much, fighting somebody. Right. Yeah.

[Bomani Jones]

Beating somebody with a barstool, because that's what he went down for, right?

[Jason England]

Yeah. Yeah. But My Beautiful Thing in this World is a wild single for somebody to have, Right? You talk about. That's an impossible single to imagine charting these days. And that was a hit.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah. Just on the strength of how he sounds on the hook. And it. I mean, that's an Eric Sermon knocker. Eric Sermon, somehow wildly underrated as a historical figure in rap, which is why every interview with Eric Sermon is him explaining to you all the things that Eric Sermon ever did in rap, which I normally find problematic, except I can't blame him because nobody else does it.

[Jason England]

Yeah. I have to say, the last few interviews I've heard from him, he was saying he passed on signing and producing for Nas BIG and the Wu Tang, although I think it was specifically Raekwon. So those are some big whiffs. He was busy. He was too big at the point. I think he thought and didn't see the vision. But the other thing that really blew my mind is taking nothing from his producing because he's a brilliant producer and, like you said, totally underrated. It's criminally underrated. I was surprised to hear him say on an interview that Paris Smith made a lot of the beats that we thought Eric Sermon did the first couple albums, and that, in fact, their first album was just them telling someone in the studio what beats to make because they knew how it sounded in their heads, but they didn't know the equipment yet. And those are some knockers, right? Those are some incredible knockers, and they kind of produce those.

[Bomani Jones]

We could have a discussion a whole other day about how somehow EPMD has slipped through the cracks of the historical discourse in rap, because they are. They are incredible. They were incredible. And then had this breakup that. I guess it felt contentious. But it never feels contentious when they talk now. I guess they've broken up and gotten back together enough times. But Eric Sermon kept going. That Paris Smith thing. Never.

[Jason England]

Never.

[Bomani Jones]

He put out a record in 96. Don't. Don't ask me if I've heard it,

[Jason England]

but it came out with the. Went solo on that ass. But it's still the same. I saw it coming. That's why I went solo. Suddenly, his. His flow aged overnight. It was like he was rapping the way Cool Modi looked. It just was old, bro. What was going on?

[Bomani Jones]

Well, he's a person who needed a co. He needed a co star.

[Jason England]

Yeah, right.

[Bomani Jones]

He needed. He was not enough. I mean, Eric Sermon wasn't either, to be perfectly honest.

[Jason England]

He.

[Bomani Jones]

He just. In that split that they had of the crew, Eric Sermon got. Got a better package. Even though Paris got some good cat. Like Paris got doss effects, right? Like, it wasn't like Paris got nothing, but it just didn't go the same. Last one I'll get to before we get out of here. I don't think we've ever talked about this one. I always wonder if Hell on Earth came out before the Infamous. Would people say they liked Hell on Earth more than the Infamous? Because Hell on Earth, which I think comes out in one way, in a very interesting time, which is Tupac is dead, but we still gonna fire his ass up. We ain't forgot you dead, right? Like drop a gentleman on there. But you go back and listen to Hell on Earth. And it also is very clear they had more money to record the record. Like, it sounds cleaner, but it still knocks. Like it's still a hard ass record.

[Jason England]

Yeah, Was real comfortable. I think he had found his own first album, is havoc with other outside influences. This feels very much like he's in his element and he just could rap. Man P, I think, was someone that was underappreciated in his heyday because there were so many heavyweights who were solo, who were making noise. But the album sounds great. I think the Infamous, For My Money's still a better record. It just feels like a giant record in a way that Hell on Earth doesn't feel giant, but it feels focused and it feels, in its own way, like a very dark thematic album. It's a beautiful album in a way that. In a way that a violent street album can be beautiful.

[Bomani Jones]

Yeah, the Infamous is definitely more cinematic. Right? Like, I can. I think I can more readily see the scenes that Are painted in the infamous. In a way that I can't quite capture off of Hell on Earth. But it's. It's that thing where it's like. It's wild. We're all better at what we do. Like, I probably rap better on this record. The beat. I probably made better beats on this record. But it ain't. It's still not that record.

[Jason England]

Yeah, Drop a Gym on him is one I run all the time. Still, it sounds so sinister.

[Bomani Jones]

Hey, look. And they got it off in time for Pac to hear it. It was just a little bit wild that they still put it on the album. There was plenty of time to jump off of that decision.

[Jason England]

Well, and everyone was playing a little bit hokey Pokey. Left foot in, left foot out. On whether or not they were gonna just publicly dispot, they said, no, we are. We are in it. They made LA La too. They were like, hey, give us all the beef. We wanted all these. These little niggas wanted everything, right? I gotta say. I gotta say, man, you know, I have to do it. Dr. Octagon and Big Time. Two cool Keef albums in 96 had a song called the Industry is Whack. That's still one of the funniest songs that you've ever heard in your life. And every song on Dr. Octagon is hilarious. Gotta promote myself.

[Bomani Jones]

It has been so long since I've listened to Dr. Octagon that I had forgotten that it came out in the course of this year. And being 16 and listening to Dr. Octagon was like, what the fuck is this? How is this real life, Bo?

[Jason England]

I promise you. So he. I think that was the first album on DreamWorks, and he got booked on Lollapalooza but then skipped it. Like, that album was actually huge. You want to talk about an album? Huge white people. When I went back to college after I dropped out the first time, people used to run up on me and start rapping Cool Keef verses at me because they heard he was my cousin.

[Bomani Jones]

Charlie Browning.

[Jason England]

Snoopy. Check out the group. Like, rapping in my face. There was a woman with dreads, a white woman with dreads who showed up to my college apartment, knocked on the porch door, and came and bought weed to smoke me out so we could listen to Cool Keef together. I had to turn her away. I said, this has gone too far. But his fans are real fans, and you know, that got passion of Weiss, Jeff Weiss, the rap critic. He just tweeted yesterday, a friend of mine, Shamira, sent it to Me, he said, At 63 years old, cool Keith is still making dope music. And, brother, I've seen him touring. I've been on stage with him whenever he comes through my town. And he is still rocking shows. And those fans still come out. They don't look quite as young or as good as as when I remember. Met 21, but they are as loyal.

[Bomani Jones]

My favorite thing with you about this is, as you say, how totally unimpressed your family is with the idea of Cool Keith, your cousin, showing up to stuff.

[Jason England]

Yeah, yeah. And that's no insult to him. My mother has 14 brothers and sisters, and it's a group of Harlem and Brooklyn street players, hustlers, that sort of thing. So there's a hierarchy in our family. And you gotta understand, back in the day, of course, in New York, we had LL Cool J posters on the wall, right? And then we had this ultra magnetic funk, your head up poster. And no one who came over to the crib knew who it was. So it wasn't until I got into my, like, mid-20s, I started really listening to my cousin's music more and being like, you know what? This dude is brilliant and half crazy, and I fuck with him. His humility around my family is also incredibly impressive. Keith comes from the projects in the Bronx, man. He's a real street dude. And that's what makes the space music and the scat music so much wilder, you know? So love to Keith, man. Love to Keith.

[Bomani Jones]

Well, you tapped on something interesting, and I think it's a great way to wrap this. And I think that 96 is a year where we start seeing the end of this truly being present, which is the broad definition of what it meant to be street. Right? Like explaining to people, for example, that Public Enemy, it takes a nation of millions to hold us back. That's a street record. Like. Like street and gangster are not perfect synonyms. Gangster is within the confines of what it meant to be street. But what it meant to be street is all over the place. And the idea, like Q Tip being a dude that had these connections, but was also a bit of a nerd cat, like there was room for that. The idea that the nerd acts white only exists in a world where white people are part of the equation, right? If it's all black people, then it's all black because all, you know, was black people. And so the industry at a time, at that time had a better reflection of that, that we wound up getting down the line. And this year is something that show that. That kind of Gets into what we're discussing there.

[Jason England]

Yeah, Hip hop is still in this year. Joycean. Right. It's a culture in discussion with itself. It's self referential. You have to be part of the in group to understand what the records mean. But it's finally starting to drift away and become music made by black people for an audience that isn't black, with music that isn't black serving as the sample sources. And that. That gets a little tricky. But I think about this all the time. It's the last thing I would say. People tend to think the hood is just drug dealers and bullies. If it's all bullies, who's going to be bullied?

[Bomani Jones]

Right?

[Jason England]

If it's all robbers, who's getting robbed? You know, if there's nobody who's a nerd, who's making all this music, who's digging through the crates, you know, so it's that. That vision of the hood and of this idea that only people who were suburban in integrated high schools were nerds is really bizarre to me. Sean Price is a nerd. He's a nerd that could beat you up. But he does graffiti, he can dance. He's like, yo, let me do some art. He's got a sense of humor and an encyclopedic recall of culture that he works into his lyrics for humor, that's nerd shit.

[Bomani Jones]

That's my man, Jason England. Check him out. Google him, Check out his work. You find a chronicle of higher education. See some of his stuff at the Defector. My brother, I appreciate you for joining us here, working on this series, man. Really, really appreciate it.

[Jason England]

Thank you for having me. Always, man. Appreciate you.

[Bomani Jones]

No problem, man. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on the Right Time. We do this four days a week. Ryan Brumley handles everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. 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. And we'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.