The National Football League (NFL) wanna penalize players for saying “nigga” during a game…since when wealthy white men cared about the welfare of Black people?…I mean, seriously
You got plenty of problems to focus on in the Black community, and folks are worried about Blacks callin' each other niggas...LOL
“Nigga” is a very powerful word…it’s one of the few things white folks don't have control of…Black folks can say it, but white folks can’t (at least without consequence)…and that fact burns a hole in their soul...now they wanna make a big fuss about athletes saying “nigga”
Gimme me a break
It’s funny because you’ll most likely hear Black athletes saying “nigga” toward each other than a white person saying it (with the "er," not the "a") towards Blacks
"Nigga" is a control issue in this case, not some good Samaritan who wanna help out the image of Blacks…white folks are STILL gonna say “nigger” even when Blacks stop saying "niggA" among each other…real talk
NFL TEAMS should police their players, NOT the damn league
It pisses me off that society romanticizes the past…I admit, I do it sometimes…shit, 99 percent of the DVD movies I own were either made in the 1990s or older
The truth is, with the exception of Argo (instant classic) and Bamboozled, I really don’t fuck with movies in the 2000s too heavy
That leads me to the years of 1995-1996, infamously known as the wet dreams of Hip-Hop fans
A slew of classic albums dropped in those two years: Only Built 4 Cuban Link, Dah Shining, Reasonable Doubt, Temples of Boom, ATLiens, 7 Day Theory, The Infamous, It Was Written, Liquid Swords, East 1999 Eternal, and too many other joints to name
Hell, I’ll even throw in cult classics like Crucial Conflict’s The Final Tic in the mix (one of my personal favorite albums)
What people fail to realize is that Hip-Hop back then was NO DIFFERENT from Hip-Hop of today
I’m NOT talking about the quality of albums…you must be on crack or molly to think that rap albums today can remotely compete with joints from back then…That’s not even a debate
I’m not talkin’ about that…
…I’m talkin’ about the SUCCESS of an album and rap artist
You see, in order for a rap artist or group to even sniff platinum, a CROSSOVER record needed to be made, or else you found yourself barely going gold or even dropped from the label
Yeah, Fu-Gee-La was cute, but The Score wouldn’t have done shit on the charts without The Fugees droppin’ the remake of Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly…Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Link was classic, but that album wouldn’t have hit platinum without a joint like Ice Cream… Nas dropped the Street Dreams remix with R Kelly just to get more spins and notoriety
Bone Thugs’ East 1999 Eternal is a VERY dark album, but that joint crossed over when they re-released the album with Tha Crossroads remix to sell more units
Method Man’s All I Need razor sharp remix had won the Grammy…NOT the grimy version you heard on the album, the joint WITHOUT Mary J Blige on the hook
To take things a lil bit further back, Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers didn’t move units until they dropped C.R.E.A.M and the M.E.T.H.O.D Man joint…BOTH songs are catchy as hell on a grimy ass album
The major difference between that mid-90s era and today is that the new rap cats nowadays act like they can’t make a memorable album even if their lives depended on it…they also feel the need to dumb their shit down to sell
Keeping it simple and dumbing down are totally twodifferent things, but that’s for another blog
Good music is STILL out there...it's just that music buyers today are too lazy to dig for it…technology spoiled the American public…I remember spending HOURS in record shops to find good music…Yep, I saw a lot of wack shitin ’95-’96, too...that's why I spent hours at the shop...LOL
So people, don’t get shit twisted...as much as headz wanna act like rap was pure in ’95-’96, that era was just as commercialized, superficial, and so-called negative as it is today…besides a few differences here and there, the music climate is STILL the same
You NEEDED to be a superstar to go platinum in those days just like how you need to stand-out today like a brotha at a klan rally
I don’t even wanna talk about the designer clothes and hoes, champagne, liquor and luxury car name drops of '96 that plagued the rap game…Biggie and Tupac were HIGHLY criticized by rap listeners during the last months of their lives because of their materialistic rhymes
BIG was accused of rhyming with too many designer clothes name drops as a fake mafia don (The Roots sneak-dissed Biggie and his videos in the What They Do video), and Pac was accused of being a fake thug, a troublemaker, and a puppet for Suge Knight
If you don’t believe me, check the readers’ letters in any Vibe and Source magazines during that time
But hey, people tend to overlook those things when they succumb to what my guy Divine had coined, “Funeral Love”
The Roots What They Do video (aka the Biggie diss)...they're pretty much using themselves to make fun of how rap videos were made in '96 and how they might appear in the future...click here to watchon your phone
1995-1996 was the beginning of the end for rap music that wasn't motivated by money, pretty much what you're seeing today on a commercial level...Hip-Hop went from a culture to a business, even during an era that supposedly gave birth to some of the greatest rap music known to man
Remember, family…
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the present is just the remix of the past
