CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
Biggie was amazing, one of the best ever, his flow on 'Hypnotise', his imaginative self-loathing on 'suicidal thoughts', him acknowledging his own ugliness simultaneously somehow one of rap's most credible ladies men, his cinematic storytelling etc. Noz wrote a good thing on Biggie, here it is http://www.thefader.com/2011/04/20/feature-stay-low-and-keep-firing

2pac i'm less sold on (hardly listen to him) but tracks like 'hail mary' and 'no more pain' and 'dear mama' etc. no other rapper (aside from yer 2pac rip off artists) could have made those songs. His lyrics aren't very clever or witty or whatever but he had a totally distinctive voice and delivery, there's a reason (his untimely death aside) that he's been so influential and worshipped. Charisma. Magnetism.

Is it fair to say that, in spite of the legions of pasty white fans wearing bandanas in their bedrooms, 2pac is a rapper that white people by and large don't really get? I mean I get the sense that for black ppl 2pac resonates a lot more emotionally than a lot of supposedly better rappers - granted i get this impression from lurking on the coli, where he's worshipped as a God, and anybody deferring from this position is dismissed ipso facto as a 'cac'.
 

CORP$EY

no mickey mouse ting
Reasonable Doubt era Jay Z obv owes him a lot, to put it nicely

its funny cos on OB4CL they slag biggie for ripping off nas's album cover, but wasn't 'it was written' a response to 'ready to die' and bad boy in general?

although arguably i guess all that funky playa/pimp stuff was popularised by G funk?
 

luka

Well-known member
i bet junior mafia's one of those arbitrary, off-kilter craner obsessions.

this is actually spot on.

no one in London liked Tupac before he died then he became another poster child for dying young. airbrush t-shirt fodder. bob marley, jimi hendrix, kurt cobain and Tupac.
 

luka

Well-known member
there was always a huge bias towards NY rap here.. kids liked snoop for the same reason kids like hearing people say tit, bum, willy but otherwise california was virtually invisible. almost as if we have a hard time relating to a life of perpetual sunlight, the blue pacific rolling against beaches of golden sand, palm trees, enormous all day barbecues and beautiful women in bikinis.
 

luka

Well-known member
biggies great. im not a big beleiver in artists 'developing' youve either got it or you havent and that famous clip of biggie aged 17 or whatever on a street corner in brooklyn is what i use to back up my claims.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
this is actually spot on.

no one in London liked Tupac before he died then he became another poster child for dying young. airbrush t-shirt fodder. bob marley, jimi hendrix, kurt cobain and Tupac.


can attest to this i got cousins who adored Biggie but when you mention Pac would have nothing but venom about him or talk about how if you watch certain videos from when he was younger it was proof he was gay or some shit like that. Pac love over here is very much one of them in hindsight tings that i feel like alot of New Yorkers who were around that time dont want to admit out of embarassment or fear of ressurecting whatever long dead 90s beef


I feel like Luka hits a point for me where i feel like in order to really love Pac even with his politics you really have to be somebody who is caught up in all the mythology and mystique of him to REALLY be a fan, all them conspiracy theory videos where people talk about him having guys willing to ride for him or how he was gonna start his own political party and man finding bare "mysterious" interviews where they misinterpret him talking about stopping the Illuminati or some shit like that play into this.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I get the sense that for black ppl 2pac resonates a lot more emotionally than a lot of supposedly better rappers

this is a good point. one of those things that seems patently obvious once someone has pointed it out.

it's not just race but the intersection of race, poverty, disenfranchisement.

I have always thought Tupac was a hugely interesting figure and a thoroughly uninteresting rapper.

the Black Panther family background, art high school, dancer for Digital Underground, and then by sheer force of will he transformed himself into this flawed messiah, the actor who made Poetic Justice, and a cartoonish avatar of thug life (I don't mean that in a bad way really), all rolled into one. his life after death, endless releases, holograms, etc it's all fits in pretty well. unsurprising he's impossible to capture in more traditional biopic.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
man finding bare "mysterious" interviews where they misinterpret him talking about stopping the Illuminati or some shit like that

he's basically a folk hero

a thoroughly American folk hero, who reflects back a lot of the fucked up things about this country but also some of the beautiful things
 

forclosure

Well-known member
Its also why southern rap never really connected here we dont have a history of creating resonant music like the blues (John Mayall and dem dont count) or living with the legacy of slavery and literal history of slavery around you where the overseers and the KKK are celebrated, but the people who really did the backbreaking labour arent celebrated (Britain has these same problems but over here its more the case that people go out of there way to be passive aggressive about it unless they want to be snarky about it)



Thats why it was mad to me when for a brief period you had groups like Piff Gang over here talking about sippin lean and shit cause we dont have that kind of culture over here period. the existance of a european lean sipper is a lonely one.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
I can't think of single other rapper who is a folk hero in the same way

more akin to Jimi Hendrix in that sense

only person that comes to mind for me is Boosie but then again he came up in a weird period of rap its only after he got locked up did he become something of a folk hero to people.
 
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