Might as well start off with a bang. Biggie was great, but Tupac was in a different class…it really wasn’t that close.
Kind of like Ralph and anyone else that has played basketball at UVa. The debate is/always will be, Hoo was #2?
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I’d say that’s a hot take lol imo it isn’t close in the other direction! Tupac just has a larger discography but Biggie has the best flow in the history of mainstream music and his hit/dud ratio was way higher than Pac’s!
For disclosure purposes I was a 90’s baby so did not experience either of them in real time.
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I could not disagree more. Tupac had the charisma and the voice but lyrically . . . come on BIG was much better. I rate Pac as a performer and a personality but as an MC he was never that guy. Give me KRS, Rakim, Kool G Rap, even Ice Cube if we’re going back to that era (and I was there for it).
Sadly, early death always has a way of enhancing an artist’s mystique and legacy but I can’t remember one that saw a bigger bump in reputation than Tupac. Certainly BIG got the same thing but he had two absolutely classic albums and a bunch of legendary features. Pac had some hits but his output was nowhere near as consistent. People conveniently forget he had a lot of filler on his albums and the less said about the Outlawz the better. He was better known for his acting and drama outside of the music than his actual rhyming ability.
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Rakim the greatest on the mic ever. Short lived but EPMD flow was geat. I was huge into PE during college mainly cause of the beats on my walkman. KRS one and Scott LaRocks Criminal Minded was a masterpiece then
For me, with Pac it was more about the message than the delivery. He could take you/your emotions 10 different places on the same album. He was obviously a complicated but insanely smart guy. He could take you from party/club track, to something sentimental, to 100% thug track, to something so deep it gave you chills…all within a few tracks of each other. No one had his versatility.
And another hot take to stir the pot…Ice Cube’s solo stuff in that era was better than what he did with NWA a few years earlier.
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I don’t disagree there. Probably because he didn’t have to carry the load of writing for Eazy and Dre in addition to himself.
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Saw PE at the Capital Center in Landover like late 91 or early 92. Great show.
awesome show. have seen them a few times. Saw NWA in Nashville circa 91. that was unreal. Agree in Cubes solo stuff as well. If you got in my 87 Jetta on Grounds you were proly gettin Cube or Shabba Ranks blasted for the ride
Edit: And then came The Chronic! was one of the first ones everyone could sing the chorus too maybe outside of OPP at house parties
The first person to mention Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch gets benched for the half
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Going to transfer what I said in other thread to here:
One of the best beats of all time:
And another choice for my walk-out:
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No Vaseline is/always was/always will be the greatest diss track in hip hop history.
thnking you
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Also, realize this is a 90s thread but… still gonna drop in some more recent stuff, because how often do we actually have a music thread going?
Kendrick is on top for me in the very modern era. Don’t know how you pick between like m.A.A.d city, King Kunta, Humble, etc. (and those are just the hits), but I guess in this moment I’ll go with DNA:
Childish Gambino also great, and taking into account his other creative endeavors, is just insanely talented. Might normally go with This is America, but I’ll throw Sweatpants here instead:
And finally, one nobody probably tracked - Zach de la Rocha paired up with the drummer from Mars Volta/Queens of the Stoneage for a single tiny album a decade ago, and I still love the lyrical work on it and the beat:
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My 20 & 17 year olds insist I’m stuck in the past, but what they’ve played me of Kendrick Lamar makes me think he could have been a factor even back in the day.
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Since we’re going old school I gotta give props to DMX.
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He did always give it to you
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said he would but did be deliver…
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He did know how to Party Up though…
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I once did a paper for an African American studies class at UVa on rappers as the bards and documentarians of the inner city and Black culture. Had a lot of fun choosing which quotes to use for the paper. Ended up with Ice Cube, Ice T, Public Enemy, Apache, maybe Digable Planets…several others I can’t remember. One of my favorite papers to write.
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Underrated - Tribe Called Quest
Overrated (IMO) - Wu Tang