Whole Crew Up In This Muhfucker
In case you missed it, Westcheddar recently unearthed this monumental 1999 footage of Jay-Z and the Roc-A-Fella click performing at The Tunnel. I’m just sitting down with it now. Highlights include a Beanie freestyle, Jay breathlessly rocking the first verse of “Jigga What? Jigga Who?” with no hype man and an early performance of “So Ghetto.” It’s almost surreal to think of these guys, a bunch of sweaty dudes in t-shirts and beanies talking about murdering you, were seen as “jiggy” in this era. This was what a concert performed by one of the biggest pop stars in the world looked like. Imagine Kanye or 50 or Wayne playing such a relatively small capacity venue (and to an almost completely black audience) in New York City in 2009.
You can’t. Because Jay-Z destroyed that. He made rappers turn corporate, made rappers tabloid fodder, made rappers interested in anything but rapping raps for rap fans. And now all we have are these youtubes. More after the jump.
Tumblin' Erb
June 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
i agree
jay-z made it cool to sell out and now everybody is soft
i will always respect the black album as a work of art
but besides that jay z is POP
wu tang//ect… was hip hop
and kanye needs to get popped
June 6th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
“It’s almost surreal to think [that] these guys, a bunch of sweaty dudes in t-shirts and beanies talking about murdering you, were seen as “jiggy” in this era.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxUoySP9zqg
June 7th, 2009 at 4:36 am
so, now seems like a great time for that why “Vol. 3″ is the shit post. i’m in agreement on that, dunno if i’d call it his best, but its definitely underrated.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:52 am
gay-z pls lol the dude who made only becase biggie is rip !
just like puffy they made there money off biggie and ya they sold so what just cause you sell millions that makes you a quality mc ? nah not in my book!
June 7th, 2009 at 8:49 am
“now seems like a great time for that why “Vol. 3? is the shit post”
yep
June 7th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
^^ co-sign
June 7th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I agree with the comments….that nigga need to sit the fuck down somewhere. Can BARELY call this nigga “gangsta” WTF
look at his tired looking ass wife pfffft! They were hot in the 90s/early 2000 but if you don’t have much substance to offer, then there is NO longevity. Remember that Kingdom Come bullshit? Hell, even the American Gangster soundtrack wasn’t all that.
MEH….
June 7th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Damn, this some out the vault shit right here! Amil looks more like a man than usual, too, lmao. Whatever happened to her ugly ass anyway?
June 7th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
didn’t she have a kid with Masta Killa or smthing?
June 8th, 2009 at 2:10 am
the last great movement in new york rap. rocafella as we loved it, rip.
i still like jay-z of 2009, but jay-z of 1996-2002 or 2003 will always be in my top 5. they are practically two different artists though.
although this is a few years later, remember that mixtape that was a prequel to the black album? that shit was great.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:28 am
yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn……i thought i clicked on cocaine blunts?
June 8th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
“didn’t she have a kid with Masta Killa or smthing?”
She married Killah Priest.
“the last great movement in new york rap.”
And most of the talent came from Philly.
Though 50 was probably a great movement in of himself.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
We STILL Get Lil Wayne To Come 2 The Hood Spots In B’ham, AL from Time 2 Time!!! Because You Got O.G.’s Who Will Pay That FRONT MONEY, Just To Put On 4 The City & Make That Dough On The Back END!!! He’s Only Done Like One Concert Here, But He Done Did Bout 2 or 3 Stops @ This Hood Club Called CONTINENTAL. Although It Is BIG As FUCK Just To Be A CLUB!!!
June 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Matter of Fact, We Just Had Boosie, Webbie, & OJ The Juiceman come Thru The Same CLUB This Past Weekend & Shut The Whole City Down… Besides This Kappa Pool/Suite Party on The Other Side of Town That Did It WAYYYY Big Too!!!
June 8th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
^^ Clearly, ‘Bama is the spot right now. There’s this tiny spot by ASU in the Gump where big names come through, too.
June 8th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
The part of this thread that makes me yawn is that we’re just running down Jay-Z again. Anybody got anything new to say about Hov? No? Wanna call him camel-face or something?
Seriously, how responsible is a rapper supposed to be for all other rappers? Even if Jay was able to “make rappers interested in anything but rapping for rap fans,” since when was a rapper supposed to be making choices based on what was good for other rappers? Is there any genre of music more preoccupied with ruthless capitalism than rap? I remember a month or so ago when people on this site were ripping Stakes Is High because it drew a line in the sand between the underground and the “overground.” I love hip hop, but there are a lot of people on this board who know more about it than I do, so I could be out of line when I ask: How is running down Jay for making his style more accessible to people who didn’t buy the first pressing of Reasonable Doubt different than the line that De La supposedly drew with Stakes Is High?
June 8th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
“How is running down Jay for making his style more accessible to people who didn’t buy the first pressing of Reasonable Doubt different than the line that De La supposedly drew with Stakes Is High?”
Pretty sure that’s not the argument being made here.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Help me out, then.
I interpreted Noz’s remark to mean that Jay influenced a generation of rappers to give up on rapping for the people who loved hip hop before it became huge. That he (and the rappers who followed him) left the true-believers behind in the name of “going corporate.”
My response was that separating the “rap fans” from the people who got into hip hop after it became “corporate” feels like the kind of distinction that Noz typically avoids making. I actually thought that, in the De La thread I cited, the fact that De La made that distinction was the beef with Stakes.
I was serious when I said that, while I’m a rap fan, I’m not an expert on the industry. I could be misreading “rap fan,” or I could be in the dark about some other element of Jay’s influence besides his sound. When I ended the last post with a question, I wasn’t being inflammatory.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:44 am
[...] these via CB, who gave their post a bitterweet twist, [...]
July 7th, 2009 at 5:28 am
[...] these via CB, who gave their post a bitterweet twist, [...]