Tag: Gangsta Rap

1991, Music

We Can’t Be Stopped (1991) by Geto Boys

So, for reasons I will never understand, YouTube Music – where I do most of my listening to new music – only has the “screwed” version of this album. I didn’t know that meant something and so I listened to it. And I was extremely confused as you might imagine. I knew I had at …

1996, Music

Reasonable Doubt (1996) by Jay-Z

I have listened to hip hop for basically only six years, with somewhat increasing frequency. I feel like I am starting to get a grasp on the flow and technique of rap, and I’ve long felt like I know what I like when it comes to the production side. But I still find myself flummoxed …

1996, Music

All Eyez on Me (1996) by 2Pac

When I was young, I would eat up everything I thought I should like and this included double albums which, in the LP days, meant a maximum approximately 90 minutes of music. (Usually 88 or less, but often much less, such as Exile on Main St.), which is not much more than an hour.) But …

1995, Music

Gangsta’s Paradise (1995) by Coolio

Coolio’s debut pleasantly surprise me if only because all I knew of him were the hits from this album, and I was surprised by sense of humour and his self-awareness, things that I didn’t know he had. But that very thing that I found really endearing on his debut – which I otherwise found too …

1995, Music

E. 1999 Eternal (1995) by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony

I have had a hard time getting into (and just plain getting) hip hop for basically my entire music-listening life. One of the major barriers to me has been rap – I am a fan of musicality in music, and rap is often not very musically interesting to me. This is especially true of early …

1995, Music

Me Against the World (1995) by 2Pac

So I guess the first thing I have to talk about with this record is expectations, which is often a problem for me when I first encounter someone about which an absolute ton of ink (both literal and proverbial) has been spilt. 2Pac is one of the most lionized rappers in history as far as …

1994, Music

It Takes a Thief (1994) by Coolio

I guess serious hip hop fans have strong feelings about Coolio, like he got too famous or something, or he’s not as talented as less famous rappers, or something. I don’t know anything about this and, frankly, I couldn’t care less. I hate arguments about whether or not someone is more authentic than someone else …

1994, Music

Regulate… G Funk Era (1994) by Warren G

Of all the hip hop I’ve managed to listen to to date, I’d say virtually all of it tries to at least partially match the music to the lyrics. What I mean by that is that, if the lyrics are about being a criminal, the music underlying the verses (not the choruses) is usually rough-edged, …

1994, Music

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) by OutKast

Everything I know about scenes is confined to rock music, and most of the detailed stuff I know about rock scenes is confined to the psychedelic rock scenes of the 1960s. That’s probably the only period where I could hear music I don’t know and give a good guess as to where it was made. …

1988, Music

Power (1988) by Ice-T

Something seems to have happened within hip hop, between this record and the music that was everywhere during the 1990s (and everything that’s come since). To me, someone who doesn’t know hip hop at all, this sounds considerably older to me than N.W.A or Wu Tang, and even significantly older than Public Enemy. I think …

1988, Music

Straight Outta Compton (1988) by N.W.A

Though I do not generally enjoy listening to Hip Hop, and still lack a frame of reference for most of it, if not all of it, I vowed to myself a few months ago that I would listen to more of it, at least to give myself some frame of reference – both for my …