NEW JAKE ONE HEAT! Rick Ross - "3 Kings" (Ft. Dr. Dre & Jay Z)

Big_Chan

Jake really did his thing with this one. 206 Town Bizness.....

yuichi

Beat is dope. Rhymes are weak.

bassie

yuichi said:

Beat is dope. Rhymes are weak.

Yup. Goofy lyrics have no place on such elegant production. And I am SICK TO DEATH of Rick Ross.

HarveyCanal

http://www.rappersiknow.com/2012/07/19/late-night-critical-thinking-with-damien-randle/

Late Night Critical Thinking
with Damien Randle


I???ll begin with a statement:


The Notorious B.I.G. and Rick Ross are basically the same. Biggie wasn???t really much better.

{Intentional space to let it sink in.}

If you???re over the age of 30, you???re probably scrambling to unfriend me now. If you know me personally, you???re probably thinking ???It???s just D being a hater.??? But hear me out.

???Greatness??? is a marketing term. It???s used to indicate a product???s superiority over its competition. Labeling something ???the greatest??? immediately turns eyes (or causes them to roll); either way, there???s a reaction.

In the consumerist society that we live in, we have to believe that as a product line evolves, it improves. Otherwise, nobody would have an incentive to buy a 2012 Lexus if it isn???t an improvement over a 1998 Toyota Camry. We can???t respect Lebron James??? game if we???re not inclined to believe that there???s even a chance that he can eventually become the best player of all time. And when it comes to the endless sea of musicians available to us, the casual listener can only really focus on whatever artist is considered to be most worthwhile.

Those of you who are old enough to remember might recall Rakim being labeled ???The Greatest Rapper Of All Time???. Followed by Nas. Followed by Biggie and Pac at the same time. Followed by Jay Z. Followed by a self-proclaimed Lil Wayne. Followed by whoever???s saying it this week. My timeline might be a little off, but you get the point.

In his prime, Biggie was considered to be the ???greatest of all time??? by everyone east of Colorado, largely because PuffyDiddy made it a point to tell you that every chance he got, and the hype train that once rode for Nas was ferrying Biggie. For the record, I thought Biggie was very talented. Ready To Die is a classic in my eyes. But I also felt at the time that there were at least 5 or 10 rappers that I would rate above him. I know that it???s a personal preference, but he wasn???t the best to me. (Who the other 5 or 10 were isn???t important, so don???t ask.)

I was there when Biggie???s 2nd album dropped. Hypnotize was a hit, but the general consensus was that the album (a double album) had way too much filler, and was a step down from the first. What preserved his legacy? You already know. As tragic as his passing was, he became a martyr in his prime, and nobody got to see him endure what Nas has gone through in the last 2 decades of his career. Calling Biggie ???The Greatest??? at the time was premature, and still giving him the mantle after 1.3 good studio albums is still a bit ambitious. Again, I know that we???re dealing with matters of taste, so I won???t tell anyone that they???re wrong for believing that.

Referring back to my scandalous statement at the beginning of the post, Biggie and Rick Ross have a lot in common:

1. They???re both fabricated characters. Christopher Wallace was a fat, goofy kid from Brooklyn who became a sensationalized, gun-toting playboy. William Leonard Roberts II was a probation officer ??? turned drug kingpin.
2. They both embrace the fat / ugly dude / sex symbol persona.
3. Sales-wise, they stay at the top of their respective genres.
4. Both garnered a Universal appeal that???s not really defined by regional boundaries.
5. They???re talking about the same stuff. Hustling. Women. Guns. Drugs. And stuff.

From a technical standpoint, you???re probably going to reach a stalemate based on your audience. My age group is going to consider it blasphemous to even compare the two. Late teens and early 20s ??? the target base ??? are probably going to lean with Rozay and say that Biggie sounds dated. Who???s right? Both sides. And neither side.

This is what happens when you get sold on the ???greatness??? of something instead of coming to enjoy something organically. I was the biggest Run DMC fan as a kid, but I have to accept the possibility that today???s hip hop artists have the benefit of 3 decades of improvements and have superseded RUN DMC on some level. I may not like to say it, but Drake is technically an improvement over MC Shan.

So when I say that Biggie is really no better than Rick Ross, I say it with the understanding that Biggie was part of the same hype machine that supports Ross. If Ross died today, he would be almost as much of a martyr. If Frank Ocean died today, he would be a saint. But he still can???t sing. (Shots fired.)

bassie

Well damn - that never occurred to me!

I still prefer grapefruit to oranges any day.

cookbook

not enough love in this thread yet!

jake did his damn thing on this, and it is one hell of a good look for dude

JectWon

Big_Chan said:

Jake really did his thing with this one. 206 Town Bizness.....

Fun tune. Silly lyrics and all. Really dug the way the beat hit on the 2 and 4...shit kinda sways, or something.

Thanks for posting.

DJ_Enki

bassie said:

And I am SICK TO DEATH of Rick Ross.

I'm kind of astonished that everybody isn't saying that at this point. Dude has managed to hang on much longer than expected.

At any rate, great look for Jake One.

BeatChemist

Jake One is a beast. Is this the first time the jigga man has spit on a Jake One beat?? I could care less about Dre and Ross being on this... lol

Biggie and Ross are very alike. Classic or GOAT status is also heavily skewed to artists that have a limited body of work - it isn't strictly tied to the artist passing away. Once you start having tooo much material, the importance of it seems to become less and less. This is certainly not a statement about the quality of the material, more about it's relevance/importance in the greater context of the art form. So even though, technically and artistically, Rick Ross may be an improvement over Biggie - the fact remains that Biggie is more important to hip hop than Ross.

[ copout ] All of this shit is subjective anyways... [ /copout ]

swissbeatz

I think Dre saying "hip hop classic shit" in the intro ruins it for me

DocMcCoy

Much as I may agree with some of what was said in that article Harv posted, it overlooks the key difference between the two rappers - how they rhyme about their subject. It ought to go without saying that Biggie is/was way ahead of Rozay as a lyricist. While the subject matter is broadly the same, to me Ross has always been more about portraying a heightened-reality, stylised, Hollywood version of the hustler's lifestyle. Not the intense, paranoid version you'd get from someone like Clipse, but something more simplified that'll still appeal to dudes who like to sit around at three in the morning, getting smoked out and watching Scarface on repeat. Conversely, Biggie always sounded like a regular street dude to me, talking about street dude things. Personally, rather than make glib remarks about how Biggie and Rawss are "part of the same hype machine", it might be more interesting to consider what their differences and similarities, such as they are, say about the way rap has changed over the last 20 years - or perhaps more accurately, how the audience's expectations of it have changed.

The beat is straight killer.

BeatChemist

DocMcCoy said:

it might be more interesting to consider what their differences and similarities, such as they are, say about the way rap has changed over the last 20 years - or perhaps more accurately, how the audience's expectations of it have changed.

This is a lot more interesting. I think part of it has to do with the way rap music itself has been commercialized more and more - to the point where it is a major trend setting and marketing force. To incredibly oversimplify things: rap used to sell the struggle for success, and now it sells the success itself more than anything. As well, there seems to be a lot more acceptance on the audience's side when it comes to fantasy and lying from the artists. So it only follows that Ross' take on the subjects Biggie talks about would be from a more stylized, fantastical angle. Biggie wasn't anywhere close to as commercially successful as Ross either, in terms of money being made - I'm assuming heavily here.. but... - so that also plays a part. Ross is balling bigger than biggie ever did. So he's gonna talk from that angle.

Biggie > Rozay for me though, because the dude just sounded more like a real person. Talking about doing real shit. Ross sounds like he's selling his own character. It's like when he writes he things "What would Rick Ross say here?" the whole damn time. Does that make sense?

batmon

D.E.L.E.T.E.

thrope

not really feeling the beat or the lyrics on this one, to be honest with you

Bsides

Jake one is the homie and one of the best producers alive.

This is a classic to me.

I sit and watch some peeps nitpick over this song and I just have to laugh. I hope you guys find some music out there somewhere you dont feel compelled to instantly criticize.

No argument, No hate, I really do hope that y'all have that in your lives.


I love the whole thing. Although as usual I think Jay killed it. Rozay is in my top 5 though. He really makes good songs.

Love it!

Bsides

Jake one is the homie and one of the best producers alive.

This is a classic to me.

I sit and watch some peeps nitpick over this song and I just have to laugh. I hope you guys find some music out there somewhere you dont feel compelled to instantly criticize.

No argument, No hate, I really do hope that y'all have that in your lives.


I love the whole thing. Although as usual I think Jay killed it. Rozay is in my top 5 though. He really makes good songs.

Love it!

Sunfade

This thread is bad and you should feel bad.

Sunfade

Jay-z sounds too drunk here. I don't know what he's talking about.

Bsides

Sunfade said:

This thread is bad and you should feel bad.

Why?

Sunfade

Bsides said:

Sunfade said:

This thread is bad and you should feel bad.

Why?

I'm just joking. It's this meme.