Old heads, is it true Reasonable Doubt...

[Heretic]

everything was being played on Rap City every day, breh.

there were only so many rap videos they could play 6 days a week with the top 10 on saturdays.

you might be right breh. Honestly it might be ingrained in my memory because I liked the songs

West of the Mississippi in '96

Kurupt>>>>>>Jay Z.......Might not even be close really

Maybe even globally.Death Row was the hottest label in the world & had just dropped NY, NY.

Maybe dogged pound as a collective but by 96 I'm pretty sure they weren't on tv. I could be wrong because I was really young so I'm not doubting you, but I do know kurupt as a solo artist made no noise down here.

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

you might be right breh. Honestly it might be ingrained in my memory because I liked the songs



Maybe dogged pound as a collective but by 96 I'm pretty sure they weren't on tv. I could be wrong because I was really young so I'm not doubting you, but I do know kurupt as a solo artist made no noise down here.

Well we can call it even.That's the same way we felt about Jay on the west coast.He was that dude from the Aint No Nikka joint with Foxy Brown.

 

[Gains]

RD wasn't getting play like that

 

[BamdaDon]

We talking about '96 tho....Jay wasn't even Kurupt status.

As far as other rappers quoting his shyt, it's probably a case of them quoting another nikka, by way of Jay z.

He "pays homage" to so many people, you just never know

give it up nikka far as popular rappers he wasn't the most popular like I said already not even two years later he was. All this declining rap bullshyt is lame nikka excuses. Deaths are irrelevant too. Jay been popular since 98 ain't no two ways around it. Damn near 17 years as the most commercially popular artist or close too it that shyt is no fluke breh. Just deal with it. nikkas next album wack or not is going to have him right up there with whatever young dude is popping. I could see nikkas saying this if it was 3 or 4 years but almost 2 decades

 

[Heretic]

Well we can call it even.That's the same way we felt about Jay on the west coast.He was that dude from the Aint No Nikka joint with Foxy Brown.

Yeah I'll have to agree with that 100%

 

[mobbinfms]

Well we can call it even.That's the same way we felt about Jay on the west coast.He was that dude from the Aint No Nikka joint with Foxy Brown.

I grew up in the Bay. I found out about Jay from watching the video for Dead Presidents on Rap City. I don't know how you could have been a fan of rhyming and not hit the when you saw that video. I copped the album off that alone.
You had to be into more than just what was on the radio to be up on Jay back then.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

And the Source also listed it as one of the best albums of 1996 in their '96 Year In Review issue (Jan. '97)

And people wanna say we're being when threads are made complaining about the shyt state of hip hop today or reminiscing on the 90's. That's just 96 and (almost) all of those are classics/4.5 mic albums, that's not even mentioning all the 4/4.5 mic projects. 92-96 wasn't even fair.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

Jay was NOT "That Dude" when Reasonable Doubt dropped.

Folks were like "Is that Mary J Blige" when Cant Knock the Hustle came out.

He had a song with Biggie, which was a big deal cause of Biggie.

First verse of Cashmere Thoughts got Hip Hop Quotable in The Source, and they cut the last bar off it. "From my nikka Sauce, I hit you with this advice:"

Too much music was dropping all over. Its gonna make some folks mad to hear it, but Real Live was getting more plays on Rap City than Jigga was . And I'm not hating, that's just the way it was.



He didn't get to be a big deal until Pac called him out. Then he became "Biggie's Best Friend, Jay Z" after Biggie died.

Wasn't nobody feeling "The City is Mine".

"Sunshine" got WAAAY more love.

"Streets is Watching" made him hot.

"Money Ain't A Thang/Hard Knock Life" made him stupidly famous and "That Dude"

"Lookit all these OFF BRAND nikkaS..... runnin around acting like they holding figures as big as Jigga's! THATS THAT BULLshyt!" Made us all pay attention to the fact that he was loaded and the Bentley he was driving in the Hard Knock Life promo was prolly his.

And there you go.

funny you say that I used to stay turning the channel when that shyt came the box or bet

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

thread is funny.

whats even more funny is people acting like jay wouldnt be hot if pac & big were alive - while proppin up nas in the same post as if jay didnt pass nas up.

plus jay was on his first album and accomplished more than 2pac & nas did on their first joints. jay was an independent new-comer to an already over-crowded game. he didnt have the luxury of dropping his album at a time when the east coast was looking for a big star like biggie had the luxury of doing in '94 under clive davis, la reid & puffy.

and this whole "his album wasnt getting any play over here" thing is crazy. theres only a handful of squads that were a factor across the map. death row, bad boy, bone thugs and you can say wutang to an extent. then you had the fugees on the commercial end, and LL became a legacy act. thats pretty much it.

How so when the topic is was it popping or not? Yall arguing that it was are confused yourself on what even defines popping.

One minute its "only the hiphop heads matter yall ,not casual listeners",next minute your tellin us how it got daily spins on mtv

Which is it?First of all how many nikkas even had cable back then?

All I'm telling you is nobody I knew was talking bout no RD back then or that song,and being that it used the beat of a true bay area classic nikkas who did hear it would've likely been disgusted by the misuse of this beat after hearing it used on a classic track.

Were we true hiphop heads?probaly not,but based on the fact you bringing up mtv views,you know like I know what poppin really means,and it aint "Real hiphop heads liked it yall"

Lets not use the word poppin so loosely for the sake of arguing,just keep it at hiphop heads liked it,unless that's not good enough....Or maybe its not and you want the same validation Jay wanted when he himself said it was slept on....Im not mad at that,who doesn't want they album to be TRULY poppin?

youre playing yourself here.

youre trying to combine 2 different arguments.

i wasnt saying he was poppin simply because he was on mtv. i was responding to people in here claiming that jay was a nobody in '96. you got people in here saying that nobody knew who jay was before 2pac dissed him. thats bullchit.

cable was beyond commonplace at this point breh. most people had cable or a chip.
the vast majority of people who didnt have either were old-fashioned or in poverty unfortunately.

This record was huge in the Bay...
But EPMD used that sample 6 years prior.

and treacherous three sampled it before them.

96 the GOAT year in hip-hop ?

As far as albums go

ehh.

'88 & '95 were better.

everything was being played on Rap City every day, breh.

there were only so many rap videos they could play 6 days a week with the top 10 on saturdays.

nah. everything was not getting played everyday.

they only had 20 slots tops.

plus jay was getting play outside of just rap city. he was on every channel.

Dogg Pound, without a doubt, was bigger than Jay-Z in 96. They went double platinum with Dogg Food. Jay didn't sell 500k.

dude didnt say dogg pound tho.

he claimed that kurupt himself was bigger than jay-z.

 

[Surreal]

It was a great album. Not classic or genre changing.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

I grew up in the Bay. I found out about Jay from watching the video for Dead Presidents on Rap City. I don't know how you could have been a fan of rhyming and not hit the when you saw that video. I copped the album off that alone.
You had to be into more than just what was on the radio to be up on Jay back then.

That's the thing, people remember dead presidents, but it didn't make people jump up and say I gotta cop this...as I said earlier in this thread, i fukked with that song, had no clue who a jay z was when it dropped (thought he bit AZ's name lol) and told my brothers I was gonna buy his cd and got laughed out the room...that was the majority response to him "smack, who is this nikka".

Vol 1 put him in the game nationally tho, plus the feature on foxy's "I'll be". Vol 2 made him a superstar and birthed one of the best concerts ever! Hard Knock Life tour and Up In Smoke - GOAT hip hop tours.

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

give it up nikka far as popular rappers he wasn't the most popular like I said already not even two years later he was. All this declining rap bullshyt is lame nikka excuses. Deaths are irrelevant too. Jay been popular since 98 ain't no two ways around it. Damn near 17 years as the most commercially popular artist or close too it that shyt is no fluke breh. Just deal with it. nikkas next album wack or not is going to have him right up there with whatever young dude is popping. I could see nikkas saying this if it was 3 or 4 years but almost 2 decades

Me & you definitely look through different scopes.

I don't really care about commercial popularity.The masses are asses.

I just don't like when nikkaz try to revise history.


Which you're not trying to do because you keep mentioning '98 Jay.

I can't argue against him being the most popular rapper since that time.

Only thing I don't agree with is the decline of rap being a lame excuse & deaths being irrelevant.

When Pac & Big got knocked off, the game went through a depression.Puffy came on some "cheer up/let's make the music fun again" shiny suit shyt.

Once that lil phase burned out, the game was voided..wide open.

Jay took it and ran with it....DMX...Even Ja Rule got a piece

 

[Mr. Negative]

nah. everything was not getting played everyday.

they only had 20 slots tops.

plus jay was getting play outside of just rap city. he was on every channel.

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

I grew up in the Bay. I found out about Jay from watching the video for Dead Presidents on Rap City. I don't know how you could have been a fan of rhyming and not hit the when you saw that video. I copped the album off that alone.
You had to be into more than just what was on the radio to be up on Jay back then.

All this time I've been thinking you was a east coast nikka

 

[god shamgod]

Who gives a shyt what was being played on the west coast.Celly cel and mac mall got tick out there back in those days and both them nikkas wakk as hell

The world don't revolve around the west coast.I live in the midwest and knew who jay was off radio/videos and being a hip hop head.Anybody saying jay was a nobody in 96 was young as hell in 96 or running with a narrative.Nobody saying jay was a star he was an up n coming rapper in an era where hip hop was deep as hell with established acts of course he was at the bottom of the food chain but to say he was a nobody is a lie.Pac spent energy name dropping a so called 'nobody' and big collabed with a 'nobody' on several songs.