Old heads, is it true Reasonable Doubt...

[Rekkapryde]

the funny thing about these illmatic & reasonable doubt threads is that the same people that try to deny their status, are the same people that wont utter a world when an album like black moon's "enta da stage" is considered a classic(as it should be).

they just like to stress sales and such for jay & nas, I guess because they had big commercial success afterwards.

2 things for certain about reasonable doubt if jay never became a household name afterwards:
1.) nobody on these message boards would try to downplay its classic status.
2.) at the same time, one thing we can all agree on is that the media would prolly sweep reasonable doubt under the rug and not mention it anywhere near as much as they do. a lot of these commercial entities that give the album high rank wouldn't even know about the album, nor would they know about jay. so in that case, @Enchanted, yes the album does benefit from jay blowing up later and campaigning for it. it helps in that aspect.

but if you were into hip-hop for real-for real back then, you know reasonable doubt is a classic. also, some of these bigger name artists that keep getting mentioned in here, weren't getting as much props as jay within hip-hop. for example, the fugees dropped a great album and they were selling more records than everybody. but jay was getting more burn in the streets of the fugees own city/state than they were.

I dunno fam. I don't think it would be considered the "classic" it is today if Jay didn't become who he is. It would have just been another dope debut in the same breath as Busta's "The Coming".

There are many albums though that do become classic even though it wasn't recognized as such when it dropped. But to say RD was poppin "like that" in 96 isn't true.

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

I bought it in the summer of '96 just off of the strength of seeing the Dead Presidents video on Rap City.. I figured if AZ and Biggie cosigned him (by being in the video), and he was smart enough to sample Nas he must be decent... I bought it on the same day as I bought IWW (cassette days)....I opened IWW first and it was so dope I swear I didn't even break the plastic off of RD till like 3 weeks later...It was good but I only listened to it sparingly...You gotta remember this was '96 so we had Outkast, Redman, Tupac and Ghostface all dropping classic albums later that fall... RD got lost in the shuffle and was pretty much forgotten in my circle..


Then I heard him say on BP1 "Reasonable Doubt classic, should have went triple"



Since that point on I've witnessed the revisionist history on the impact of this album be overstated...

But back in '96 it was only really a regional hit....NY dudes tell me it was the hottest most quoted album of the summer up there...I was in Atlanta at the time and it came and went without most n1ggas paying it any mind....The biggest discussion surrounding it was Biggie saying the line about Faith having Tupacs twins...Jay was Big Sean status and Biggie played the Kendrick role on his album..


The reason I feel he went on a marketing push to inflate the importance of the album was because he was beefing with Nas at the time and he needed an Illmatic...The critics and fans hadn't given it to him so he attempted to create it himself.. I won't even say he attempted, because it actually worked..It was the first time I witnessed marketing rewrite history..

Same exact story I got.I'm from the west coast and I can honestly say I didn't know one nikka who had RD in their possession.He was just that dude from the Foxy Brown "Ain't No nikka" track.

 

[froggle]

the funny thing about these illmatic & reasonable doubt threads is that the same people that try to deny their status, are the same people that wont utter a world when an album like black moon's "enta da stage" is considered a classic(as it should be).

they just like to stress sales and such for jay & nas, I guess because they had big commercial success afterwards.

2 things for certain about reasonable doubt if jay never became a household name afterwards:
1.) nobody on these message boards would try to downplay its classic status.
2.) at the same time, one thing we can all agree on is that the media would prolly sweep reasonable doubt under the rug and not mention it anywhere near as much as they do. a lot of these commercial entities that give the album high rank wouldn't even know about the album, nor would they know about jay. so in that case, @Enchanted, yes the album does benefit from jay blowing up later and campaigning for it. it helps in that aspect.

but if you were into hip-hop for real-for real back then, you know reasonable doubt is a classic. also, some of these bigger name artists that keep getting mentioned in here, weren't getting as much props as jay within hip-hop. for example, the fugees dropped a great album and they were selling more records than everybody. but jay was getting more burn in the streets of the fugees own city/state than they were.

You hit the nail on the head. Everyone ignores all the other classics from that time that are not commercially successful. It's as simple as this. If you didn't know about Jay or Reasonable Doubt before 98, you were not a real rap fan and just a product of what the music labels were pushing to you at the time.

 

[The_King_of_Everything]

So basically just like yeezus

Mentioned as great but wasn't really popping numbers wise because it was ahead of its time?


I get it.....I get it

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

You hit the nail on the head. Everyone ignores all the other classics from that time that are not commercially successful. It's as simple as this. If you didn't know about Jay or Reasonable Doubt before 98, you were not a real rap fan and just a product of what the music labels were pushing to you at the time.

I knew about C Bo, Tela, and Celly Cel........Jay just wasn't cracking like that.He wasn't too far from being on them dudes level back in '96

 

[CrimsonTider]

Wasn't poppin in 96? I keep seein nikkas sayin that no one was checkin for Hov and nikkas thought it was trash until Jay himself started sayin that it was classic later on. I was born in 95 so it doesn't sound right to me that the GOAT was considered wack

So is that true or is the booth just bullshyttin?

No one had ever said RD was trash

 

[the cac mamba]

 

[Brad Piff]

I'm from the west coast and I can honestly say I didn't know one nikka who had RD in their possession.He was just that dude from the Foxy Brown "Ain't No nikka" track.

a hell of a lot more people were bumpin RD than illmatic or iww on the west coast although i will say if i ruled the world was popular but that was due to lauryn hill not that sherm head chump nas

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

What? Somethings are instant classics, most things are not. People call GRODT classic, that shyt is trash. It wasn't that good to begin with and time hasn't been good to it and it's only been a decade.

people weren't in a rush to call something a classic back in the day tho.

what it comes down to is the fact that when it was out, it was treated the same way and/or better than most classics.

 

[Rekkapryde]

I bought it in the summer of '96 just off of the strength of seeing the Dead Presidents video on Rap City.. I figured if AZ and Biggie cosigned him (by being in the video), and he was smart enough to sample Nas he must be decent... I bought it on the same day as I bought IWW (cassette days)....I opened IWW first and it was so dope I swear I didn't even break the plastic off of RD till like 3 weeks later...It was good but I only listened to it sparingly...You gotta remember this was '96 so we had Outkast, Redman, Tupac and Ghostface all dropping classic albums later that fall... RD got lost in the shuffle and was pretty much forgotten in my circle..


Then I heard him say on BP1 "Reasonable Doubt classic, should have went triple"



Since that point on I've witnessed the revisionist history on the impact of this album be overstated...

But back in '96 it was only really a regional hit....NY dudes tell me it was the hottest most quoted album of the summer up there...I was in Atlanta at the time and it came and went without most n1ggas paying it any mind....The biggest discussion surrounding it was Biggie saying the line about Faith having Tupacs twins...Jay was Big Sean status and Biggie played the Kendrick role on his album..


The reason I feel he went on a marketing push to inflate the importance of the album was because he was beefing with Nas at the time and he needed an Illmatic...The critics and fans hadn't given it to him so he attempted to create it himself.. I won't even say he attempted, because it actually worked..It was the first time I witnessed marketing rewrite history..

Bingo.

 

[froggle]

I knew about C Bo, Tela, and Celly Cel........Jay just wasn't cracking like that.He wasn't too far from being on them dudes level back in '96

just watching Rap City around that time, they played everyone, but on saturday mornings when they had their top ten best, aint no C Bo, Tela and Celly Cel in there. Jay was #1 for dead presidents, aint no nikka and held it down in the top 10 wid Mary. The top 10 determined what was hot and to say Jay was that status means you needed to step your cable game up

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

I dunno fam. I don't think it would be considered the "classic" it is today if Jay didn't become who he is. It would have just been another dope debut in the same breath as Busta's "The Coming".

There are many albums though that do become classic even though it wasn't recognized as such when it dropped. But to say RD was poppin "like that" in 96 isn't true.

reasonable doubt was getting way more love than "the coming". come on man.

like I said, the media wouldn't be hyping up reasonable doubt like they do today if jay hadn't blew up to where he is now. they might not even mention it on their lists. and newer rap fans wouldn't be talking about it either. this thread prolly wouldn't even be made......but at the he ssame time, while being brushed under the rug by the media, it would get infinite props as a classic on this board like say black moon or any other BCC classics.

and certainly people wouldn't be trying to downplay him and compare him to busta rhymes(no disrespect).

its a 2-way street basically.

 

[Homeboy Runny-Ray]

also, if youre from some sort of bamma town that wasn't really hip-hop or hip in general, then you prolly would never understand.

that's not anybody's fault tho.

 

[MooseMouthMthafuga]

just watching Rap City around that time, they played everyone, but on saturday mornings when they had their top ten best, aint no C Bo, Tela and Celly Cel in there. Jay was #1 for dead presidents, aint no nikka and held it down in the top 10 wid Mary. The top 10 determined what was hot and to say Jay was that status means you needed to step your cable game up

I didn't say Jay was on their level, I said not too far from their level.He was a Robin...sidekick status

 

[Rekkapryde]

reasonable doubt was getting way more love than "the coming". come on man.

like I said, the media wouldn't be hyping up reasonable doubt like they do today if jay hadn't blew up to where he is now. they might not even mention it on their lists. and newer rap fans wouldn't be talking about it either. this thread prolly wouldn't even be made......but at the he ssame time, while being brushed under the rug by the media, it would get infinite props as a classic on this board like say black moon or any other BCC classics.

and certainly people wouldn't be trying to downplay him and compare him to busta rhymes(no disrespect).

its a 2-way street basically.

Reason I said Busta was because of it being a dope debut. that's all. And that's not a downplay at all because The Coming WAS dope.

The Enta Da Stage analogy is good in the fact that it was an album that became a classic even if it wasn't necessarily recognized as one at the time and became one over time. But Jay and his marketing adding the "extra" to cysing RD as a classic helped RD's "classic" status as well. I think @Gator Reloaded said it perfectly.

And it's not a knock on the album at all because it is an incredibly dope debut. It just wasn't the status cats made it out to be at that time.