Took the words out of my mouth. Now I'm only 27 so I can't act like I was around in the 80s or even old enough to understand everything in the early 90s but once I got into the music in the mid 90s, even as an elementary or middle school kid, I could feel the mystique around certain dudes. You felt like they were untouchable and that the images they portrayed, whether right or wrong, were who they were. There was no constant exposure to how dudes were behind the scenes, you only had word of mouth stories and a lot of those stories became urban legend, like with Wu or Pac or BIG. Beat downs at D&D Studios, fights at shows, Wu beating down reporters, Nas and Pac meeting at the MTV awards...stuff happened and you had to assume it was true.
The music is lacking an aggression and isn't as a part of the pop culture zeitgeist as it used to be. Not saying no one cares about Hip Hop but in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was THE biggest genre in music and the coolest because of the aura, mystique and variety you had in the music. Like someone said before, Cash Money sounded like Cash Money, New York MCs sounded like New York MCs and westcoast cats sounded like westcoast cats. There was room for every style to not just exist, but thrive commercially. We have variety now but a lot of the guys we love are relegated to the underground or just dropping mixtapes and doing shows and not being able to truly be "stars." As the music has grown it's become more corporate and when something becomes more corporate, naturally it will soften up and it did.
...it's no wonder that nas also dropped hhid that year too,which was also a horrible album
