Jeezy was the start of me knowing that hip hop was dead.
I remember the moment this album came out like it was yesterday. I could not understand the hype. There was this suburb university chick I knew that was talking about "Young Jeezy is the truth, he makes me wanna grind." It was like: 'whaaat? Of all rap albums, this is the one you're obsessing over?"
Fast forward many years later. Ol girl doesn't even listen to rap no more, and from the looks of it, married a total square.
I think Monie Love quit radio because of her argument with Jeezy over how dead hip hop had become. Remember that shyt?!
As the years passed, I started to realize that this album appeals to squares (black squares and cacs) who use it as 'motivation music'. I know a cat who considers this the hardest and most gangsta rap album he's ever heard, and he's a total cac square from the suburbs on some Pleasantville shyt. He's also much younger than me. I'm probably the only Black person he knows, and we're not even cool like that. Like you said, I think it was the mix of the street affiliation and the aggressively-dumbed-down candy hip hop that made this blow up.
The beats are still trash for the most part and don't have any groove to them. It's straight up robot music. Maybe it's OK as background music to work out to but I can't see any intelligent, artistic funky person actually listening to this album on its own merit. It's way too dull.
These guys acting like you're crazy for not loving this album are most likely hip hop newbies who got brainwashed into liking this album. It's a group mentality album for real.
Really? Hmm... I had no idea. Then again, I was in Toronto. It just wasn't playing around me. The first time I heard that whole sound was through Jeezy.
very true.
I agree - the production was unlike anything I'd ever heard. I didn't hear any groove but I knew it was hyper-glossy and I didn't like that.
The incessant ad-libbing... Jeezy is the first major adlib rapper. I remember being confused that people actually liked someone solely for their adlibs. Biggie had DOPE adlibs but it was one of the last things you'd ever think when you thought "why is Biggie dope". But for Jeezy, it was front and center. Comparing him to Lil Jon is accurate in a way but inaccurate because everyone knew Lil Jon as a producer. No one was listening to him as a 'rapper'. But people actually quote Jeezy's adlibs. To the point where people started using them in dance/pop RnB records.
Young Jeezy started the trend of 'I'm a super average street dude that wants to rap' like we have now. If he didn't start that trend, he certainly took it into the stratosphere. Rap still sounds like what Jeezy did in 2005. All that trap, drill shyt is Jeezy.
Your average, stuck-in-the-hood wannabe trap-rapper of today is Jeezy's son. He's fathered millions of nikkas.
It wasn't like before when you had to have a special story to come out as a gangsta rapper. 50 Cent got huge because he was special: you didn't hear about the guy who got shot a million times and survived. That doesn't happen to everyone. even street nikkas. It made 50 special. Like a lone survivor who you couldn't kill. And he played it up for sales.
Jeezy had NO story. His story was literally: "I just wanna rap and make money. There isn't anything special about me except my motivation to succeed, which is unparalleled. and I've got a street movement behind me"
With intensive marketing, I think that struck a chord with your average non-artistic professional/business type.
Nobody is saying that this album wasn't listened to. I think everyone heard it. We're saying that it set a bad precedent in hip hop where hype grossly preceded actual quality of music. Sure this was a problem in the past but if you look at albums in the 80s and 90s, they pretty much lived up to the hype. In the mid 2000s, with Ye and Jeezy, the hyperbole went into overdrive. And we started seeing it so often with "Wayne is the greatest rapper alive and top 5 all time" when Carter 3 dropped and "Who are these new guys Odd Future? Are they the new Wu-tang?" and rap saviors (Electronica, Cole and Kendrick).
Modern hip hop is all hyperbole and no music.
