Pop music is watered down. Part of going pop is transforming your sound so that the masses will like it. The idea is that you're only going to go so far as an artist of a particular genre.
Pete Rock did Juicy first.
And Juicy isn't a quintessential Bad Boy record either.
I agree that Trackmasters could be as commercial as they needed to be. They made straight up pop with Will Smith. They also made grimy shyt and commercial rap.
The bolded is exactly what Nas did with
It Was Written. According to your own statement, you're agreeing with what I said.
Pete Rock doing "Juicy" first is irrelevant. Puff went with the version that he and Trackmasters did for a reason. Puffy and The Trackmasters version far less raw, has much more gloss and mass appeal than Pete Rock's version.
"Juicy" is quite possibly the quintessential Bad Boy record. Puff literally made Da Band recite that song word for word as a requirement. When they failed he made them memorize it.
Yeah, nobody's denying The Trackmasters' versatility, but they got over by looping '80's Pop records and not just looping them, but they even incorporated the choruses of the songs they looped.
Of course it is. Are you saying hip hop has no definitional characteristics? Is Garth Brooks hip hop? If not, why not?
Outside of the actual rapping, there aren't really and defining characteristics of Hip Hop music especially these days. Hip Hop has gone through to many sonic phases and draws from too many influences to be confined to specific sounds. There's Hip Hop songs that have a Jazz feel, a Rock feel, and a lot of it has an R&B feel. These days, it's Trap and since you have virtually an entire music industry singing and rapping over them, it all sounds the same.
That's a slippery slope. You're saying there isn't a general consensus about guys like Rakim and Nas and etc?
General consensus doesn't exist. I think Rakim and Nas are Top 5, with Nas higher on my list. I'm sure people would disagree. The reason why there's not a general consensus and because every body has their own biases and preferences. For example, I write, so my reasoning behind liking Nas more than Rakim, is going to differ from someone who doesn't. Someone else who also writes, might even disagree depending on what their preferences are. I tend to favor more storytelling and conceptual writing. Someone else might favor something else.
Some people don't care about the writing and favor flows, delivery, and overall music. That's where the appeal of someone like Missy comes in. You might not understand. I may not think of Missy of Top lyricist or rapper for that matter, but I like her music. I understand why others don't, but I get the appeal and it's definitely not because she's a lyricist, but because she knows how to interact with the music she's given. I really don't hear anyone else rapping on the beats that she raps over outside of the artists she's featured.
It's not really a slippery slope because not everybody has the same criteria for what a classic album is.
Wasn't that Timb though? Or are we taking about her corny rapping?
That ground breaking sound was a combination of both Missy and Timbaland. That goes back to what I was referring to above. She knew what to do with a Timbaland beat at a time when his style was still new to everybody else.
At Fiesta Remix being a pop record.
