Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up” is a crucial and critical blow. But there was never reciprocation.
2. What’s the best “Takeover” vs. “Ether” piece of trivia?
Here it is: There was a third part to all of this: “Ether” was so damning when it hit that Jay Z, nearly impossible to rattle, offered an impromptu response on Hot 97 called “Super Ugly.” In it, he said that he and Allen Iverson slept with Nas’s then-girlfriend, an allegation he alluded to on “Takeover” (“You-know-who did you-know-what with you-know-who”8). He also said he left a used condom on Nas’s baby’s car seat. Jay Z’s mother was so offended, she made Jay Z apologize to Nas and his girlfriend and all other women.
3. Which song is sonically better?
“Takeover” sampled the very rugged “Five to One” by the Doors, and it sure was fun and surprising, and I definitely do enjoy Jay Z’s ability to bend sentences around corners to fit into whatever cadence it is he’s trying to make. But “Ether,” a testament to Nas’s superheroic skill, was as rotund as it was slicing, and that’s a pair of traits nobody else on earth has figured out how to match up yet. “Ether” got it.
4. Which song has the better disses?
“Ether” was very, very ruthless. It covered all the bases.
Destructive: “Blowed up, no guts left; chest/face gone” Self-congratulatory: “Name a rapper that I ain’t influenced” Directly hurtful: He called Jay a camel, and that’s so sad. Indirectly dismissive: “What’s sad is I love you ’cuz you’re my brother / You traded your soul for riches”
But Jay Z’s above-referenced math class was too real to overcome. “Takeover” got it.
5. Wait, so who won, then?
Everyone did, actually.
Jay Z won because he thrust himself further into the true rap canon than he could have had he avoided confrontation. No matter how famous he gets, how many endorsement deals he does, or how many times he hangs out with the president, he will always be one-half of the most exciting, realest rap battle in history. His name couldn’t carry as much weight in rap without it.
Nas won because it reinvigorated him and revitalized his career.
And humans with functioning ears won because we got “Takeover” and “Ether” and all of the excitement that surrounded the battle while it was happening. Also, nobody died, which is always preferable.
6. Yeah, but who really won?
Well, “Ether” was technically better than “Takeover.”
7. Got it. So Nas won?
Kind of, but really no. It’s hard to say Nas won because we know how each of their lives turned out. I mean, Nas literally worked for Jay Z when he signed to Def Jam Records in 2006.9 At the end of everything, we’re back at their core dispute: art vs. success.
In 2001, Nas won. But for the rest of time, Jay will win.
I suspect that’s how they prefer it, too.
REBUTTAL: “RENEGADE” JAY Z, FEATURING EMINEM
Jay Z engaged in a rivalry more subtle, but no less significant, on The Blueprint. Well, “rivalry” implies that the competition between Jay and Eminem on “Renegade” was close. But just as Sean Carter was bested by another smiling nihilist on an infamous freestyle six years earlier, so too was he dominated by his album’s only guest. Eminem was coming off the best record of his career, one that made him “the king of these rude, ludicrous, lucrative lyrics.” Aside from being Jay’s main competition commercially, Em had inherited hip-hop’s mantle of the underdog: Even when on top, he came across as an outsider. On Blueprint, Jay established himself as the twenty-first-century rap overlord. But Em, more mercurial, and ultimately more self-destructive, hijacked “Renegade” with a jaw-dropping display of the raw talent that allowed him to dominate the next five years, as well as the overwhelming fury that eventually doomed his music.
—JONAH BROMWICH
Rivalries
Sometimes rappers don’t get along with other rappers, things
Jay-Z vs. Nas + Common vs. Drake + Snoop Dogg vs. Looking Like Abraham Lincoln’s Skeleton + Eazy-E vs. Dr. Dre + Ice-T vs. Soulja Boy + Lil B vs. Kevin Durant + Lupe Fiasco vs. Aliens + The Real Roxanne vs. Roxanne Shante + LL Cool J vs. Canibus + Nelly vs. Chingy + Chingy vs. Having to be Chingy + Jermaine Dupri vs. Timbaland and Dr. Dre + Charles Hamilton vs. That Girl Who Punched Him in the Face + Boogie Down Productions vs. Juice Crew + 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule + Busy Bee vs. Kool Moe Dee + J. Cole vs. Everlasting Corniness + Run-DMC vs. Sucker M.C.’s + Memphis Bleek vs. Nas + Pimp C vs. Master P + T.I. vs. Lil Flip + Suge Knight vs. Being a Very Despicable Person + Lil’ Kim vs. Cosmetic Surgery + Iggy Azalea vs. Ears + Tyler, The Creator vs. B.o.B + DMX vs. Going Insane + Gucci Mane vs. Going to Prison + LL Cool J vs. Not Licking His Own Lips + Joe Budden vs. Raekwon + Ol’ Dirty Bastard vs. Welfare + Young Jeezy vs. The Plug + Jackie O vs. Foxy Brown + LL Cool J vs. Those Sharks in Deep Blue Sea + Method Man and Redman vs. Acting in How High + Coolio vs. Weird Al Yankovic + Eminem vs. Every Woman on the Planet + Mos Def vs. His Facial Hair + Missy Elliott vs. Whomever Had the Keys to the Jeep
1. Jay Z is one of six rappers that my mom can name. The other five: Tupac (he’s her first mention always), Slim Shady (though she doesn’t know that he and Eminem are the same person because she is adorable), Vanilla Ice (this one is my fault—I really, really liked “Ice Ice Baby” when I was in elementary school), Snoop (he’s my dad’s favorite rapper, inasmuch as a fifty-plus-year-old Mexican man can have a favorite rapper), and Pitbull (though she will always ask, “Is he a rapper?” when she names him).
2. Probably.
3. The dream Monopoly rapper showdown: Jay Z, Dr. Dre, Puff, Master P, and DMX. The first four because they’ve amassed fortunes in rap and other ventures, the last because I really just want to see what DMX says when he draws the Go to Jail card.
4. A noncomprehensive list of Jay Z’s endorsement deals: Budweiser, Samsung, Reebok, Hublot, Hewlett-Packard, Rhapsody, and Bing. If Jay Z couldn’t make Bing cool, nobody can.
5. Nas actually has a long string of endorsement deals as well. It’s not impossible that his philosophical stance is a restriction imposed by poor business skills and not by morality, I suppose.
6. The generally accepted Worst Nas Song is “Who Killed It?” from 2006’s Hip Hop Is Dead. That’s incorrect, though. “Who Killed It?” is a bad song. But it’s bad in a pretentious way. (It’s Nas talking about rap being dead, and that’s no new thing, but he’s doing it in a cartoonish Al Capone accent, and that was a real mistake.) Stillmatic’s “Braveheart Party” is a failed grasp at radio play, and that’s way more offensive. The song was so upsetting that Mary J. Blige, who sang the hook, asked that it be removed from further pressings of Stillmatic.
7. Biggie told Vibe that he’d written that song well before Tupac was shot, which is either proof that he didn’t intend this as a diss song or proof that it is a diss song and also that he knew Tupac was going to be shot. And even if it wasn’t originally intended as a diss song, the timing of the release certainly wasn’t an accident.
8. When Tupac took aim at Biggie on “Hit ’Em Up” it starts with “That’s why I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker.” Tupac and Jay Z did not handle things the same way.
9. Jay Z was president of Def Jam Records by that point.
WHAT THIS SONG IS ABOUT
Dealing drugs.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
It evolved gangsta rap, thumbing it into coke rap, a subgenre of a subgenre of rap that was rooted primarily in talking about dealing drugs in clever ways, which became a dominant trend in rap. (Also, it became the North Star for the Neptunes, an affluential production duo.)
The following names are of characters from a TV show called The Wire, which ran on HBO from 2002 to 2008 and examined the caustic effects of drugs in Baltimore. Their quotes are scattered throughout this chapter.
Omar Little: He is a self-employed mercenary. He sticks up drug dealers for a living.
Avon Barksdale: He’s the leader of a fiercely
successful drug operation.
Cutty: He’s a reformed enforcer from the drug trade. He runs a boxing gym now.
Bunk Moreland: He’s a detective in the homicide unit of the Baltimore PD.
Slim Charles: He mostly works as an enforcer for whichever drug cartel needs him.
Bubs: He alternates between being a drug addict and a recovering drug addict.
Stringer Bell: He’s second-in-command in the Barksdale organization.
This is not a comprehensive list of the people on the show, and the descriptions here can hardly really be called descriptions. But they will do.
♦
“The game is out there, and it’s either play or get played.” —Omar Little
Pusha T is one of two members of the Clipse, and just that quickly you know that Pusha T spends a lot of his time talking about drugs, because his name is Pusha, referencing “pusher,” which is slang for “drug dealer.” The other member of the Clipse used to call himself Malice, and just that quickly you know that he spent a lot of time talking about bad things, drugs and the such, because his name was Malice. In 2012, Malice changed his name to No Malice, a reflection of his conversion to Christianity. The religiosity was largely inspired by the 2009 arrest and eventual incarceration of Anthony Gonzalez, the group’s former manager. Gonzalez admitted to being the leader of a $20 million drug ring that had moved a half ton of cocaine, a full ton of marijuana, and hundreds of pounds of heroin to different parts of the United States. He received thirty-two years in prison. No Malice still raps about the bad things, the drugs and such, and he does so with the same concrete resolution he’d flexed before, but now it’s of a different tone—a no-thank-you tone; a good-bye tone.
Pusha T admires The Wire.1 This makes sense because The Wire is wonderful and largely considered the finest television of its time and all time. But it also makes sense because the way you would talk about it—an unflinching, nuanced, steadied drug drama set in a city in the northeastern United States that forgoes celebrating drug culture and drug dealers in favor of positioning them as a reflection of that culture—is the exact same way you would talk about the Clipse’s music. They make drug records. More accurately: They make coke rap records. They did so in the ’90s to moderate success, but after linking up with production team the Neptunes, they did it in 20022 better than anyone had ever done it before,3 specifically with “Grindin’,” and effectively legitimized the coke rap trend that would come to dominate rap in the years that followed.
♦
“We gon’ handle this shit like businessmen. Sell the shit, make the profit, and later for that gangster bullshit.” —Stringer Bell
At the beginning of “Grindin’,” Pharrell, one-half of the Neptunes,4 introduces everything by saying, “Yo, I go by the name of Pharrell, from the Neptunes, and I just wanna let y’all know the world is about to feel something that they’ve never felt before,” and as far as boasts go, it was similar to most,5 but also as far as boasts go, it was truer than most.
The Neptunes are maybe the most influential production team of the last fifteen years,6 and they were definitely that from 2000 to 2010. They built up large, large hits for Snoop (“Drop It Like It’s Hot”), Nelly (“Hot In Herre”), Justin Timberlake (“Señorita”), Kelis (“Milkshake”), Britney Spears (“I’m a Slave 4 U”), Jay Z (“I Just Wanna Love U”), and more. But none matched the weight, the ingenuity of sparseness, of “Grindin’.” It sounded like someone was beating on a garage door, which connected it to the past, but it also sounded like someone was trying to make a phone call from outer space, which connected it to the future, and that’s exactly what it represented, both in production and rap.
♦
“I’m just a gangster, I suppose. And I want my corners.” —Avon Barksdale
There’s a scene in the final episode of the second season of The Wire where a plan Stringer Bell laid gets tangled up and a hit man he hired named Brother Mouzone ends up getting shot but not killed. Stringer visits him in the hospital, and while there he asks Mouzone who shot him. Mouzone doesn’t say. When Stringer mentions the exchange to Avon, he says he asked Mouzone who shot him. Avon, flabbergasted, asks him why, but in a voice that lets him know it’s less a question and more an admonition. “Why, what?” Stringer asks. “How you gonna ask a soldier like Mouzone a question like that?” Avon barks. “Either he’s gonna say or he’s gonna work it out. Either way, you ain’t got to be asking him for shit.” Watching it unfold, I had no idea Stringer had done anything wrong, but as soon as Avon explained it I understood. Watching The Wire is great, but it always reminds me that I am not a gangster.
There’s a part in the third verse of “Grindin’” where (No) Malice says, “Four and a half will get you in the game / Anything less is just a goddamn shame.” It’s an easy bar to learn, and it’s fun to say, but I didn’t have any idea what it meant for the whole twelve years between when the song came out and when I wrote this paragraph right here. I didn’t know if “four and a half” meant hundreds, dollars, or guns or crack rocks or hot dogs. When dealing with cocaine, an eighth of a kilogram is the minimum amount considered to be major weight (an eighth of a kilogram is 4.5 ounces). Isn’t that interesting? Listening to the Clipse is great, but it always reminds me that I am not a drug dealer.
♦
“The game done changed.” —Cutty
Pusha T and Malice are from Virginia Beach, Virginia. There’s an argument to be made that their prominence signaled the potentiality for other cities not known for rap to become known for rap (Memphis, Seattle, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., etc.). There’s also an easier argument to be made that the success of “Grindin’” was the continuation of the radio dominance of the Neptunes, Missy Elliott, and Timbaland, all also from Virginia, and all interested in evolving rap into etherealness.
Grindin’
“I sell it whipped, un-whipped, it’s soft or hard” (0:21)
“Call me subwoofer ‘cause I pump base like that, Jack” (0:28)
“Gucci Chuck Taylor with the dragon on the side” (0:44)
“Legend in two games like I’m Pee Wee Kirkland” (0:53)
“Watch it, like my whip, like my chick, topless” (1:28)
“Cocky, something that I just can’t help” (1:47)
“Filthy, the word that best defines me” (1:55)
“I’m just grinding, man, y’all never mind me” (1:58)
“My grind’s ‘bout family, never been about fame” (2:41)
“Four and a half will get you in the game” (2:46)
“Glock with two tips, whoever gets in the way” (2:53)
“I move ‘caine like a cripple” (3:01)
“One eye closed I’ll hit you, as if I was Slick Rick my aim is still an issue” (3:08)
Descriptive, Introspective, Historical Reference, Self-reflective, Thrilling, Name Brand, Comparative
♦
“Thin line between heaven and here.” —Bubs
Right around the time that Malice was deciding to become No Malice, Pusha was deciding to join Kanye West’s GOOD Music label. No Malice found Jesus. Pusha T found Yeezus. I’m glad everything that’s ever happened in the whole history of the world has happened because it led to me being able to write a No Malice/Pusha T, Jesus/Yeezus couplet. This book is a success, as is history. Sometimes the universe serves this stuff up right in your face and all you can do is be thankful.
♦
“If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie.” —Slim Charles
There have been stages to gangsta rap, which definitely is what coke rap is rooted in. Early gangsta rap, tied to the crack epidemic of the ’80s and early ’90s, was not an uplifting narrative; it didn’t have any Horatio Alger in it. It was meant as the loudest kind of analysis, an unsettling look at the aftershocks caused by the drugs and the drug war.7 It grew from there into what Dr. Dre and Snoop turned it into, which is to say a perfectly stylized version of itself. Then came the American outlaw Tupac, and after his
death things started to tip. Crack, while still a nasty problem, wasn’t the rampant epidemic it was anymore, and so the violence that had been attached to it tapered off. (“In 1991, 50.4 African Americans per 100,000 were killed. By 2000, that number had halved itself. Actual murders committed by young black males dropped from 244.1 per 100,000 youths in 1993 to 67.3 in 1999.”8) Biggie had turned the lens inward, examining the effect the drug trade had on a person philosophically and intrinsically (Jay Z occasionally did this, too, though never as well), and Nas sat on his stoop and reported on the entirety of his universe like no one else had or could. But, absent a sense of true urgency, gangsta rap floundered otherwise. Puff showed up and yanked rap in the direction he took it, commodifying commodities, commercializing everything with light-speed, slapping Cîroc stickers on everything and swapping out bandannas for velour Sean John sweatpants. And then the Clipse walked onto the radio with “Grindin’,” and Oh my goodness, what TF is this??? It was back to drug dealing, but it was this new thing, from this new perspective. There was no romanticizing, no upsell, just d-boy rap championing d-boy rap. The post-crack, post-Tupac gangsta rappers were supplementing true chaos with charisma, and the result was an inescapable feeling of secondhandedness.9 The Clipse were the opposite. There was no charisma. They had reverse charisma. The Clipse anesthetized the process. They removed the emotion. They were workaday hustlers. It was perfect.
The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song from Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed Page 19