The kid who went to hell for snuffing Jesus has become a sacred cow. When people start making greatest rapper lists you can't count to five before Nas' name is mentioned. Even a young RZA and GZA got bamboozled into goofy New Jack Swing jams by clueless executives. LL Cool J was mugging with a red beret in Toys. Big Daddy Kane was firmly in the silken post-Madonna Sex book era. It was after Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, and leather-suited rappers wanted that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze money. Rap-A-Lot was carving up its empire in the South. Death Row and West Coast gangsta rap dominated the charts and mass media oxygen. New York street culture was losing its birthright to hip-hop's evolution. The Columbia press sheet that accompanies it opens: "While it's sad that there's so much frontin' in the rap world today, this should only make us sit up and pay attention when a rapper comes along who's not about milking the latest trend and running off with the loot." Hip-hop was a teenager when Illmatic dropped*.* Old enough for biblical foundation, but young enough to be embroiled in an early identity crisis. I lay puzzled as I backtrack to earlier times. He was the spawn of the Wild Style, the first great to grow up with Park Jams as his earliest memories. He's carrying on tradition, defined as: "When it's real, you do it even without a recording contract." It's an oath of purity amidst poisons- something that seems sanctimonious in a post-Puffy world, but it assured the older gods that they would have a stake in the next generation. His brother Jungle snaps, "yo, Nas, what the fuck is this bullshit?" Nas tells him to chill. Nas calls his version "The Genesis", fusing his own story of origin with the culture. The track shifts to " The Subway Theme" from Wild Style, hip-hop's first creation myth, the 1983 film that exposed the routines of the South Bronx to the rest of the world. A VHS snippet from Wild Style immediately snarls, "Stop fucking around and be a man!" You hear a cassette tape hissing the verse from teenaged Nasty Nas on Main Source's " Live at the BBQ," 1991: " When I was 12, I went to Hell for snuffing Jesus." He anointed himself the "street's disciple." Everyone blessed him as the Golden Child. Illmatic starts with that rumbling of the train. It's just the attitude out there, it's just life. Everybody's mentality revolves around the projects. He explained the mentality to The Source in April 1994, the same month Illmatic was instantly canonized with a perfect 5-Mic score: "When I was a kid I just stayed in the projects… that shit is like a city. The neighbors are the rotting East River and the "Big Alice" power plant, its smokestacks hacking up black clouds. The pissy elevators only stop on every other floor. Queensbridge Houses, the largest projects in America, brick buildings dun as dead leaves, a six-block maze clotted with 7,000-plus trying to survive. I wanted to expand.The doors crumple open and the passengers vanish up half-lit stairwells into the Bridge. I didn't want to do a thousand "Men At Works", or a hundred " Road to the Riches". But I did want to rap about interesting shit. I would just let everything come natural, whatever took over my imagination I'd just roll with that. I like when other people make me laugh.Ĭoncept songs were very important but I never forced them. Everything is not always straight-faced or ice grilling for me. It was meant to get chicks interested in me in that kind of light but be funny at the same time. I wanted to make something in a different direction. I had always been a rapper for the thugs, the drug dealers, the goons, and the dudes locked up. "Talk Like Sex" was Kool G Rap's first dirty rap song and he recalled in a 2014 interview: "Talk Like Sex" was released as the second single from this album with "Fuck U Man" as a B-side. The song first featured as the fifth track from Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's 1990 album Wanted: Dead or Alive and was later included on the 1996 album Rated XXX, which comprised a number of classics and previously unheard songs. It was also featured on the compilation albums The Best of Cold Chillin' (2000), Greatest Hits (2002) and Street Stories: The Best of Kool G Rap & DJ Polo (2013). " Talk Like Sex" is a song by American hip hop duo Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, originally recorded for their 1990 album Wanted: Dead or Alive and later released as the second single from 1996's Rated XXX. 1996 single by Kool G Rap & DJ Polo "Talk Like Sex"ĭirty rap, East coast hip hop, golden age hip hop
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