09/25/2010
You ever heard a song on an artist’s album, and wanted it to be the next video, or the song they played on the radio? Well, around the mid-’90s after I got my turntables and went record-coppin’ crazy, I did the same. I always kept up on what all the new singles were, but as I stayed up on those, very rarely was I buying full-length albums. When I did get the albums, being the music nerd I was, I’d try to predict what the forthcoming singles were gonna be. Sometimes, I was correct (D’Angelo‘s “Lady” and DMX‘s “Ruff Ryders Anthem” being two correct guesses I made)… other times, not so. In this installment of the AllTime8, I drop eight instances in which I was wrong, but perhaps should’ve been right. You be the judge…
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11 Comments | 
AllTime8, Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B | Tagged: CHRISTION, DIGABLE PLANETS, DJ QUIK, DOGG POUND, FAITH, JAY-Z, LL COOL J, SWV | 
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Posted by Danj!
08/23/2010
“The people ain’t comin’ cause you grandiose muthafukkas don’t play shit that they like.”- Shadow, Mo’ Better Blues
“Crossover ain’t nothin’ but a double-cross. Once we lose our audience, we never gonna get them back!”- JT, The Five Heartbeats
“People gotta understand, we got in this to be stars. We didn’t get in this to walk around with bookbags on our backs, talkin’ bout we hip-hop”- Nas interview on MTV
“It’s a shame, niggas in the rap game, only for the money and the fame”- Xzibit, “Paparazzi”
In the past month or so, there’s been a few things I’ve seen around the internet that prompted me to drop this entry. First, there was the mini-fallout that started from Talib Kweli‘s collaboration with Gucci Mane, which to some defied the rules of all that is right in the world. Then, there were two excellent lists of late-’90s hip-hop- Complex’s 75 Greatest Tunnel Bangers and the Bloggerhouse spin-off, Backpack Bangers. The lists in particular threw me back to that time when the “commercial” and “underground” sides of hip-hop started splitting apart further than ever.
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16 Comments | 90% Dis, DanjLovesTheHipHop | Tagged: 1996, BIGGIE, DE LA SOUL, FOXY BROWN, JAY-Z, JERU, JUNIOR MAFIA, LIL' KIM, NAS, PUFFY, RAS KASS, ROOTS, XZIBIT | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
06/25/2010
I’ve been ready to do this entry for a good year.
Seeing as how Jay-Z‘s Reasonable Doubt dropped on June 25, 1996, my intention was to do an entry on it last year- 13 years to the day of its release. But that was the same afternoon on which one of the main artists that made me love music in the first place died, and plans got sidetracked. I don’t really do the death anniversary thing like that, so instead, no time like today to drop my one-year-in-the-making retro on one of my favorite albums from the great summer of ’96.
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18 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheAlbums, DanjLovesTheHipHop, Nuff Respect Due | Tagged: 1996, JAY-Z | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
06/01/2010
Doooo youuuu knoooow what todaaay is? It’s my anniversary. Yeaaah. Anniversary.
Lemme tell y’all a lil’ about me. If there’s one thing I love talkin’ about, it’s old music, movies, and TV. Actually that’s three things, but no need to be technical. I’m an admitted nostalgia addict. It’s almost a prerequisite that any future wife and/or ex-wife of mine will have to have this same quality, or shit prob’ly ain’t gonna work. There’ll be no Waka Flocka played at my our reception. Due to this addiction of sorts, and rediscovering my interest in writing over the last two years, I started DanjLovesThe90s one year ago today.
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37 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, Hip-Hop Soul, My Life, New Jack Swing, Random | Tagged: ABOVE THE LAW, AFTER 7, ALEXANDER O'NEAL, ATCQ, BBD, BLACKSTREET, CL SMOOTH, CLIPSE, CNN, CRU, ED O.G., EN VOGUE, FAITH, GANGSTARR, GINUWINE, HOT BOYS, ILL AL SKRATCH, JAY-Z, K-SOLO, KURUPT, M.O.P., MAIN SOURCE, MASTA ACE, METHOD MAN, MOKENSTEF, MONTELL JORDAN, NICE & SMOOTH, PETE ROCK, R. KELLY, RAMPAGE, REDMAN, SILK, SOUL FOR REAL, SOULS OF MISCHIEF, TEVIN CAMPBELL, THREE 6, TONI BRAXTON, TONY! TONI! TONE!, TOTAL, TROOP, YVETTE MICHELLE | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
05/05/2010
As I sit here listenin’ to this “Timbo The King!” playlist on my obscenely incredible iPod, I gotta say Timbaland is a bad muh’fukka. I’ve been a fan of his beatwork over the better part of the last 14 years or so, as he’s constantly dropped too many game-changing tracks to name.
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15 Comments | DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, Man Behind The Music, Nuff Respect Due | Tagged: AALIYAH, GINUWINE, JAY-Z, LIL' KIM, MISSY, TIMBALAND, TOTAL, USHER | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
05/03/2010
Any of y’all ever seen Backstage? That documentary on the goings-on behind the scenes of the Hard Knock Life Tour? It wasn’t quite a must-have, but if you’ve ever wanted to see Dame Dash shit on DJ Clue‘s multi-directional haircut game, that’s the DVD for you. I was watchin’ it a couple nights ago, and it reminded me of how hyped I was to see that concert when it came here on Friday, March 26, 1999. My brother went and got both of our tickets a couple weeks prior, I had my new Phat Farm shirt on, and I was ready to go that afternoon.
But there was only one problem: I didn’t get to see the shit.
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13 Comments | DanjHatesThe90s, My Life, SMH, Wiggedy-Wack, Young Youth | Tagged: 1999, DMX, JAY-Z, METHOD MAN, REDMAN | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
02/19/2010
Hope y’all have been enjoying Love Week here on DLT90s thus far. And since it is Love Week and Valentine’s Day just passed us by… lemme tell y’all about some ol’ bullshit I did back in February ’96.
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9 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, Love Movement, My Life, Winter Six, Young Youth | Tagged: 1996, D'ANGELO, FAB 5, GZA, HELTAH SKELTAH, JAY-Z, METHOD MAN, OGC, REDMAN, SMIF-N-WESSUN | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
01/25/2010
Growing up in the ’80s, once I got hooked to music, I started listening to everything. I listened to both the R&B and pop stations, watched any video show I could find on TV, the whole shit. Much to the surprise of my friends around my way, I liked a lot of what was often referred to as “white people music”. At the time, I hadn’t looked at or listened to it that way- it was all just music to me. The only real difference I knew was that there were “singin’ songs” and “rappin’ songs”. I could rock with this just as much as I did this with no problem. Unfortunately for me, I got clowned more than a lil’ bit about that shit.
Apparently, a lot of rappers and producers must have felt the same way. Along with the fact that some white artists used to be played on urban stations, some of these people seemed to have grown up equally exposed to “white people music” from the MTV era. From Method Man referencing a Hall & Oates hook to (of course) Puffy‘s use of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”, lots of pop hits have been sampled/flipped/interpolated/etc. in the hip-hop world. It especially started happening more frequently in the last couple years of the ’90s, which brings us to today’s entry.
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13 Comments | DanjLovesThe80sToo, DanjLovesTheHipHop, Original Flavor, The90sLovedThe80s | Tagged: 80s, BIGGIE, FOXY BROWN, JAY-Z, LIL' KIM, M.O.P., PUFFY, SAMPLING, TOTAL, TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
12/22/2009
“Yo, N-E-P, T-U-N, E-S/ The way they lace a beat’s like, one of the best” – Noreaga, “Super Thug” (1998)
There was a time earlier in the 2000s when I still liked listening to the radio and watching BET on the regular. The only time in recent memory that I’ve committed more than an hour to either was when Michael died. Prior to 2005, when “Laffy Taffy” and all of its spinoffs finally broke my threshold for pain, I was still regularly tuned in. A good half of that is due to music produced by The Neptunes.
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14 Comments | Best Of..., DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, DanjSometimesLovesThe2000s, Man Behind The Music, Nuff Respect Due | Tagged: 702, BABYFACE, CLIPSE, JAY-Z, KELIS, LL COOL J, NEPTUNES, NORE, SNOOP, USHER | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
12/04/2009
Yeah, I know. I’ma go ahead and assume that I’m not the first person with a blog to talk about this, but I’m a human being too, dammit.
In the first of a few 2000s-related entries I’ll be dropping this month, I will not be using today’s date to wish a “happy 40th” to my second favorite MC. I’ll have other times to give him his accolade, and besides, I’m sure his Illuminati free mason fam will be throwin’ him a party tonight. *ROFL* But I will be speakin’ on something epic that he took part in. Something that had an enthusiast like myself excited during an otherwise ehhh year in hip-hop. It was 2001, I was a mixtape-coppin’ animal, and the battle of battles was taking place: Jay-Z vs. Nas.
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17 Comments | DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjSometimesLovesThe2000s, What's Beef | Tagged: 2000s, BEEF, JAY-Z, NAS | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
