02/07/2011
15 years ago this month, 2Pac was the newest signee to Death Row Records, and the label was at the height of its popularity. Every album with that electric chair logo was selling like crazy, with more to come for ’96. Three albums deep by that time, ‘Pac was already a major star, but also ran into some much bigger problems that landed him in jail. After being bailed out by Suge Knight (in exchange for signing to the Row), he went straight from the jail cell to the studio. Within two weeks, ‘Pac recorded 28 tracks for his Death Row debut, which has since gone on to be his highest-selling album of all, All Eyez On Me.
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11 Comments | 
Classic Material, DanjLovesTheAlbums, DanjLovesTheHipHop | Tagged: DEATH ROW, TUPAC | 
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Posted by Danj!
12/29/2010
Oh worrrrrrd? Suge Knight formally being charged in the murder of Tupac Shakur? Finally, justice has prevailed and Big Red is being named as the orchestrator of the whole shit? After 14 years, the world can finally rest easy, knowing that what has been suspected for years is actual fact, and Marion’s… about… to go… down?
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3 Comments | DanjLovesTheHipHop, Just That Sh*t To Make You Laugh, SMH | Tagged: SUGE KNIGHT, TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
11/11/2010
There was a time… long, long ago… when the color lines were a lot more blurred on urban radio. Artists like Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers, and others- without necessarily catering to the R&B audience- would still get certain records of theirs played on the primarily “Black” stations. It continued through the ’80s with artists like Madonna, Hall & Oates, George Michael and even ya man Rick Astley getting their music played, sometimes with people not even knowing they were White until seeing them. In the case of Bobby Caldwell‘s “What You Won’t Do For Love”, his label intentionally hid his image in a silhouette, and even the video was kind of a “revelation” of what he really looked like.
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19 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, The90sLovedThe80s | Tagged: AALIYAH, KOOL G RAP, LUNIZ, SAMPLING, TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
07/19/2010
Like we always do about this time… it’s Death Row Week on DLT90s.
It’s crazy to think about how quickly it all fell apart, but during the four years Death Row spent on top of the game, it was one of the strongest labels ever. With Suge Knight‘s strongarming business acumen and Dr. Dre‘s music, the Row seemed unstoppable at its height. Every release went platinum or better, the songs were all over the place, and the artists had people chewin’ nails in anticipation for new music. It went down like this…
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24 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheHipHop, Nuff Respect Due, Read The Label | Tagged: DEATH ROW, DOGG POUND, DR. DRE, RAGE, SNOOP, SUGE KNIGHT, TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
06/20/2010
“Where the fuck is the Daddy song? Mama get all the songs… ‘Dear Mama’, ‘I’ll Always Love My Mama’, Mama, Mama, Mama… what’s the Daddy song? ‘Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone’!” – Chris Rock
First off, it’s Father’s Day, so big shoutout to the fathers out there… not the niggas who have kids… the fathers. I normally don’t drop entries on Sunday, but I figured I’d do it for this occasion. Earlier this morning, I remembered that Chris Rock joke, and it got me to thinkin’… not only is there not much in the way of “Daddy songs”, but hip-hop particularly don’t give a fukk about a father. There’s a lot of “Mama songs”, but most of the ones about fathers are about how they ain’t shit. From Treach (“never knew my dad, muthafuck the fag”) to Eminem (“if you see my dad/ Tell him that I slit his throat in this dream I had”), rappers and their fathers just don’t seem to click.
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12 Comments | DanjLovesTheHipHop, Just That Sh*t To Make You Laugh | Tagged: LL COOL J, NAS, ROYAL FLUSH, SHAQ, TUPAC, WC & THE MAAD CIRCLE | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
06/16/2010
OK… before anyone says it… it has nothin’ to do with the fact that this fella is my favorite MC. I was never of the belief that I had to dislike one in order to like the other. I never really got into the taking of sides while that shit was goin’ on, and I don’t even compare them to each other today. I’ve always felt that the only reason people connect them anyway is because they’re both deceased and the rivalry they had when they were alive- the same way people still compare Jay-Z and Nas because they had a feud nine years ago. To me, 2Pac and B.I.G. as two almost completely different things musically, both of which I like for different reasons. They shared some of the same subject matter, but that’s where it stops.
Now that I got that out the way… Being a lifelong hip-hop enthusiast, I’ve had all kinds of Tupac Shakur convos over the years- before and after he died, pro and con, in real life and online. If nothing else, he’s always been one that gets a strong reaction one way or the other. Rarely have I ever had a convo about him with someone who doesn’t feel some kind of way about his music, or about him as an individual. But at times, the love AND hate he’s gotten have bordered on insane- which is why I can say, ‘Pac is the most overrated and underrated of all-time. Let’s speak on it.
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20 Comments | DanjLovesTheHipHop, In Memory Of..., Nuff Respect Due | Tagged: TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
06/14/2010
About a month or so ago, I happened to be on Youtube and came across an episode of TVOne‘s Unsung, the documentary show about R&B artists of the ’70s and ’80s whose stories have rarely been told. This particular episode featured Zapp, the ’80s funk group headed by Roger Troutman. In addition to noting that my iPod was lacking a lot of their music that I liked, I also had to put them down for a future “90s Loved The 80s” entry, considering how much of their music was sampled during the ’90s.
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8 Comments | DanjLovesThe80sToo, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, Nuff Respect Due, Original Flavor, The90sLovedThe80s | Tagged: 80s, 90s, E-40, MC BREED, ROGER TROUTMAN, THE CLICK, TUPAC, ZAPP | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
03/09/2010
So it’s March 9th, most remembered in hip-hop as the date on which Bow Wow was born in 1987 The Notorious B.I.G. was murdered in 1997. As a fan of Big, and as a fan of hip-hop in general, it was just as major to me as Tupac‘s death was six months prior. You’ve prob’ly read a million times over how huge of a loss those deaths were, and you’ll prob’ly read it a million more, so I’ll spare y’all that. Matter fact, at the risk of bein’ a lil’ strange, I’d rather do my B.I.G. entry on his birthday than the death anniversary (make a note of May 21st). But if there is one good thing that came out of those events, it’s that the whole East Coast/West Coast shit started coming to a close.
I know people have since said that the “East Coast/West Coast War” was an isolated incident that was blown up by the media and hyped for the sake of controversy. There’s a good deal of truth in that statement, but let’s keep it one-hunnid: March 9, 1997 was the climax of some shit that had been quietly building up for years. Let’s talk about it…
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16 Comments | 90% Dis, DanjHatesThe90s, DanjLovesTheHipHop, What's Beef | Tagged: BAD BOY, BIGGIE, CNN, DEATH ROW, DOGG POUND, EAST COAST, ICE CUBE, MOBB DEEP, PUFFY, SNOOP, TUPAC, WEST COAST | 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!
12/28/2009
Ah, yes… as I noted in my first “The 90s Loved The 80s” entry, there hasn’t been as much lifting of ’90s hits by the artists of this decade. Part of that, obviously, is due to how much those artists themselves were sampling from older music. But, there were a few quality remakes and whatnot that took place in the 2000s. Some of them were hot, like Carl Thomas & Faith Evans singing over The Firm‘s “Phone Tap“. Others were eehhh, like Fabolous & Tamia recycling “So Into You“. But here are five that stood out the most to me over the last ten years…
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11 Comments | Classic Material, DanjLovesTheHipHop, DanjLovesTheR&B, DanjSometimesLovesThe2000s, Original Flavor | Tagged: ASHANTI, ATCQ, JA RULE, LUDACRIS, METHOD MAN, MJB, NAS, RAKIM, ROBIN THICKE, SAMPLING, T.I., TONY! TONI! TONE!, TUPAC | Permalink
Posted by Danj!
