Before there was 50 There was Tim Dog-Remembering the East-West Coast War

homie this shit seems to me like you promoting beef

sorry I hate when people post 2x in a row but I have a question : What about Ice T? He predates NWA, is from the west, and was really succesful because he made good music. Did he struggle with NYC audiences? I don’t remember ever hearing about it if it happened.

This is kind of proven by the fact that many New York rap minded people think that Houston Scarface, Chi-Town Do or Die, San Francisco’s Rappin 4-Tay and Vallejo’s Mac Dre all make the same kind of music (“gangsta rap”)

Ive been followin the east vs west since getting into hip hop or id say at least shortly after, being that i came of age during the rise of west coast dominance. I also caught the east coast movement in full swing when i was younger. my favs were gangstarr, Poor Righteous Teachers, KRS, but im from Oakland. I’d say alot of early west coast hip hop favored the east coast sound the beats and rhymes were much faster and gritty from hammer to cube,ice t, even nwa and short. there was definately influence and love there, admiration for the mecca. it was a rap thing a hood thing. but all the music that was big was mostly east coast, that was the standard. there was even a battle between Self destruction and All in the same game which one better? However that doesnt mean that hip hop wasnt goin on in its own way in other places and it doesnt mean that NY have all the rights to hip hop. hip hop is a hood thing a culture thing. KRS told me himself when i toured w him that hip hop was already there in Oakland, Chicago, Florida,Seattle and the elements were already embedded. But the East pushed the movement 1st. It was nothing to hear or see X-Clan,Mc Lyte, LL cool j on the radio or on a video as the standard of hiphop back then. I was a fan, and i would say i liked it more than west coast rap because i myself was brain washed by the biased but also because the music was dope and they were runnin shit. I had this convo w Crooked I at rock the bells jus a day after the altercation in L.A about west coast lyricism and growth. As i became an emcee starting high school the tide was turning Snoop was out (who for yall who dont know was labelmates w Crooked at one point)…and every car goin by was the Chronic, but i had Redman, i was into the wildstyles of NY which was more lyrics u had to decipher, i was tryna escape the harsh realities of west coast in your face rap of which i lived amongst everyday not just in rap but as a young man in East oakland. I gravitated to groups like Pharcyde and Hiero and the Liks and the 1st thing i heard from e40 fans was you like East Coast rap you aint from oakland. But i had E40, Short, Luniz tapes too who i see to this day as some of the best lyricists ever. It was like u had to choose. when i would spit Everyone would say u can rap but you got that east coast flow. I was seen almost like a trader. niggaz would say move to NY, or yo raps make no sense, you be usin them metaphors. I didnt all the way get it. I jus liked the sound. Maybe i was denying my roots or maybe the west was being generalized. i didnt have a Jeri curl (Lauryn), gang bang , or smoke weed at the time. i rocked oversized head phones, wore 1 pants leg up, and freestyled, tagged, and played hoop w non hangin dreds and there were many like me. To this day i realize i wasnt the norm but i also wasnt alone. this is all part of my growth as an artist

at some point The “box” became the medium you could see east coast, south booty, west underground, local oakland indy music… it actually almost turned the tide cuz for once you could rep your coast and not be forced to hear East coast only. Of course 2pac played a big role in this he was uniting the West Coast and he was warring w the East w much success along w Westsyde connection. But he was from Brooklyn he had Meth and Red on the album. Death Row was killin it. Hmmmmm how did this happen? I almost missed the East coast sound. The Bay was full of home pride Mob Music compilations , Hiero was doin songs w Tribe. and the east was kinda quiet outside of the native tounges /nas/wu movement which wasnt as big out west. The west was sellin records. the boom bap sound of NY started bein known as Underground rap and u had to listen to the wake up show to hear that here.

When i 1st saw Biggie’s video Juicy (long b4 i knew who puff was) i jus knew for sure he was from the West Coast the flow the sample, the laid backness of the song. Who knew he’d become the king of NY one day. i remember when Jay Z dropped Aint no Nigga in oakland we were like this nigga stole Dru down beat at the time Dru D
own was a signed artist nationwide id say bigger than JayZ – my boy came bumpin reasonable doubt shit in his firebird i wasnt interested then i heard the slaps and was like okay. I noticed that biggie, jigga, and the east coast sound was appreciating what we like and our style (Biggie said on Ready to die he was tryna figure out how to sell record like Snoop). the music was becoming less abstract more in your face. at some point w groups like outkast who were once accused of biting hiero, and short… and groups like UGK- lines were getting blurred. more big budgets came into play- rappers were doin songs accross lines more and more, big budget remixes. The mixing was at a all time high. Pun ,DMX, The Lox, Camron were all giving the West props and kickin in your face gangster shit.

the east coast bias was losing its steam. more and more short was on jayz and biggies albums- bone was out (everyone had a bone flow song for a minute lol) , shit was everywhere.To say u listen to east coast style rap was becoming hard to define. In these days that term doesnt even stick w artist like Jim Jones and Murs and Jay Electronica and even w me DLabrie- im loved in NY for my True lyricism and also for my Hyphy ties. My Homies from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens they go dumb w me when they hear my single Pity Patt – http://bit.ly/YW0nC comes on and even ask me to spit that shit and show them the town flavor. Sometimes i have to remind them i grew up on NY rap and one of my fav groups ever was Wu Tang and , Def Squad, Boot Camp Click. My point is this is hip hop……. west borrowed from east, south borrowed from west, midwest soaked game from all over, east borrowed from jamiaca, disco, cowboys, r and b- we have covered the gamut, now international is borrowin from america. Its a cycle. we have to let the old terms go. its been a journey for me to find my voice as an emcee . I can rock on a cut w Mos Def or Luke or the hood homie Keak da Sneak or a nigga who dont speak english. Im still hip hop. Backpackers/Conscious rappers are fed up w the stigma, political rappers are sick of being held to an unreal standards, ganster rappers are pourin they heart out. No one wants to be put in a box anymore. All bets are fuckin off now. I hear rappers sayin when will the real rap come back or bring back the real hip hop? Jus do you……..Lets evolve and stop this bullshit. If you old school do you, if you w the new shit do you. I rep the Bay hard as fuck all day to the point i still get mad at bay cats dissin hyphy or the bay in general but to each they own I don’t take it personal. I don’t decide no 1’s opinion on hip hop and how they feel and vice versa. i dont wanna hit the road an be seen as the jus the “hyphy” dude either just cuz im from oakland cuz then u think im one deminsional. i rep the west Seattle, Oregon, Vegas, Cali, Im still pissed XXL did a whole article on hip hop and r and b and didnt mention the west coast AT ALL and acted as if the 1st time was meth and mary or rakim and jody watley (with all due respect). Same time alot of my favs new and old are in NY and the East Coast in general and i always get my game face on and get a lil kid like when i touch down in the mecca i always bring my best for them. Overall theres still an east coast bias in alot of the dinasours , publications, shows, i dont see it as much in the new generation though and that caused a rebellion that lead to cats formin they own media, websites and outlets to counter that. Its like lets rep our own not to diss nowhere else but if the mainstream aint gonna do it like NWA, Cash Money, Thizz, or G.O.O.D you have to put on for your city. Its like affirmative action give a fair chance to everyone. Some of yall right its not comin from the artists and not always the fans. you cant like what u dont know about. some cats i met in NY thought the bay was just e40 and too short cuz thats all they hear in the mainstream but many rappers get shine on the internet from other places now. lets allow for a bigger mind state then jus Biggie, Jay Z and Nas- and grimey street raps with beat breaks, break dancing and graphitti. Even in NY thats not all thats crackin anymore. that will always be the foundation – but let rappers sing, do auto tune, dance, have fun, krump, snap, go dumb, earl flynn, say tech 9 is the best, TI or Wayne, Mistah Fab or Mac Dre, let a nigga make a song for the harmony and not for lyrics – after i say all this shit im still gonna throw on my Illmatic tape listen to it a week straight on repeat and say its better than almost every album ever made and hold myself to that standard. ALL EYES ON ME is my shit too Much respect to all regions, we all have something to offer. It’s hip hop better yet its music…………

Yep! b lo Tim is exactly right. Davey is a good example of the future of Hip Hop on radio. I met Davey when I was a student in the Cal Berkeley Extension studying Media in the early 80’s. Davey was the head of the Third World Department at when we interned at KALX 80.7. He brought the heat even then, but I was playing mostly Reggae and if you think it is hard to get radio juice now,you should have witnessed how hard it was to get Reggae spins, even on a college station. The shit was segregated really, with reggae having about four hours a week over, like two different days. But the Third World Department was where the concerns of all “other” music was addressed and Davey’s advocacy for not just hip hop but all ghetto-ized music was admirable. He made a lot of friends and fans and this is what made him popular-his advocacy.

Later when he went to KMEL he took his whole crew. This was when and also kind of how my music began to fuse and my love for hip hop began to grow. My dj Jah Bonz was apart of Davey’s crew and I started directing Bonz’s productions and adding music to the dub plates Bonz had for me to chant on. The reggae music I was playing and the Hip Hop samples and drum and bass motifs we were adding made it so we were actually creating a hybrid Hip Hop/Reggae sound, but what drove our sound was that we wanted to get on mainstream radio.

Then the unforeseen happened. Politics and bullshit caused the plug to be pulled and the whole KMEL thing, our access to big radio etc came to a halt. Suddenly I was caught in the middle and I guess my sound must have seemed schizophrenic to most. Not reggae not “rap”, and our advocacy in the form of Davey D was taken away from us. We were in a genre graveyard.

So the lesson is, if you tailoring your sound to either radio or record companies there is going to come a time when radio and record companies aint gonna be here. What I learned is that, though it was true that my shit “wasn’t reggae and wasn’t rap” the shit was HIP HOP, and that means you gotta take that shit directly to the people to get love from the audience or you’re likely to get gaffled.

the notion of coastal bias really came from the fact that NY was all about NY. i can remember when souls of mischief freestyled on stretch armstrong and got fools mad open…because they could actually freestyle.

the irony of course was that other regions, especially the bay, really supported East Coast hip-hop, along with West coast artists. for example, Tim Dog’s crew Ultramagnetic MCs had mad love in the bay, so did Nas, gangstarr, Wu-Tange, redman, BDP, Organized Konfusion, etc. that love was never reciprocated by NYC.

i also remember Afro-Rican opening for De La Soul in 1988 and blowing them off the stage. De La was pretty lame live when they first came out. they got better, though.

the sad thing about it is that NY not only hated on hip-hop from other places, eventually they started hating on themselves. they killed their own culture.

they stubbornly refused to accept Southern groups like Outkast and Goodie Mob who were both dope….many years later, NYC clubs started having “crunk nights” playing nothing but Down South music. how ironic is that?

if NY ever got off its own dick, it might be able to recapture the rawness it once had, but unfortunately all we’re left with is mediocre East Coast rappers shitting on each other.

But Tim, the mythology behind NY as the Mecca for hip hop is what drove Hip Hop and what also what made the West Coast become the “Medina” of Hip Hop.

When you talk about the five boroughs competing, it was just that: Healthy competition. But what we saw in the reaction of NY hip hop to hip hop from other places in Amerikkka was COVETING, and whenever that type of spirit gets into anything it is destructive and divisive.

Also, the era of revolutionary rap was inspired by what we do in the west, that is to say, Panther shit, as exemplified and personified in Tupac. That bling shit from Puffy and Biggie and them was a controlling reaction by NY because the west was influencing not just the music but the entire culture of hip hop, and infusing it with some progressive revolutionary shit. The corporations get into NY’s ear, NY gets it and appropriates it and the counter reaction was the gangsta shit. A mitigating aspect of this was the Wu movement.

See how coveting mutated a perfectly viable tool for change into something that ends up being controlled by the same principalities that needed changing?

“e-scrib you are missing a very big point here and it’s one most people miss when this regionalism debate comes up. NYC was never one region it was 5 boroughs competing at times battling but always maintaining their own sht. so when other cities came into it they treated them no differently. the Bronx treated down south rappers the same way they treated brooklyn rappers when they came out which was the same way they were treated if they went uptown.”

this is a good point and i’m glad you raised it. go back to your second line, however–“NYC was never one region”.

that’s precisely the problem. the whole notion of NYC as the center of hip-hop was always mythical because in actuality, there wasnt unity for the reasons you mentioned so maintaining hegemony, to borrow a term from political science, wasnt possible. i remember when KRS came with South Bronx and smashed on Marley and Queensbridge. at the time i thought the record was dope, and i dug the history lesson Kris kicked. but that song underscores a point that there was always inter-regional (inter-borough?) beef in the alleged Mecca of hip-hop, as Ali Baba mentioned.

the real Mecca is a place where Muslims from everywhere come to study and be at peace with others who have the same religious beliefs. If Saudi Arabians are hating on folks from Qatar, Yemen, and Sudan, then that peace is shattered.

to stretch this analogy to hip-hop, NYC should have been a place where hip-hop from everywhere was accepted. instead it was a place where Brooklyn hated on Manhattan who hated on Long Island who hated on the Bronx, who hated on Queens, etc. instead the lack of hegemony made it vulnerable to the divide and conquer strategy outside influences (i.e. the media and music industry) promoted after infiltrating the culture. it’s colonialism and neo-colonialism all over again.

the west, being outside of much of this control, was rawer, more revolutionary, more independent. Paris and the Coup are perfect examples of this. So is Digital Underground and hiero. so is freestyle fellowship. and the pharcyde.

dont get me wrong, i love me some PRT. and i was all about Chill Rob G back in the day. and Liquid Swords was my shit.

however, when it came to rappers being identified with what was happeneing in the streets, no one could deny E-40 and the Luniz had raw game for days. but most of them started rapping to get away from violence.

i have to respectfully disagree about the west being more “violent” than the east. i dont think that’s a competition anyone wins. however, i will point out that the co-option of NYC hip-hop–as noted by Wise Intelligent back in 1996 with the song “They Turned Gangster”–changed the game. When the East Coast tried to be as gangster as Death Row and them, that’s when they lost. once they started down that path,t here was no turning back. even after Biggie’s death, no one learned their lesson.

then the game changed again with 50 Cent, who’s claim to corporate fame is his street cred–being shot 9 times. so that becomes the new badge of (dis)honor among east coast rappers. in addition to Vibe and Source, you also have to look at the role Hot 97 specifically played in promoting beef.

the bottom line to me is that ultimately, the East Coast bias against other regions (both internally and externally) became somewhat of a myopic stigma which resulted in blindness, instead of clear vision. and that’s where we are today.

Brilliant thread. When I think about the fact that most of the progenitors of the “rap game” were teenagers when the game begin, and are now middle 30’s to early 40’s, it really sheds light on the conundrum the hip hop movement is faced with. When is hip hop gonna allow itself to grow up? There’s the age old adage that one should never send a boy to do a man’s job. But that’s one sure way of making men out of little boys. The history of hip hop reminds me of the story of the old bull and the young bull sitting on a hill, looking down on a pasture of young heifers.

Children at the age of most of the earlier rappers that made a lot of money were also at the age that one tends to be most malleable. Why is the age of conscription in the military about the same age that record deals are usually offered?
It all comes back to what I wrote about in 1990 in an article I published titled “The Corporate Control of Hip Hop Culture”.
This goes right to the issue of beef in the industry as the e-scribbla said when he stated “the lack of hegemony made it (hip hop) vulnerable to the divide and conquer strategy;” and then “When it came to rappers being identified with what was happeneing in the streets, no one could deny E-40 and the Luniz had raw game for days. but most of them started rapping to get away from violence.” When a boy sees a fight he runs toward it. When a man sees a fight he tends to go the other direction. The older one gets the more important longevity becomes.

E-Scribe then goes ahead and drives it home when he says
“Outside influences (i.e. the media and music industry) promoted (beef) after infiltrating the culture. It’s colonialism and neo-colonialism all over again.”

But you see, when I talked about “healthy competition” among the five Burroughs in terms of hip hop, I was probably romanticizing. I wanted to believe in the mythological NY as the Mecca for hip hop in the same way that Motown was for R & B. I wanted to think of hip hop as the new age bee bop, and the existence of Death Row, Bad Boy and Rap-A-Lot in the same way I used to think of Motown, Stax, Chess or Atlantic Records back in the day.

These entities competed, like any business would compete, for market share, but did the Temptations ever get into a gun fight with the Ojays?

So once again, children don’t always know what’s best for themselves and maybe a 21 year old should not be allowed to cut multi million dollar deals with multi national monolithic media conglomerates. Not to get all PMRC with this shit but maybe legislation of prudence in hip hop may be needed to some degree (probably not the most popular of proposals).

Of course, some might construe this as a pitch or a self serving sentiment since I am an OG B-Boy, but what was needed early on and sorely needed now are more OG’s in hip hop, which may be a foregone conclusion since most relevant art comes from those who have been at it the longest and not out of the mouths of babes. So how about a summit of hip hop OG’s to take up the question of where we go from here in hip hop, kind of like a “Million OG Rappers March?”

“These entities competed, like any business would compete, for market share, but did the Temptations ever get into a gun fight with the Ojays?”

LOL. that’s a good one. of course, the rise in gun violence may be a reflection of worsening conditions overall for the inner-city which gets reflected in the music. and i could also point out that beef in Jamaican dancehall has frequently resulted in shootouts as well.

“I wanted to believe in the mythological NY as the Mecca for hip hop in the same way that Motown was for R & B. I wanted to think of hip hop as the new age bee bop, and the existence of Death Row, Bad Boy and Rap-A-Lot in the same way I used to think of Motown, Stax, Chess or Atlantic Records back in the day.”

another great point. that’s the problem with mythologizing/romanticizing something–reality sometimes gets in the way.

“what you loose in ur so-called lesson is that any type of bourough rivary is secondary when it comes to nyc representing nyc, that is a fact, I’m from nyc, and when it comes down to representing nyc, it ain’t about well he from bk he from boogie down, it was about in the end the region of nyc nj being represented, that includes when delasoul and naughty by nature were making hits, people from nyc weren’t saying those uppety negroes from strong island takin over or those peeps from jc tryin to infuse themselfs into the so-called game.”

had to address this one too. will, i think you make some contradictory points here, given the facts as we know them. i dont think artists from trenton or long island were any less accepted in other cities/regions then they were in new york. and most of those crews from the suburbs or brick city whom we know about had strong NYC connections. this would indicate a greater level of hegemony among east coasts artists was possible to attain than what actually happened, with the only real unity coming during an XXL photo shoot in harlem or a media-fanned “war” on death row and the west in general. as we all know some of the cats in hip-hop are/were fiercely territorial. when biggie says, “that brooklyn bullshit, we on it,” just what do you think he’s referring to? his love and admiration for other boroughs? but when Pac talked about “california love,”he brought in not just LA and the Bay but Sacramento and other regions. so the point is that if NYC only has unity when its “representing” itself (i.e. hating on other regions) , is that really unity? as soon as the east/west beef was over, cats went back to hating on other NYC rappers. just for kicks, ask cats in connecticut or philly if they were really accepted by NYC… i think that will give you a clearer picture of the limitations of East coast love and the realities of territorial politics in hip-hop.

Ok E-Scrbbler, you opened the door so I’ve gotta take what you said and embellish it, chips fall where they may. Now I remember how I felt the first time I ever heard one of my joints played on radio or walked into Amoeba records an saw my shit on the shelf. There was no way in the world that at that point, in my mind, I hadn’t “made it.”

But what happened to the rest of the spins I thought I was gonna get? True enough that the Telecomm Act of ‘96 and other deregulatory moves helped to seal the fate of a lot of aspiring artists and that this began the start of the Corporate Control of Hip Hop. Now I had to get on Scantron and I needed a UPC sticker on my shit, which was a lot harder to get than a Parental Advisory tag. But it gets deeper than that and this underscores the East-West conflagration.

As you know, for every spin on the radio, the artist and the label gets paid. So East Coast radio DJs were making sure that East Coast artists were the only ones getting paid on the East Coast radio stations. On the West Coast, we went the independent route, and so we only needed to sell 100,000-200,000 to go Ghetto Gold because we owned the product from concept to cop. Since radio was now corporate and monolithic, West Coast independents would not get radio play because there was no incentive to make an artist that wasn’t making money for the industry.

Since payola was outlawed, in order to get that broad exposure from radio, you had to play the game of “who you know” and now your work became a thing that was not even how good the shit was, but whether or not some mutha fucka you aint even know “liked you” or not.. An artist is always striving to get a greater audience and so there was still a desire to be heard by a nationwide audience and get national love. So now another tier was created whereby the radio DJ was “the man” de facto.

So if Tamu or Davey D would have Ali Baba on the Wake Up Show one night and they spinned his shit one time at about 1:30 in the morning, it’s cool for Baba’s ego but it didn’t help the record get heard by unduplicated listener contacts. If you were not in the click or if you didn’t have the particular style these coolies were looking for, you were not going to get evening drive spins. There was also a racial/racist aspect to all of this (No offense to Chuy Varela) and that meant that no matter how good the shit was, if you weren’t a part of the popular click you didn’t get no action. This kind of fueled a West version of the Borough beef we have been talking about on this string, which almost certainly fueled the deaths of a number of important West Coast artist including Seagram and Mac Dre, and included the dissing of Short by the Luniz and shit like that.

Furthermore, this kind of scenario was what created so-called “radio personalities”. These are people that don’t really do any music, they are just famous for playing other people’s shit, becoming enriched for living vicariously through other people who really do the shit. Of course many of these types have the redeeming quality of having a nice bunch of knowledge about the music and the history thereof, but I could never understand why these people have the power in the game they have for being what amounts to “professional fans”.

If you have ever seen some of these people you know what I mean. They have their clicks and their entourages and they get to sit in VIP and the velvet rope gets opened for them while some brilliantly talented kid who is hollering from behind the gate “Please play my demo” is getting dissed and laughed at by them.

So don’t forget that other player who had a vested interest in promoting beef and separation: The DJs and “Radio Personalities” who may not have been exactly pawns on the industry chessboard, but were certainly Rooks and Bishops for the industry.

one more example i should mention of radio stations playing a gatekeeper role was in the Hiero/Hobo Junction beef. there was a disagreement between camps, but instead of it turning ugly, they were invited onto the Wake Up show to settle it the old-fashioned way: with a rhyme battle. i cant see this even happening today.

correction: I knew they were….

(yawn)

Never in my life heard about this weak guy named “Tim Dogg”. He was “not” a premier rapper from the East Coast. I can name Kane, Kool G Rap, Nas, ect., where you all find that negro at? He ain’t represent “New York” rap. Sounds like someone’s giving credit where it ain’t due. Dude was whack trying to sound “west coast” if you ask me, and we weren’t “doggs” on the East Coast? Whack and a biter. LOL!!!

See Brother McClendon, when I hear people coming from that “Save the children from hip hop” vibe, I think about Eminem. Just by virtue of his existence and prominence in hip hop is the lie brought to rap being a damager of black youth. The extreme individual ala “Stan” is going to be sensitive to stimulation from Mozart. Shades of Tipper Gore and that handkerchief headed C. Delores Tucker. Naw bruh, I think you gotta just turn and walk away fromthat one.

sorry, that should have been “Kemetic” knowledge just in case you wanna Google it or something… peace

Stop googling and acting like you know something, Bro. You are not original in any thing you post. Everything you post is straight off of google, es-scriblah. Damn, you weak. You like a page right out of David Toops book.

Brother McClendon
Big Daddy Kane’s joint “Ain’t no half steppin” is the signature song of hip hop’s transformation from party music into truth music. That joint is the epitome of “The rap game is the crack game”. That shit rocked 24-7 out here in the West. Nobody I have asked ever even heard of Tim Dogg out here. But around the same time, early to mid 90’s we were loving Wu Tang. Even in when I lived in London they were banging Meth and Mary J’s “All I need”. So I find that the “beef” originally seemed to be coming FROM NY, and this seems to me to be the result of the loss of dominance to the West.

FOTFLMAO! Beef sells records and keeps writers coming back to this thread! West Side!!!

another salient point here is that when everyone else in NYC was hating on the south, Jay-Z had the foresight to record Big Pimpin with UGK. that was a real smart move…around that time (2000), the South had basically stopped playing East Coast artists. yes i was there, in southern clubs, witnessing with my own eyes. they werent playing any other Jay-Z track but Big Pimpin…

contrast that to East Coast DJs taking E-40’s verse out of “Automatic” while West Coast/Southern jocks played the entire song, including Fabolous’ verse…

another example was East Coast fools hating on the Federation and Rick Rock’s production style specifically, without knowing that Rock produced Busta, Jay-Z, Fabolous and Mariah Carey (in addition to Tupac and Keak Da Sneak).

bottom line to me is that all this beef is basically bullshit. divide and conquer. bloods vs. crips instead of people vs. the man. you want an old-school parallel, look at the movie “the Warriors.” Sirus is about to unite all the NYC street gangs when he’s assassinated and the Warriors are blamed. so then we have internal gang conflict instead of the gangs taking on the system, like they had originally planned to do. ironically, it’s the Black Panther-esque Riffs who discover the truth and call off the hit order. you know where the Panthers were from, right?

ok, now look at your politically-active NYC groups: PE and dead prez. wish there were more but that’s another story. both of them majorly influenced by the Panthers. maybe if y’all would put down the hate gun for a minute you’d be able to focus on the real enemy. hint: it’s not Ja Rule, Cam’ron or Tupac.

Like I said, “This is a “west coast” thing. talking ’bout tooting one’s horn. Tim Dogg? West Side!? Let’s all grow up and get “real” jobs.

Writing is apart of my “real” job, just ain’t supose to be on here during work hours. Free-lancing and author is my side job. Just saw something in an Entreprenuer Magazine with Russell Simmons on the cover. I skimmed through it. It made me think about a song on another post about advice to the young Black male, it was the song called “Be a Father To Your Child” by Ed O.G. and The Bulldogs. The magazine had all of these monetary accomplishments of Russell in “Hip-hop” and all I kept thinking about was the Ed O.G. song and how a brother from Africa had to come over here and take his wife to have a baby and raise her kids as his own. That’s Hip-hop. The jews applaud you for making yourself and them rich along the way, but the one basic thing any Black man is required to do “ye be lacking”. Be a father to your child, Russell, just ’cause you 50 plus and rich off of helping ignorant people – hurt our people (hip-hop) don’t make you a man, ask Kimona Simmons. All that money and another brother being a father to your child. I’m lightened up, now that’s some laughing shit! Got to hear the song. Laying some African pipe and you still stuck on hip-hop. That’s shits a joke. Trying to do argyle and he doing Kimona. LOL!

“Alright, es-scribblh, don’t agree with you, of course, but atleast that shits “original”.”

cool, we can agree to disagree on some things. i’ll agree that Be a Father to Your Child” is a song more folks should go back and check out…

i just want to make a final point about beef getting in the way of progress and advancement of the culture. it’s kind of pointless to even draw regional distinctions about hip-hop when you consider how much cross-cultural influence benefits artists, fans and the music overall. look at Dilla, a Detroit dude, producing both Tribe and Pharcyde. Or Ice Cube with the Bomb Squad, best album he ever did. Or Del on Definitive Jux. How about Dizee Rascal with UGK, that track was fire. Some of the best hip-hop has come from region’s “off the grid,” like Brother Ali, a Minnesotean. Dont front on Seattle’s Mix-a-Lot because e’eybody and they mama was geeking to “Posse on Broadway.” And what about Mystikal’s “The Man Right Chea,” Outkast’s “Hey Ya” or 3-6’s “Stay Fly”? to me that stuff is just as key as Wu-Tang, Nas, old-school $hort Dog, or the Coup. the point is the focus should be on making the best music possible, not regional set-trippin’…

hey Robert Jr. James McClendon, been searching for you for a while, steve edwin, you protege on the base in tx. 8609224822 or icemagz@yahoo.com. hope all is well with your family.

Im pretty sure tim dog did start the whole east v west thing. Didnt fuck compton come out in 92. Cos the bad boy deathrow beef didnt start till 94 didnt it? Cos the pac v big beef started in 94 if im correct