AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
East coast hip hop history9/16/2023 Wu-Tang Forever, Life After Death, Hello Nasty and Diddy’s debut album, No Way Out all release in this two-year span. With the death of both coasts’ monoliths, the rivalry dissipates quickly and New York re-tightens their grip on the rap game with a slew of hits. This is a huge bummer and I’m super glad rappers realized it was more profitable and fun to be alive and friends, mostly.īiggie and Tupac’s Mothers Afeni Shakur and Voletta Wallace at the 1999 MTV VMA’s – Courtesy MTV About six months after that, Biggie is shot and killed in California. In 96’ Tupac releases a diss track that all but directly calls out Biggie by name, and less than six months later Tupac is shot and killed in Las Vegas. New York has the advantage over California in terms of number of artists, but California’s punches are landing cleaner. The rivalry is so strong and California is so powerful that my dad, a white guy from Las Vegas with a Sons of Anarchy goatee, starts throwing up the W and shouting “West Side!” anytime he does anything at all. Suge Knight goes on stage at the Source Awards and, in so many words, tells Diddy to eat his shit. We see three albums from Tupac Shakur ( one of which is posthumous) and another Snoop album. These are the peak years of the East/West rivalry. California after The Chronic was standing in the middle of the ring holding the belt and screaming at the crowd and then New York sent Wu-Tang, Biggie, and Nasinto the ring all at once and took that belt right the fuck back. Then the camera cuts back to the aforementioned bozo and now it looks like someone removed his skeleton from his body and he is on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. If you’ve ever watched professional wrestling, which seems likely since you are reading an article about an imaginary and meaningless championship belt with a silly name, you know that one of the most satisfying things that happens in wrestling is when some bozo thinks he won a fight, and then all of a sudden the lights go out and you hear the opening bell of Undertaker’s music. The Chronic not only shoots two west coast goliaths out of a cannon and straight into stardom in Snoop and Dre, it births the G-Funk sound and establishes Death Row records, which becomes a substantial element of the pinnacle years of the East/West rivalry. New York is the pasty lower half of my body in this example, which is just about the worst thing anything can ever be. New York has a down year at the same time that The Chronic comes out which is like the time I decided it was fine to wear shorts and flip-flops to my job as a public school teacher one day and the superintendent showed up. start to make some noise out west as the 90’s approach. New York is decidedly unfuckwithable in this stretch of time, even as Ice-T and N.W.A. & Rakim, LL Cool J, Afrika Bambaataa, Slick Rickand basically every other founding father of rap music. These 11 years see the rise of Run-DMC, Eric B. No matter who holds the belt, from now until Infinity, New York will always have the “yeah, but who taught you how to do that?” line in their pocket. It is, after all, the birthplace of rap music as we know it, which also means that it’s sort of the birthplace of “cool” as we know it, which, as a Californian, is an obnoxious thing to say, regardless of how true it might be. New York holds the belt for more than a decade before anyone can even contend for it. LL Cool J along with this link all about epic 80’s rap Below is a brief history of who held the belt from 1980 to present day. It’s less about who sells more records or has more artists producing work, and more about who is having a bigger impact on the rap industry as a whole in any given year. The Intercoastal Hip-Hop Championship Belt is the title that designates which coast holds more power in the rap game at any given time. Drawing comparisons between the two is inevitable, and that’s what brings us to The Intercoastal Hip-Hop Championship Belt. While the beef is non-existent now, California and New York remain the greatest influences to hip-hop’s past, present, and future. We miss you Biggie – Read about the famous photo shoot by Barron Clairborne Aside from his music, and the roughly 400% too many murals of his likeness strewn across Brooklyn, Biggie is remembered most for being a key player in one of the most interesting narratives in pop-culture history: The West V.S. In his few short years of superstardom, Biggie left a crater-sized impact on the music industry and a cloudy legacy behind him. Last week March 9th, marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Notorious B.I.G. 0 Shares Share on Facebook Share on Twitter The Intercoastal Hip-Hop Championship Belt
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |