Monday, May 02, 2005

Hip Hop school IV

You're probably wondering where class #3 is...basically, it's taken me forever to get the music for it, and I was checking out all of these obscure underground West Coast tracks...so eventually I decided that I needed to get this party started again. Anyway, I'll post #3 at the end of this week/beginning of next week.

This class focuses on 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. - they're the two titans in rap history, and they deserved their own CD. You could actually do a class on just 2Pac alone - it was hard for me to include just nine songs of his. Biggie only had two albums released when he was alive, so of course there are less songs of his, but I was able to include some classic tracks.

Here's the list:

2Pac - Brenda's Got A Baby - the serious side
Notorious B.I.G. - Who Shot Ya?
2Pac f/Shock G & Money B - I Get Around - everyone forgets he was with Digital Underground
Notorious B.I.G. - Big Poppa - "A t-bone steak, cheese eggs and Welch's Grape"
2Pac - Me Against The World
Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy - his best song ever, IMHO
2Pac f/Dr. Dre - California Love - everyone knows where they were when this song was hot - and we were all like, "Wait, isn't 'Pac from the East Coast?"
Notorious B.I.G. - One More Chance
2Pac f/Danny Boy - I Ain't Mad At Cha
Notorious B.I.G. - B.I.G. Interlude - he explains his name in 45 seconds...excellent
2Pac f?Outlawz - Hit Em Up - here's where the East Coast/West Coast thing went nuclear...that tends to happen when you claim you slept with someone's wife on record
Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize
2Pac - Toss It Up
Notorious B.I.G. - Niggas Bleed - VIBE magazine published an analysis of this song about 7 or 8 years ago, and it's amazing how much stuff is crammed into this song...if anyone out there has a copy of that article, let me know
2Pac - To Live & Die In L.A.
Notorious B.I.G. f/Mase & Puff Daddy - Mo Money Mo Problems
2Pac - Do For Love - my favorite posthumous track of his...there are a lot to choose from
Notorious B.I.G f/Eminem - Dead Wrong - his other posthumous track is probably better, but this has a wicked beat

So who was better, 2Pac or Biggie? And yes, there is a right answer to the question...

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