2 Hip Hop Snobs Tackle.... "Posse Cuts"(Day 4)
Check out the first three installments:
"Dirty South" featuring Cool Breeze and Big Boi
DanTres: It's dope to find folks repping for their regions. This track put the south on the map. Ever since then, the south has been known as the Dirty South. As usual, any track with Outkast and Goodie M.O.B. Always presented quality. This one definitely opened doors and does get the floor jumping when you play it down south. A lot of folks have balked when I brought this track up during "a best of..." debate. I think it's influence has been highly underrated.
HumanityCritic: Ok, you got me, I was indeed one of the aforementioned "balkers", this track is dope but it was never was one of my personal favorites. That being said, there is always a point when an artist(or a group of artists in this case) rip off the proverbial scab and gives their listeners an unadulterated look at the geographic area that they call home, a sobering reality of sorts. The same way MC's out of "The Golden State" have been forcefully making the case for years that there is more to California than just "swimming pools and movie stars", this collaboration proved that there is more to the South than just down home cooking and the shameful history of Jim Crow.
DanTres: When Outkast first came up, I was always checking Dre. On Dirty South however, I peeped that Big Boi was nice. Ever since then, I felt he was the better of the two. He is very underrated. One of the few cats out there who can change the sounding of certain syllables to rhyme and get away with it (I think Black Thought is the only other cat that can do it properly). What I dig about this posse cut is that they could have put everybody on that and it might not have come out the same. It was nice and short. Straight to the point. The south is dirty, don't get it twisted.
HumanityCritic: Word, Big Boi is both dope and underrated. Speaking of Big Boi, excuse me for getting off topic here, but I'm glad that him and Killer Mike finally decided to squash their beef. I'll take Big Boi over Killer Mike lyrically any day, but after witnessing the back and forth between the two men, I just felt that his new "tough guy" stance was laughably unbelievable. He's better than that. But then again who am I to talk, I once sucker punched a preacher for telling his all black congregation to vote for Bush in 2004 and put the father of a girl I was dating in an inappropriate sleeper hold.
"Headbanger": EPMD, Redman, and K Solo
DanTres: Although the Hit Squad wasn't the first group of artists to put it down, they came off hard. I remember I was out to sea when this joint came on. This cat fresh out of boot camp came on board and during one of our sessions, he brought the single. After it was over, we were like "whaaaaaattttttttttt.....!" We must have played it over twenty times. Looking back though, it was a gay moment, since here were like 40 heads in wife beaters jumping around doing the East Coast stomp in an enclosed space.
HumanityCritic: Like any Hip Hop enthusiast, I'm fully aware of the pitfalls surrounding some overzealous person accidentally reinforcing negative stereotypes about the genre within the proverbial earshot of critical malcontents. That being said, this posse cut makes me want to punch a motherfucker in the face, and that's a good thing. Like so many other posse cuts where there is at least one squeaky wheel, a proverbial weak link of sorts - everyone here holds their weight like human drug mules. This is one of my favorite posse cuts of all time, the gold standard which all other collaborative efforts over a dope beat should be judged.
DanTres: The sad part is that shortly after this track, the collective got into a beef and everything fell apart. The only cat really holding it down on any level is Redman. Everyone else just hasn't been the same. Still, I find this track to be a watershed in that moment when hip hop music was about Carharts, timbs, and hoodies. No glamor, no glitz, no wack white shades, bottles of Mo', or "swagger." Heads just got on a dope track and wrote dope rhymes.
HumanityCritic: This song has also provided me with countless hours of laughter due to my utterly warped sense of humor. I can't tell you how many times I've forcefully yanked the back of some stranger's sweatshirt and yelled "Yo Where's my Hoodie!!??", simply screamed the word "Negroes!" whenever I found myself at a concert where two black males were fighting, been in a club and expressed my displeasure at a young lady's meddling friend by very politely asking her to "tow truck her weak sideshow" - and about a million other inside jokes that I've been gleefully regurgitating since this song came out. But seriously, how fucking great is Redman's verse in this song? it perfectly captures my belief that Redman's style is rather "Seinfeldian", an utterly brilliant display of lyricism that isn't about anything in particular. Straight dope.
Here is another example of Redman's "Seinfeldian" brilliance:
Redman: "Tonight's da Night"(Remix)
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