biggie
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Aaliyah, Missy Elliott and Timbaland Changed the Game With 1996’s One in a Million. Thankfully, I Now Get to Relive That Moment
Aaliyah's sophomore album and especially its title track are the kind of songs you never forget.
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Don Cheadle Is Every Gen Xer
A now-viral exchange between Cheadle and Kevin Hart epitomizes the generational divide—and Gen Xers are not with the shits.
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We Traveled as a Family During COVID
Touring the country together brought us closer to nature—and each other.
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'I'm Still Spending Money from '88': 9 Thoughts About Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt, One of the Best Albums of All Time on Its 25th Birthday
On June 25, 1996, Jay-Z released his debut album Reasonable Doubt and launched a legendary hip-hop career.
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A List of All the Biases That Prevent Me From Considering Drake One of the Greatest Rappers Ever (Which He, Unfortunately, Is)
1. He reminds me of hotel shampoo so much that I’ve just started calling him Hotel Shampoo. 2. The irrational and disproportionate emotional and spiritual attachment I have to the rappers I listened to and loved when I was younger, which makes it more difficult for a “newer” person to move me. 3. He’s never…
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VSB’s Absolute, Yet Debatable List of the 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time…Definitely, Maybe
You’ve probably seen a ton of lists circulating on social media lately ranking the 50 greatest rappers of all time. I don’t know who did the first one, but somehow Joe Budden—an extremely talented and gifted wordsmith—ended up in the No. 3 slot ahead of arguably, at minimum, 10 rappers easily better than him. Because…
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Mike and Slim of 112 Talk Super Bowl Halftime Show Erasure, Favorite Video Look, and Their Rivalry with Jagged Edge
The evolution of 112 has been an intriguing one, going from the “good boys” of the Bad Boys fraternity to the “rebellious” and increasingly flashy men they came to be. From white suits to black, to “even more black.” As the sun blazed through the glass walls of a Los Angeles hotel lobby, Mike and…
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The Problematic Playlist: Songs With Questionable Lyrics That We Can’t Let Go Of
Have you ever been singing along to a song and then suddenly realize it has lyrics that would get you dragged if you said them aloud on Twitter? I’m talking about songs that could be classified as rape-culture anthems, or that advocate violence against women or sex with underage girls, or all of the above.…
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I’ll Always Love Big Poppa: How Biggie Smalls Helped Me Understand My Parents’ Deaths
On March 9, 1997, rapper Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, had his life taken way too early. He was 24 years old. He was gunned down after leaving an industry party in Los Angeles, six months after the death of rapper Tupac Shakur. Being from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and seeing how this entire New York City…
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Why Black Thought Doesn’t Rank As High on Rap GOAT Lists as He Should
Last week, Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, frontman for the Roots, tried to break the rapper-nets with a 10-minute freestyle with Funkmaster Flex over the Mobb Deep “Burn” instrumental that even had people who think Kevin Gates is the best rapper of all time impressed. Even calling his performance impressive undersells it. For my money,…