Tuesday, February 11, 2014

fun facts

Super good stuff from The Big Payback, the book about the business of hip hop:

Ice T rolling up in the back of a Rolls Royce to a music convention where there were tons of protestors, including lots of cops from Texas, rolling down the window and flipping them the bird. Then driving away.

How the RZA negotiated one of the best record deals in history, which gave the right for all the members to put out solo records on whatever label they wanted. Also, the fact that they made all the money from their products including Wu Wear stores (which I forgot about!)

Puffy in general. Starting out at like 17. I mean, what do you expect when he got his name from  having a Puffed-up personality? Didn't know that he was regarded by many street artists as representing a bad/glossy trend in hip hop, which has turned out to be more than a trend. Suge Night made some crack at the Source Awards about how you wouldn't see him dancing around in a video.

The beef between Tupac and Biggie seems to be due to a misunderstanding where Tupac was shot in a building where Biggie and Puffy were recording and concluded Biggie was behind it.

Most record executives and magazine editors (including Source and Vibe) were white, and mostly Jewish. Not saying this is good, it's just a fact. But many of them really, really championed rap and unfortunately had more clout to do so.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

my friend is an editor at random house or penguin, wherever they published that business of rap book; that project was his baby! he'll be stoked someone was reading it because i don't think it sold very well. i love the early business stuff.

@jewish champions of rap

u gots to check out the interviews with Dante Ross on the Juan Epstein podcast and/or the rapgenius Outside the Lines podcast. dude is cool as shit. (just realized that cool as shit is a totally nonsensical but pretty common saying.)

so is MC Serch--somehow a frickin' fascinating character in 80s and 90s rap. he's interviewed on the Champs podcast and tells some of the same stories on the rapgenius podcast, unmissable stuff if you are a rap nerd, especially one who is also a jew.

--chapstick

beckler said...

Cool!

Tell him that it's getting read! Jay recommended it to me and Nic has read it to (probably hard to find a music book that Nic hasn't read). It clearly took an enormous amount of work. Another takeaway message that is not surprising: Russell Simmons is a dick.