What up, y’all! I know, I’ve been missing in action like "Paper Planes" (ha) for a HOT minute, but please believe that while my head’s been in the books, my heart’s not only with hip-hop, but with those of you who come back to get affected The Breezy Effect on a regular basis.
Anyway, I knew that for my first Rewind Wednesday in God knows when, I needed to pick a joint that was not only HOT on the lyrical tip but extremely rare. Rare as in it’s not heard on the radio these days, rare as in one of the hottest collabo tracks you’ll EVER HEAR IN YOUR NATURAL BORN LIFE, and rare as in...well, I always said that the true measure of an emcee was one that could spit a verse without cursing, and here we get not one, not two, but EIGHT (Heavy goes in twice).
Time for quick history lesson: For those of you that don’t know, either because you’re a bit young, or you’ve never purchased an album or a CD that came out after 1990 (highly unlikely, but possible), this song is a response to the Recording Industry Association of America’s movement to place the black-and-white Parental Advisory stickers on music albums believed to have offensive language and explicit lyrics (BIG UPS to Tipper Gore-- NOT). Hence, you get to see Heavy D and others flopping around in those horrid stripped jumpsuits (I don’t care if they were in style for a HOT minute, them shyts were F-CKIN' UGLY). Though I don’t necessarily agree with this overt criminalization of music, it was AWESOME to see that the artists chose to turn something “negative” into something positive, and prove that they didn’t need to use profanity in order to drop dope lyrics (especially Grand Puba, though admittedly I LIKE him on the nasty tip ::wink::). Can you name the first hip-hop album that got slapped with one of these labels? For those of you who still purchase hard copy albums, do you feel like the Parental Advisory stickers are necessary? Or better yet, riddle me this question– if this joint could be remade, who are some of the artists you’d like to see on it and why? Let’s open up a discussion about this.
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