no limit appreciation thread
 

**** tbe haters. You a no limit soldier?

On the real, this thread deserves serious conversation. This label, these artists, including Mia X were very groundbreaking artistically, financially, and politically. The combination of nihilism, existentialism, realism - I believe that as the decades pass these records will be remembered right alongside literature like No Longer Human and Nausea and possibly as superior when considered in a historical context of how and when and where these artists lived.

Respect. Its trendy to hate on **** like no limit and cash money cause it's associated with rap becoming more commercialized and unapologetically materialistic but that's just the culmination/logical conclusion of so many forces that have always pointed in a particular direction from day 1. Stemming from the material conditions in the hood and the grind or die mentality it produces.

It's interesting to me to think of how rap music is the perfect reflection of the dark underbelly of modern life under western capitalism. How it started out as a gritty alternative to disco in NYC... Disco itself being a monument to the kind of pure hedonism that defines our culture which probably reached it's apex around the 70's and 80's when disco was still relevant, cocaine was a novelty, hip hop was just a hood variety of dance music and Americans still thought the dream was alive.

Its not surprising that as the genre adopted a more aggressive stance as cocaine turned to crack and gang violence dominated the urban centers of every major metro area.

And it's also not surprising that when all that gang banging and King pinning climaxed with the deaths of biggie and pac and the east coast west coast beef... Nobody noticed the elephant in the room which was that the south was about to rise up and dominate the genre for the foreseeable future.

Nobody took the south seriously in the 90s.

"Back when new York niggas was calling southern rappers lame, and then jacking our slang" - jay electronica - exhibit c

Outkast got booed when they won an award cause the award show was in NY and all non east coast rappers were getting booed as if they were west coast.

Plus there has traditionally been more of an affinity between the west coast and the south in hip hop. NY always thought it was the center of the universe and their sound, style and aesthetic appealed particularly to the bleak yet busy concrete jungle that NY is.

Cali is more spread out. More beautiful yet somewhat distorted. Isolated. Alienated. The southern cities are similar in this regard.

Is it a coincidence that 2pac got accused of biting Scarface's style and then master p got accused of biting 2pac? That scarface lived in Houston, pac lived in Oakland, and master p lived in Richmond Cali and new Orleans? Is it hard to notice the influence of west coast rap on late 90s rap from new Orleans, starting with no limit but leading on to the cash money dynasty which is still relevant in the rap world to this day?

I dunno.. could be coincidence. I be could be a schizo rambling to himself about nothing at all. Who knows.

Honestly there needs to be more documentation of all this stuff

When crime was really peaking out and NY had 7 murders a day on average and Times Square was filthy and NY was filled with razor wire all over half of Brooklyn and the Bronx it still wasn’t the same kind of horror navigating other high crime cities was. For one, nobody really REALLY stands out anywhere in NYC. It’s always been crawling with weirdos being somewhere they really don’t need to be. But in Atlanta, having to walk through bad areas, and not just for the sore thumb looking dumbass white kid, but for anyone, it’s so ****ing desolate - it feels like having a gun pointed at you all the ****ing time, or at least it used to, and then to imagine LA back then - where **** was so brutally territorial- I can’t even imagine. I’m still convinced that psychopaths came from all over America just to kill some random person in LA as a type of tourism because the police didn’t even bother trying to solve murders back then.

And don’t even get me started on the missing and murdered children **** that was going on when I was growing up in Atlanta. That was psychopathic white power police **** for sure. Call me MERIT all you want but that **** was such a ****ing coverup and the Atlanta PD was ****ing insane back then.

"I know he innocent"

Call me a racist or whatever but I never buy that **** coming from a friend or better yet a cellmate of the accused

I grew up in haitian gang territory in south fl and watched a certain haitian gang go around murdering people every week and then when the indictments came down they wanted to claim it's just a rap group and even people I knew and knew for years who had family/friends connected would look me in the face and say it's all just a witch hunt, top 6 is just a rap group.



Its like really who the **** do you think I'm about to run and tell? Don't bull**** a bull****ter.


But back to the topic at hand...

I dunno... When it was 2000 murders a year in ny I'd say that is comparable to modern day chicago. Yeah it's a big city but those murders are mostly concentrated in certain neighborhoods.

Make em sayyyyy uaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!! UUUUGGAHHHHHHHHAHHHHH NAAAANAAAA NANA

But in NYC there’s always a subway station just around the way. In Atlanta there wasn’t any refuge anywhere.

Also, crime was typically business in NY. That’s the way it felt to me, anyway.

Present day Chicago man I don’t even know at all. Isn’t it mostly snowballing retaliation madness? It’s so crazy the numbers they put up there.

that's gang violence in general. If you watch the gangland episode i posted on the gang from my high school it's the same ****. One person gets shot and then it snowballs into retaliation after retaliation.

Chicago is just in a bad place rn cause they tore down the housing projects and the gang territories got all ****ed up as a result.

I didn’t know that. That makes sense.

I mean it's an oversimplification tbh.. Chicago was violent before that but once they tore down Cabrini Green and some of the other large housing projects, in an effort to fight crime of all things, the residents got dispersed over a larger area and the gang territories got all mixed up which lead to more fighting over territory which obviously lead to the cycle of retribution you referred to... Its like a murder feedback loop.

The reason the towers were tore down in the first place was because of all the gang activity. I remember seeing a video on YouTube years ago about snipers in Chicago high rises. Dude would post up with a sniper rifle in an abandoned apt and just wait for the anyone from the wrong set to walk through the court yard.

Yeah. Hurricanes do that too when a bunch of people get displaced.

It reminds me of here they closed a couple of “failing” schools as if it was the actual building causing the problem. They literally boarded up two school buildings. So they put the same kids in a now overcrowded different buildings, shuffle the same crappy teachers around, build these cheap ass “portables” that mold up and leak, leave the old buildings up as community eyesores.

One high school even has this psychotic design where if you’re in some classrooms you can’t get to the restrooms without walking through other classrooms. Like they thought it was modern or made sense somehow not to have every room have a door that opens to the hallway. The classes are constantly being interrupted and new students and staff can’t figure where the **** the classrooms are. And don’t ask me how this **** passed muster with fire marshal.

I feel like people read this **** and think Hawk has gotta be making this **** up but I swear to god.

Please tell me they bulldozed those schools and put up condos.

Not yet but ultimately that’s always the plan. Urban development has always been synonymous with pricing out the poor.

https://genius.com/a/in-1998-master-...ip-hop-history

so as i've indicated earlier in thread, no limit represented the transition from west coast dominance to southern dominance in hip hop, at the end of a period where the main competition was east coast vs west coast and nobody paid any attention to the south.

When you listen to no limit songs, you can hear the clear as day west coast/g funk influence. Perhaps no album is more indicative of this than Ice Cream Man, the 1996 Master P which was the last major release by him prior to blowing up onto the pop charts with Ghetto D.





And Ghetto D only continued along that trajectory.




The link between south and west coast goes back, like I said. Beyond just hip hop, it's interesting to think about how Cali rap was so heavily influenced by P Funk which in itself drew heavy inspiration from Funk and Blues traditions which have in themselves a heavy southern influence, partcularly from New Orleans, hometown of no limit and Master P.

Yet No Limit wasn't a purely southern group. Like I said, the west coast influence was obvious and in earlier albums Master P was just as likely to claim Richmond, Cali as he was New Orleans. Around 1998, No Limit took the hip hop world by storm and dominated the charts with a handful of artists and dozens of albums that did serious record sales.

Almost as quick as they rose to prominence, they were quickly eclipsed and superceded by another New Orleans rap outfit, Cash Money. Unlike No Limit, Cash Money was a uniquely southern sound and had several rappers who could actually spit. Cash Money would first take the hip hop world by storm, then fade somewhat, then resurge and become a permanent fixture in hip hop lasting to this day.





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Love No Limit. I own more No Limit albums than I probably should. I think the most underrated MC from No Limit was Mac - never thought he got the respect he should've.



Probably in the late '90s, there was no production crew that was more overworked than Beats by the Pound. Imagine how many oz's of weed those dudes burned through in the process of making all these albums?



I still got both of Mac's albums on CD somewhere - checking Amazon now, I could sell 'em both for around $100 - assuming there's a buyer out there willing to pay for it.