Guess what Ny Ny we baaackkk...

So almost 5 years ago, Jay-z proclaimed that New York was back on the Kingdom Come album. Honestly, it felt like there could be a revival, you had Jim Jones and the Dip-set holding it down and 50 Cent was still riding high. However, the momentum could not continue and thus it died right with 'Superman'. A couple years later, Jay-z tried again to revive the New York feel on D.O.A. but alas, while he benefitted with huge sales of the Blueprint 3, it hasn't led to renewed support for other East Coast artists. What i want to do is maybe look at some of the reasons why and what an artist would need to do to blow up from the North.


Number 1: Stop talking about how NY you are.



If you haven't noticed no one has really cared about how New York you are, how fast the city is and how hard it is to make it there. If you're not Jay-Z or 50 Cent, no one wants to hear you talk about how great the rotten apple is. And by the way, stop calling it the rotten apple, there are way more fucked up places to live than New York. We don't think you're that tough and your arrogance isn't helping you. Realize this, you have the biggest city in the country yet everywhere else still outnumbers you so guess what, you need to rest of the country more than we need you.



Number 2: Doing a track with Rick Ross or Wayne doesn't mean anything.

How many songs does Wayne put out in a given year? Like a verse a day? It's not special, he doesn't discriminate, if you have a paypal account and e-mail address you have a feature. Same thing with Ross, Plies, and damn near every other Southern rapper. They don't have any standards of emceeing so it doesn't mean anything. Get a song with Jay-z though, that's special. Unless he just makes you do the hook like you're Drake or something.


Number 3: Having "swagger" is not a fashion term calm down with the Gucci and Louie



Honestly, we get it you're not a regular person, you're not going to dress normally all of the time, but to walk around talking about all you rock is Louis or Gucci is absurd. Be simple, you can be fly without being ultra-metrosexual. Jim Jones has made old heads with cornrows an art form, fine, but you coming out with eight scarves on, a tie, and that fake paint shit for a hairline is not where it's at. You can be yourself, X was a grimy cat but you respected his grind. Stand for something, don't just be a person who looks like they're trying to be a rapper. In the above photo you see 'Vado' whom I had never seen for a while yet refused to listen to, after I did both, I cannot take this guy seriously. I don't believe him nor his raps. stick to being a hype man.



Number 4: Make good music stop focusing on repping your borough



This ties into the first one to an extent. Calm down and just make music and stop trying to put the city on your back. If you deserve the crown someone will hand it to you, but do yourself first. The first thing you do is claim the "NY" style, and every thing you do is based around repping NY and being the one to bring back the city, tell us your story, make us relate to you as a person. 50 Cent was successful because he wasn't trying so hard to be seen as the savior, he was doing his thing for himself. People loved it, and 50 became huge. Now I like Saigon's recently released album I won't lie, but at the end of the day the rest of us around the country, really could give less than two shits if Brooklyn is harder than the Bronx and Harlem put together because it doesn't affect us. Hell when rappers talk about the "east side" of their town versus the "west side" we sort of pay attention because everyone has one of those.

Number 5: As an extension of number 2- going at Wayne and southern rappers won't help.

Rappers from the South are a brotherhood,a fraternity, and that's mostly because the East Coast froze them out for a long time. Consequently, they never developed that extra sharp witticism from battling and don't really get the purpose of such exploits. Going at these guys is an exercise in futility because they don't care to participate and in the end while you can demolish them, the public, who is the judge in the end will look at you like the jock picking on the kid in the special ed class. Yes, i'm saying a lot of southern rappers are special ed.


To summarize I've long been a fan of rap in general and like most people now, it's not about where you're from with me but what you say. However, on the national stage now, much like how there was a time when both the West, South and Midwest weren't represented, now, it is the East coast that is underserved, saved for the Southeast. My biggest thing is that there needs to be a mix of sounds and feels at all times and we need not isolate an area from being heard in hip-hop. While much of it is a result of the early East Coast bias coming back to haunt it, New York and to some extent North Eastern music needs to be heard once again.

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