The order is as follows…
The Blueprint
Reasonable Doubt
American Gangster
The Black Album
Vol. 1
Vol. 3
Dynasty
Kingdom Come
Vol. 2
Blueprint 2
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Jones relaunches TRT podcast on Wave Sports + Entertainment aired on October 23, 2023
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Jones hosts the daily ESPN television studio show High Noon, alongside co-host Pablo Torre
I was hoping to avoid the ridiculous American Gangster hype a bit longer, but I guess that was naive. I’ve slowly come to realize that even “John Henson’s The Muppets vs. The Pesci Family” would gross a gajillion dollars and have every 14 yr old moron in the country breaking out their $3 Tony Montana flea market t-shirts. That is, until the first time in the movie where Animal wasted a stereotyped Italian thug Muppet and did a line of coke off Miss Piggy’s 4th chin.
This lame gangster fetish is completely out of control.
Couldn’t have said it better, Kirk. I don’t know what’s worse: the boys who worship Tony Montana or the grown ass men. Do they just ignore the end of the movie? Do they not feel like idiots for idolizing a satirical movie caricature? I don’t get it.
Haven’t heard AG yet, but Reasonable Doubt is by far Jay’s best. He started dumbing down his lyrics to a greater degree on Blueprint. That album only looked good because everything else was so bad. Production was bangin, though.
For the first time last night I watched the show American Gangster. I wanted to see what the hype was about. Honestly, instead of being impressed or even feeling like I did when I was Notorius on A&E (kind of interested in a going to the zoo kinda way), I just kept thinking about the effect of this. It feels like it is being glamorized with Frank Lucas riding about in a limo, talking about the old days. But let us not forget, his brothers and he ran both Newak and Harlem with their Blue Magic. Think about the effect of that. In some cases they had to change the bus schedules becuase the streets were blocked waiting on their drug deliveries. He, his family and his cohorts are basically responsible for the implosion of Newark, NJ and NY too. And they haven’t recovered yet. All of the gen X people who grew up idolizing drug dealers are talking about these guys. These are the guys who flooded the streets with heroin who screwed up a whole generation and made room for crack when it came through. Look at the results, Philly, Newark, the boroughs of New York and on and on. For people who have seen the movie, is it glamourizing the drug trade? (As if we need more of that. . . )
All day long, while working, my boy and I have been arguing about Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint…which comes first? I’m Reasonable Doubt all day and he’s Blueprint all day.
And people say rap music is for the birds. We’re two grown arse college educated dudes arguing about the finer points of Jay’s drug game acumen.
I think my mother just shed a tear for that irony.
True. But let it be known that the gap between American Gangster and Reasonable Doubt is paper thin.
Oh, and Stephanie, I think that we can agree that there would be no drug trade if the feds didn’t want there to be one. Like the famous quote says “Ain’t no Uzis made in Harlem”
Just a brief explanation…
Jay was at his best on RD. However, the production makes up the difference. Blueprint completely changed the course of production in hip hop, and that gets it a few bonus points.
I don’t know if you folk have heard, but krs already made an album called blue print. Plus eminem killed him on his own song!
To be fair to the American Gangster film, it makes it’s characters 3 dimensional people, rather than just catchphrase spouting supermen. It’s widely available in DVD quality on various torrent and download sites in case anyone didn’t know. Well worth a download.
Great points Steph.. As a native of Cokeland (Oakland), CA, I really value your similar east coast perspective.
Making a living off of the addiction of others is very self-serving, and should not be looked up to.
In one scence, Lucas’ nephew (played by TI), skips a meeting that Lucas set up for him with Billy Martin (?), as TI’s character was a baseball phenom. When asked why he skipped the personally arranged (through drug connections mind you) meeting, TI’s character responds “I don’t want to be a ball player, I want to be YOU uncle Frank”. It’s abrubtly cut short by someone grabbing Frank, but later you see TI employed as another in-family goon in the operation, which (obviously) crumbles in the end.
To your question, yes there’s some glorification here and there. I had an aforemntioned “good” bootleg copy, but then the dvd started sticking at parts.
Just as an apex scene was developing, I anxiously told my wife “Yeah, this is the scene I wanted to see; the one showing how the big drug operation started..”, the damn DVD froze up again.
It made me think about what I look up to, being a college educated guy like the guy above.
It’s art and entertainement, but if you’re from Philly, NJ, inner city NY, Oakland, Bankheaed, etc.. It’s actually a part of your life too.
Marinate on that..