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- Oct 4, 2014
I'm reading the 'Tupac Shakur' book that VIBE put out in 97 and stumbled across this old article.
Mind you, this is from an article in VIBE.
Cheo Hodari Coker said this over 20 years ago.
Mind you, this is from an article in VIBE.
Spouting his multiplatinum "pay style" over a funkdafied backdrop, Todd Shaw spoke volumes for a West Coast rap community that, way back in the B.C. (before 'Chronic') age, grew sick and tired of trying to earn respect in the towering concrete jungle that was rap's birthplace. There's a new attitude out West. You can almost hear it in Too Short's simple dope-fiend bass line: Who really cares whether our records sell in New York? They sell everywhere else -Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Cleveland- all them places where Ns really buy records instead of snatchin' up a bootleg. Let them fools make Walkmen beats for the subway; my **** is booms for people who ain't got no train. Laugh all you want, but one day the West Coast is going to rule hip-hop.
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Los Angeles has its own copyrighted style: hard thump bass with balmy, cursive melodies on top to level sound. If New York makes beats for the heads, L.A. is strictly for that ***. That's the one reason West now outsells the East: The grooves are better suited to the wide-open spaces of the South and Midwest, as opposed to the claustrophobic beat collages emanating from - Queensbridge,
Bushwick, and Staten Island-to say nothing of Roxbury and West Philly. On a linguistic level, New York has always been it's own universe. Any person not from the tri-state is considered "country" an attitude that leaves the rest of the country feeling left out.
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New Yorkers will give you a million and one reasons why the East is artistically superior. They'll tell you the West leads on SoundScan charts only because, as New York Times theorized, "it's violence-filled lyrics and danceable melodies make is accessible to the casual listener" But the truth is much more complex.
Cheo Hodari Coker said this over 20 years ago.