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Originally Posted by noisereductions
louder, I'm curious how old you are and when you got into hip hop?
I'm 32, and I'd say that it was the release of The Chronic that hooked me.
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NR, you and I have a creepy amount in common.
However, it wasn't The Chronic that hooked me. I was actually quite put off by most hip hop during the early '90s. The only artist I was really a fan of was Wu-Tang Clan and Tribe for quite a while. I disliked gangsta rap altogether until somewhere around '96, when I started listening to the tracks on Ready to Die that didn't feature Method Man. (That's right, I initially bought the album for one song... Sacrilege, I know.) I felt guilty about liking Wu Tang, because of their semi-gangsta affiliation. I thought gangsta rap was for stupid people, and I was a Tribe/De La Soul/Paul's Boutique kind of guy until the revelation of Biggie's genius made me want to investigate further. Oh, and I was also a big fan of Nas and the Fugees at that point. Nas seemed like the thinking man's gangsta. Illmatic was definitely an essential album for me in the early years.
I didn't bother with the Chronic until after All Eyez on Me. Though I did have a copy of Doggystyle for some reason. To this day, I can't quite claim to be a fan of Dre. The Chronic is brilliant, and he's probably the most influential producer in the history of the genre, but I still consider him a second tier artist.
Anyway, the album that turned me into a hip hop *fan* and not just a fan of certain hip hop, was Dr. Octegonecologyst. That was the album that combined me that there was genius in the genre as a whole, and that there was no point in ignoring certain sub-genres, or discriminating based on region or style.
Not that you asked me. Hah.
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