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Originally Posted by Severian
Well, as you know, I normally don't give a fuck about any music that affiliates itself with one of two coastal regions (I mean, seriously... Dumbest turf war ever, that. When I think back on it, I just imagine Dre, Snoop, and Pac cupping their mouths to holler insults at Nas, Biggie, Jay-Z, and Wu-Tang (who were too busy fighting amongst themselves to give much of a shit) from three and a half thousand miles away. It's an objectively hilarious image)
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(a) it did get ridiculously out of hand, misunderstood, and over hyped, but the roots were legitimate. A lot of rappers from the Eastcoast scenes came to LA. They brought with them their own personal feuds from where they came. The biggest problem was that it wasn't just rap, it was actual gang and drug dealing related beef. In the 1990s, the real street snuck into the rap studios for a brief window. Thank you Ruthless and Death Row Records, both of which never intended to be "big" but were set up as money laundering operations
(b) Rap and hip hop was still bigger in the east than the west in the 1990s, so the biggest shows and TV shit was all on the east, rappers from the west did shows in the east, which gave for opportunities for the beef to be closer than thousands of miles away.
(c) The 1990s rap feuds were as priceless as they were classless. 1990s rap feuds were like when the "it" bands of the 1960s became hotel room destroying drug fiends of the 1970s, or the 1970s supergroups became the drunken flameouts of the glamish 1980s. When you give a bunch of low-lives, drop outs, criminals, drug users, and other kinds of street people access to fame and money its what happens. The 1990s was a great accident, it will never happen again, and we should remember it, and celebrate if we were a part of it. I might be biased.
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HOWEVER, I like the LA hip hop scene now. I like the epic scope of Kendrick Lamar's coming-of-age Compton thug in good kid, and I like the throwback styles of emcees like K.L. and Schoolboy Q. And lord knows I love me some motherfuckin NWA. Shit on everything they did later in life (save the Chronic), NWA was the beginning and the end of truly magnificent West Coast gangsta rap. Maybe even better than Public Enemy... 
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Interestingly enough, I think this is LA weakest scene in years. When Odd Future are the flagship, we've got a problem. I think the 1990s was our obvious peak, but we were having a slight uptick when we cliqued up with the Hyphy movement a few years ago.
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It's a good old fashioned under ground hip hop album, and it reminds me of why I listened to the indie shit exclusively for so long.
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I've never heard the term indie applied to hip-hop, has it gotten so mainstream that the term "underground" has lost meaning, or is it indie that has lost?