An NFT case? Who the fuck cares about that? So, good news everybody, the latest bust up between Jay-Z and Damon Dash has now expanded beyond non-fungible tokens.īoth Dash and Jay-Z are still shareholders in the label they used to run together, that being Roc-A-Fella Records. When Jay-Z sued his former business partner Damon Dash over a proposed NFT drop last month that was exciting because, you know, it was an NFT case, how novel, how modern, how very buzzy! But then, much like with the NFT phenomenon itself, that excitement quickly waned. Speaking to Breaking Atoms, Nick Raphael, who, alongside Christian Tattersfield, signed Jay to a worldwide distribution deal in 1996 through London-based Northwestside Records, recalls meeting Jay in New York and seeing him “driving a 190 E Mercedes-Benz with a Roc-A-Fella logo on the front, leaning out of the car handing flyers and CDs” in a gung-ho spate of grassroots promotion.Artist News Business News Labels & Publishers Legal Damon Dash now accuses Jay-Z of the “unauthorised theft” of Reasonable Doubt streaming rights By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 15 July 2021 Yet the work wasn’t done, for Jay was determined to see his name everywhere. Reasonable Doubt would initially struggle commercially but it continued to climb the Billboard Hot 100 chart, eventually peaking at number 23. He flows like he’s conversing with you at a party or on the street.” But what makes stand out here is the slick way flips lyrics. In one review written by Charlie Braxton in The Source Magazine – the Bible of hip-hop journalism, famous for its five-mic rating system – rated the project just four out of five, saying: “In terms of the subject matter, Jay-Z isn’t saying anything new. Whereas peers such as Nas were gritty in their depictions of New York and Snoop Dogg’s charisma and street savvy shined on the West Coast, Jay was an amalgamation of both qualities.īy its release in the summer of 1996, Reasonable Doubt, while well received, wasn’t the instant classic some quarters of hip-hop may claim.
#JAY Z REASONABLE DOUBT STREAM CRACK#
Rarely had a rapper captured this aspect of African-American life before Jay: he placed you in the room where the crack he sold was cooked and bagged up, in meetings with his Colombian suppliers, and inside his own psyche as he made sense of his path. The album’s authenticity, meanwhile, reigned supreme, seamlessly capturing the inner workings of a mind scarred by the crack era that enveloped his Brooklyn neighbourhood and turned young African-American kids into hood entrepreneurs to survive and move up the socioeconomic food chain. Though boom bap was New York’s dominant soundscape, Reasonable Doubt added luxury and an unshakeable groove to its sonic palette. Meanwhile, middle track “Can I Live”’s smooth horn-led intro plays like background music for a meeting of mafiosi. Over 14 tracks, a slew of boom bap beats provided by Jaz, Clark Kent, Ski Beatz, DJ Premier and Irv Gotti ranged from the rhythmic, danceable funk of “Can’t Knock the Hustle” and “Ain’t No N*gga” to the ominous “22 Twos”, a would-be soundtrack for a rap Rocky Horror Picture Show. With Jaz-O, Clark Kent and music producer Ski Beatz beside him, the studio became his sanctuary as he laid bare his glamorous, gritty world on wax, marking him out as a suave, debonair and supreme rhymer. With his buzz in the streets reaching fever pitch, he would convene in 1994 at the legendary D&D Studios in Manhattan – where Nas recorded Illmatic – to lay down what would become Reasonable Doubt. Jay would never sign with Atlantic, ultimately leveraging his friendship with Dash and Burke to form his now legendary label, Roc-A-Fella, in 1995. When I got my first A&R job at Atlantic Records, on the second day I said I wanted to sign Jaz and Jay-Z.” “But when I went to Marcy to meet Jay and he rapped in front of me, I knew this guy was it. “At that time, I thought Jaz was the dopest MC I’d ever heard,” Kent told Breaking Atoms. Clark Kent’s importance in Jay’s early story is not to be underestimated it was through him that Jay would meet Damon Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, his future business partners and fellow co-founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, the label that would release Jay’s albums until 2013. Years of honing his craft in the early 1990s on guest features and “posse cuts” throughout New York would lead Jay to DJ Clark Kent, an industry figure whose belief in his skills were so strong he built a studio in his home for Jay to record. Van Morrison is a toxic menace – Glastonbury shouldn’t be hosting him.Kings of Convenience: ‘We could write a book about couples therapy’.Kick out the drams: the musicians who went sober during the pandemic.