LL Cool J returns with the video for the Q-Tip-produced “Saturday Night Special” featuring Fat Joe and Rick Ross. LL drops a reminder of what New York sounds like as he reminisces about an old friend who was a street legend. His rap is an instructional blueprint for success emphasizing integrity by keeping your word, paying debts, and resisting greed. It is the first single from his forthcoming album The Force. More than a decade ago, his last album Authentic was released. Q-Tip’s dreamy beat is the beginning of LL’s new sound and there is a lot of anticipation to hear what he did with the whole album. LL explained on his social media that the tracklisting and further details will be revealed soon and to look for The Force to have a release date in the fall. 

Sunday night Big Daddy Kane and KRS-One gave a clinic on hip-hop for their Verzuz session. Their friendly competition was interspersed with appearances from Buckshot, Nice & Smooth, Roxanne Shante, Hakim Green of Channel Live, Masta Ace, Craig G,  DJ Scratch, DJ Red Alert, Mad Lion, Das Efx, Popmaster Fabel, Crazy Legs and Bboy Cha Cha. Kane schooled the crowd on how he became the father of so many rap styles and proved to still have the speed and precision of his Golden Era days. KRS-One reminded fans of his many classic songs and exposed his lengthy catalog to those who didn’t know. The rap legends made sure to let the audience know the history of their friendship even sharing the story of how KRS-One and his late ex-wife Ms. Melodie helped Kane move out of his parents’ house. They were focused on bringing all the elements to the stage; DJing, MCing and Bboying. But the graffiti foundation was the only one missing from the show that took place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.   

Fat Joe was the host for the event and was later seen in the crowd with Busta Rhymes and 9th Wonder. The audience was taken down memory lane to the time before the explosion of gangsta rap. However KRS did perform “Poetry” from his BDP masterpiece Criminal Minded, the one album where he did advocate for violence. Fans saw his evolution from this era to the emergence of “Self Destruction” which he performed in a medley with “Ah Yeah” and “9MM Goes Bang.” Both emcees freestyled and had fun teasing each other between their nonstop lyrical bombs. Kane’s swift flow was an education on the origins of fast rapping and he gave a special demonstration for the younger generations over the ever popular triplet trap beat. He also introduced Shante as the queen of the Juice Crew and let everyone know that the men in the group were introduced to the world by her.  The b-boy dancers were led by pioneers Crazy Legs of the Rock Steady Crew and Popmaster Fabel. Bboy Cha Cha captivated the audience and put the viewers in a zone with his kinetic movements. When the night was over the audience saw master lyricism, breath control, freestyling, b-boying and DJing.

 

 

 

Fat Joe emerged in 1993 with his first single “Flow Joe” and debut album Represent. Diamond D, who was a member of D.I.T.C. along with Joe, produced the storm-trooping beats and jazzy horns of “Flow Joe.” Fat Joe’s raw and confident cadence was recognized in the streets and “Flow Joe’s” number one spot on the Hot Rap Singles chart got him noticed by the music industry. He opened up a lane for Latin rappers that would reach an eclipse with the discovery of Big Pun two years later. The Beatnuts, Bobbito, Grand Puba, Nice N Smooth, Showbiz, AG and Diamond D all appeared in the video for “Flow Joe” that is now a piece of history that captured ’90s New York. Represent was the beginning of Fat Joe’s almost 3-decade career as a rapper and actor. In 2017 Fat Joe was popular again after working with Remy Ma, French Montana and Infrared on the single “All The Way Up.” In 2019, he and Dre released the Family Ties album. 

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[youtube id=”AiwvPmRTv6M”]Big Pun debuted as a solo artist in 1998 with his album Capital Punishment. Gifted with dense wordplay and a nimble cadence, Big Pun was quickly recognized as one of the best of his generation. “Twinz (Deep Cover)” paired him with mentor and friend Fat Joe and together they reconstructed the song that introduced Snoop Dogg to the world and was also Dr. Dre’s first solo single. Pun rapped his most famous line on “Twinz (Deep Cover)” when he said, “Dead in the middle of Little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middlemen who didn’t do diddily.” His high-speed execution of words flooded the ears of rap fans with ecstatic head-nodding sensations. Pun’s raw material provided a new anchor for hip-hop and classic lines for the future. The whole of Capital Punishment was only punitive to lesser rappers but nothing but awe and contentment for the fans. The album became the first to go platinum from a solo Latin hip-hop star, sped up the charts and had a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album in 1999. Big Pun’s Capital Punishment was the only project of his to be released while he was alive. His sophomore album, Yeeeah Baby, was also a great album but it was posthumously released in 2000 just two months after his passing. Eighteen years after his death, Big Pun’s lyrical potency is still felt in the hearts of Gen X, millennials discovering him for the first time on the internet and the hole he left in New York’s rap scene.