The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Jason A. England on The Impact of 1995 on Hip-Hop: A Deep Dive into the Evolution of Rap | 11.18

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Cultural critic Jason A. England joins Bomani Jones to discuss 1995, one of the most pivotal years in the evolution of hip-hop. They highlight how regions like New York, Houston, and California each developed distinct styles and sounds, and how regional diversity enabled rich cultural exchange, as fans eagerly explored the unique flavors of rap from different cities. They discuss how Mobb Deep and the Wu-Tang Clan were not only influential in New York but also shaped hip-hop's sound nationwide. They note that hip-hop was not just a musical genre but a cultural movement that influenced fashion, language, and lifestyle. They recount personal anecdotes of their experiences listening to music and attending shows, illustrating how the community around hip-hop was as important as the music itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time, a wave original. My name is Beaumani Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater.

All right, we are trying something new here. We are going to do a series for the year 1996 in rap for 2026. You can do a little bit of math, 30 years, celebration of sorts. Got a lot of episodes planned out ideas. going to be a little different than last time. When we did 1994, we went through specific albums. When we're going to do 1996, we're going to talk about like more albums, but also just kind of where we were at the time. So a little bit more of a study than just the rundown. But it dawned

on me while doing this. We always talk about 1994. We always talk about 96. In between, quietly, is the banging year of 1995. So to join us for the episode or running through 1995, I should have to introduce him before we got here. But he is a brilliant critic of culture, if nothing else, some of the other stuff. I'm not sure legally how much I can say. But Jason England coming to us live from Pittsburgh. What's going on?

I got my Pittsburgh Pirates, Jersey, Sean Price. Who can't clip in theme for 1995. Pleasure to be here. You know, cultural critic, I guess, a writer, generally, a former college professor of, I think, about 15 years. And, you know, happy to be kicking about rap with you. No, you actually go to those Pirates games. That's the thing to be very glad about.

Oh, absolutely. The B&C is one of the best parts there is in America. Yeah. You don't even have to watch the game. No, but I have this thing now where I'm getting to that age and because of like the inclinations and shall we say the eclecticness of my taste, like the way black people feel when they see white people wearing them like NWA T-shirts and stuff like that, I kind of feel that way

when I see somebody on the train down 125th Street with a pink floor t-shirt all. You don't know nothing about no Pink Floyd. But it's the opposite of the way that black people typically say that. But no, you are not doing that with your baseball jersey. You really be out there watching them lose. Yeah, I do. I mean, born and raised the Yankees fan. Don Maddenly was white Jesus for me.

But I always got a thought spot for the Pirates. I was a big fan of baseball history, Bill Maserowski, you know, those Willie Stardial teams, the We Are Family teams. But that was the last time that they were really relevant. So you go for the good seats in the view of the city and you go for the right field bar. you want to talk to my home girl up there. Mel, she'll get you right. Also, no, they were relevant when the Braves were beating them in the playoffs. That was my favorite era of the Pirates. I love that. Dan Slike and Barry Bonds and Terry Pendleton years. That's right. That's right. And I did like a

sporkle quiz. The Pirates, I mean, this will be, this will change with the LSU cat. But they have not had a Cy Young Award winner says Doug Drebeck in 1990. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, yeah. Everybody does something since then. But the year in rap, You and I come from this from similar but different perspectives. I was growing up in Houston. You were in New York. Two places that are fairly insular about the hip hop, but we were two people that were inclined to kind of branch out and get into more.

But I do say looking back on it, the insularity is not necessarily the bad thing that could often feel like at the time. Because what we're talking about, especially for people younger who can't quite catch this, is this is the mid-90s is when we're starting to see this dwindle a bit, but we're still squarely in a sense. very regional era of what rap was. And I don't mean that, yes, in a way it was provincial,

but in a lot of ways that was very, very good because we had very distinct scenes in different cities, like scenes within cities, but also just very distinct scenes across the country that every now and then overlap, but there was something kind of charming about the fact that the lines were drawn a little bit more clearly. Yeah, I think there was less of a flattening of, I guess, the personality and the slang in hip hop. And the other thing was, I think it was more of a charm to hearing things from outside of hip hop. And people were emceeing as an art. And that's something.

I went back and I listened to maybe two, three hours of music, you know, just to get refamiliarized. And I felt like I was back being in my teens and early 20s again, man. It was beautiful. But something that was very distinctive was the creativity. And there's something about rappers I don't want to go too far back and say in the last 20 years, but certainly in the last 5 to 10,

when they had this feel about them, like people who describe themselves as creatives, you know, I don't really know if you have a talent for any craft or mastery of any craft. You just kind of have this catch-all phrase that you're an MC, and it means something very different now. So it was really refreshing to go back and listen to like an Andre 3000 or Cilo for the first time

when they just blew my mind, right? Or the Wu-Tang when they can. came. You talk about regional. New York itself was regional within New York. You know, it's like, right, Brooklyn versus, well, not Harlem, we barely ever produced any MC. It is inexplicable how that turns out. But yeah, Brooklyn and Queens. And then suddenly you have these people coming in from Staten Island that, you know, as they said in succession, you might as well be busting in from Cleveland at that point, right? And you have one of the greatest groups of all time emerged from there. And that was fascinating, you know, very impression. And I do think that we can say this all.

off the top, and I understand why these things offend younger people when they hear it, but the truth is they was rapping better back then. There's kind of no way around it, in part because you had the technology or like thereof in some ways, almost made it such that you had to be rapping better back then. Like to do this or want to do it, you also had to love it in a different way because the promise of a payday did not exist or the dream of it rather than the promise did not exist in the same way. And when you go back and listen, it is a far more literate music, I would say. And it is definitely, like you said,

a different era of creativity. Yeah, and there's a love of it culturally that stems from it being a local culture, right? People are breakdancing and beatboxing. Before they started pretending that, Lin-Manuel invented these things. And his joke, right?

Everyone was doing this. So my friend Shaka King, director who did, why am I forgetting his movie? Jews in the Black Massive. Yes, exactly. He tells this great story about when him and our friend Justin would go to Kniton Factory and Wetlands and the roots would just rock. They would do these jam sessions for like an hour or two.

And this rapper from Brooklyn half a mill would show up. Like a street dude would be there just in there proving his skills. You know, this was like, you might be a drug dealer, you might be a thug in people's eyes, but you came there to be an artist. And that was very different back then. And it was in a way that I did not appreciate until, you know, 10 years later, 15 years later. And specific to what you're referring to, because all you guys are from New York, and I do think there's something interesting about the fact in that time. And I don't know if you could fully pick up on it while growing up there,

but by this time, you would begin to move out in the world a little bit. New York itself was a character in rap. Like what New York meant to rap is not just simply, oh, it's the birthplace of rap. By now, okay, California has established itself. The South is beginning to rise, and it really, really gets going in 96 like that. But going back at this time and thinking about just some of the records that came out of New York in 1995, right? Like we start the year with Deschining,

Smith & Weston. You get the infamous for Mobb Deep a little bit later, three Wu-Tang albums, and we'll get more into that. Like the gritty, grimy, New York sound, we got AZ Doordaq comes out this year. KRS one puts out, the album has got emcees, act like they don't know,

and others on it. Like, New York is still in 1995, a clear titan in rap, but what is interesting, really going back on it is the idea that, oh, this is also music, that is very clearly made for New York. They ain't really tripping too hard

on what nobody else is doing. Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I think that when you look in retrospect, some of what I couldn't see at the time was how little that would matter to everyone else. So the shining you bring up, it's just a classic album in New York. And Smith & Western, I mean,

there were probably five singles off that that ran the streets. Sound Boy Burry was one of the greatest New York anthems ever in terms of just capturing the feeling of the city at that time. Back then, people were debating whether or not boot camp clip or Wu-Tang was the better crew. I mean, there was a real argument that Black Moons into the stage was as good of an album as Wu-Tang into the 36 Chambers, right?

Now, in retrospect, it's a laughable concept. And that was kind of because we had, you know, my friend talks about people on the West Coast having West Coast ears and their love for certain things like DJ Quick, to an extreme that people in New York never could have. But we had East Coast ears. You know, we loved boot camp in a way that the rest of the country never could. They could never understand why we heard them that way. I mean, we even love some of us, Tim Dogg, in a way that certainly no one with any other kind of ears could ever feel.

Right. So, you know, I do understand that much better now, and I could understand it a bit back then. But I think it's interesting, though, that because of, I mean, New York still was the center of the media world, specifically the center of the media world and rap. So they're really, until vibe comes out, and I want to say vibe comes out around like 94, 95 in that space, but the source was the Bible for all of these things. And the source was guidance in terms of what was or was not supposed to be dope. It was kind of the source, yo MTV Raps and RAPCity.

We're kind of beaming in for you. And so we got these insights on these things. And so in the South, especially for the places in the South, that rap did not catch on immediately. Like rap caught on immediately in New Orleans. It caught on immediately in Atlanta. I would argue in Houston. Rap did not catch on immediately in that way.

Once Houston got its own rap scene, people in Houston got into that. Now, there was some of us that were a bit on our own kick, and we were there for what the New York rap was. And so amongst our crews, like Smith & Wesson, was still going, right? They were still hitting. You were interesting because you were in New York, and you actually were able to get an ability to appreciate and feel the rap, especially that was coming out of the South and starting to rise in this time.

I went down to North Carolina and I linked up with my homie James, RIP. James drove a lowrider for an EXP and he was blasting Compton's Most Wanted and he was blasting Outcast first album. And I had all the tapes he had never heard. I had the Diamond D tape blue was in mine. I remember that. He was like, what the hell is this? I had Biggie before it came out because my cousin was a sound engineer.

He had an early copy of it. And I'm sitting there. It reminds me of my close friend, my friend, my friend, my friend, my friend. point guard in high school. He went to Santa Clara. I was down in North Carolina. And I told him I had run a scrimmage with Vince Carter. And he told me he had run a scrimmage was the best guard he had ever met. I'm like, well, who the hell is this at Santa Clara? I'm telling you about a guy named Vince Carter in North Carolina. And he was telling me about Steve Nash. And at the time, I was like, who cares about Steve Nash? And this was how it was with James. It's like, I thought I had all of the

tapes. And then James plays me the Outcast. And I'm like, whoa. And then my other friend plays me day ball and MJG. And that was like, that was back when we looked at the source and it was like, who's the fat dude on this ad, you know, looking ridiculous leaning against the car. And I was like, oh, he's nice. And his partner, MJG might be nice than on the New York rapists that I love. Like to this day, I still argue with people from New York. I'm like, man, y'all slept on MJG. Dude was great. And it was that expanded my mind for sure. But I was always very open-minded and I hate group think. I grew up in New York, never rooting for the local teams except the Yankees, and that was only because I read a history book about them when I was young.

I'm always trying to expand my horizon. So it's a beautiful thing to watch these rap groups coming up. And I think that 95 in rap out of New York really is defined by two things. Queens, Mobb Deep, the infamous, and the three Wu albums that come out that year. All Dirty Bastard return to 36 Chambers. Only bill for Cuban links from Ray Kwan. and then to close out the year, Lig of Swords with the Jizzah. And so there's something to be said about the fact that the defining music of that time

was so gully and so hardcore. But for those who were not there, I don't know how possible it is to explain what a big fucking deal the infamous Mobb Deep record was. Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, sonically, it stands up.

At the time, I'd never heard anything like it. We're all just coming out of this stupendous hangover of Illmatic, thinking that that was the best thing anybody ever heard in New York. And the infamous drops from the same exact neighborhood. And it's like, I don't want to say this sounds better because that seems blasphemous, but this is kind of sound better. And you got Q-Tip with his fingerprints and his DNA all over it. I think Mobb Deep was saying that one of the things that Tip had a gift for is he could make a record sound huge. He just had a way sonically with drums and texture where suddenly your music,

the beat you made just sounded much bigger, like it should be in the club. in the stadium, and every song sounded like that. And Prodigy was just a genius rapper, and I think over the years he's been acquitted. I think a lot of people just thought about him making these hardcore raps, and he was kind of pretty good. No, man, he was singularly talented. His influence is all over MCs.

Clips is not my favorite group, but every group, like Clips, will tell you, like, hey, Prodigy was an emcee who inspired me, right? So you have this incredible rapping over great sonics, And then you go over to the Rizzah side of things. And I'm not sure that New York's ever had a more brilliant producer. I say that as someone who loves other producers more. I love Prime Premier.

I love MADLib. I'm not saying he's from New York, but those are my favorite producers. I think Q-Tips, a singular genius in hip-hop history. But I don't know anyone did what Rizzo did. When you hear Rizzo's beat flips on liquid swords, on only built for community leaks, and you find the sample sources, you still don't understand how he made the beat.

And to me, that's the mark of a great producer. That's a visionary. Like, I still, it's like, wait, you took that sample and you did what with it? I still have no idea how you came up with that beat. Living in the world today, off Jizz's album is one that comes to mine, criminology comes to mind. I don't know if that's a lot of drugs. I don't know if it's a lot of vision.

I don't know if it's too many kung fu movies, but I still have never heard soundscapes like the ones he created. And they did blow my mind. And no one was ready. the underground was not ready for that. A lot of people have this historical revision that everyone thought these albums were classic. I remember listening to Stretch and Bobito religiously,

and when only Bill for Cuban Lings came out, they thought it sounded good, and they were very thrown off by the lyrical content and didn't like it all that much. It took them a while to warm up, but that thing was just so overpowering as an album. It was so dope and so raw and so new. It sounded like it was from outer space,

and it just took over. But there was no critically, no stopping it on the ground. It set a new standard for rap. It totally changed New York rap. Now, one thing I'll say real quick we don't have to belabor is that the technology and the means of distribution at the time made it much easier for something to be something

that you could warm up to, right? Like, you were not required to like it immediately or otherwise that you moved all because you pay $17 or how much it costs you to get that tape. I'm going to find out if I like it. Now, with the Mobb Deep, to me, both with the sound and the lyrics, it was so evocative, right? And it was so easy in a lot of ways to picture what they were talking about

to the point where people were shocked to find out not only were these guys like five feet tall, they were also like 18 if you didn't know that part already, right? Because, and this is something that's interesting also. You don't really get that many 18, 19 year olds that get to that space, you know, as they had with that record. But especially after I moved here, somebody told me, I think it was a later Bergeron who told me who was like,

hey man, you're going to have one of these cold, wet, rainy days that you've got to walk through to get to the train no matter what, throw that mob deep on then. And if it didn't make sense to you before, it will now, right? And so now the Queensbrick projects, the largest projects in the United States, it should be noted, are kind of an epicenter of where rap is gone. Ilmatic has come out in 94. Nause is on this record. It's kind of the queen, and I don't want to say the Queen's resurrection because it's not like they just completely went away, but you're right. Q-Tip, who always had, you made this point to me that I didn't realize. Q to have got more street respect than one might have thought,

given what the type of music was that they were doing, even with that music. So now he's coming in and putting these grimy beats on top of it, plus Havik himself is making this thing bang. And then you look up and it's like, oh, okay, like it's as New York in a good way as any record had ever been. Then you go to Staten Island. And what I thought about the Rizzo was,

the Rizzo was also similarly evocative, except I felt like Mob Deep was paying. a picture for a world that clearly existed and you knew what it was. I don't know what the hell is going on with these cats, but I can see it. Yeah, I think about this quite often. I think about the Brooklyn Zoo video. I didn't know what was happening. And I'm from New York.

And not only my from New York, but my entire family, you know, in projects across from Fort Greene to Harlem. Project staircase in hallways, not new to me. But when I saw ODB and Method Man in the staircase in that video, I said, these people are just on something else, man. I do not understand the vision, but I know when I'm seeing something genius and that I should be watching and keep listening. But I always thought ODB, in the strangest way, was a yin and yang sort of person with Tupac. They have very similar spirits to me. They were absolute superstars, irrepressible charisma.

You never knew what they were going to do or who they were going to pop up around. Now, he was a more derelict version. Absolutely. But I just, his spirit, you know, I was in awe of it from the moment I saw him. I've never seen such an obvious superstar who looks nothing like a superstar and the standard measurement of it. Like, I mean, that whole crew, they burn bright from the beginning. New York had this thing where people would talk about the coolest guy in New York rap every year. And it was weird people sometimes.

Like, Grand Puba was absolutely the coolest guy in New York rap for us. Jay-Z was, the Wu had like three of them, man. Like, they had Method Man, who was for us? Ghostface absolutely was. And in his own way, you can argue that ODB was. And that's incredible for one group to have. And we're not even getting to Jizzar, Rizza, or Ray Kwan when we're talking about that, right? Like, that's the coolest group to ever come out in New York, man.

Yeah, Purple Tate, because Purple Tate drops that. summer. And I remember when it came out. And like, I'm in Houston, man. So this is a different world. Like, we were into the woo. But that was the first one for real for me out of the solos. I was like, oh, oh, hey, because you got to think about it. The meth solo record was disappointed. I think it's fair to, you know, there are explanations for why it was, but it was disappointed. The ODB one is still a little bit out there. The purple tape is like, hey, man, there's never been anything like this before in a way that it took me many years to understand because I didn't quite, you know, like 15 years old or 14. I only know, but so much about selling dope, right? And they're talking

about selling dope in a way that is way different than anything I ever could have imagined at that point in my life. And also mixing in the 5% sling. You know, it's almost like a carryover from like the brand newbie in era and then wedding it to this sort of emerging mafioso drug dealer era. So it was like knowledge of self and selling dope at the same time. And it's a hell of a thing to sit up on here and talk about this critically and celebrate selling dope. But you know what? Sometimes rapping about selling dope sounds good. A lot of people living away. Rap was better with crackpot religion, man.

I always say like what, what's because if nothing else, no matter what the religion was, there was a spiritual basis behind it. And I think we've all acknowledged even I as a non-religious wouldn't call myself spiritual person. The music's better when it's got that feeling regardless of where it comes from. And rap was always buoyed by that. that, right? In part because, and you can't really know this until you get to New York, but like, you walk in Harlem north of 125th Street and just start looking at what some of the buildings

are, man, it's all kinds of crackpot religion going on. The doors is still open. Newcast is still in there, getting the knowledge and the mathematics. I don't know why they don't rap no more, but it really added a texture to the music that was coming out from there that hasn't been replaced since this era. Yeah, I mean, my uncle was F-O-I and my uncle was also a drug for us. That marriage always existed in that religion. You said something else that I want to touch on real quick, because I think it's so fascinating. Obviously, people who collect vinyl or purists in their own way. For some reason, I always thought the tape for me was the best form of music because of what you said. The Walkman I had, maybe I just didn't have enough money to have

the real nice ones because it wasn't worth fast-forwarding. So you had to sit with the entire album. And sitting with an entire album is a lot like how you become a real. good intellectual because over time and with patience and understanding, you learn what the good songs are. The CD is the first step away from it and toward this sort of AI automated sound where it's like, I only want to hear this saccharin song. I want to hear the song everybody else likes. You never spend the time. It's almost like people's taste in celebrity women. It's like everyone thinks this person's attractive and they look to airbrush. When you sit with a person for weeks and months in conversation, you learn what makes a person attractive and beautiful.

And you're able to set your own taste, your own standard for beauty, your own standard for what's dope. And when that went away, I think a lot of the culture and the discourse went away, and I hated it. Now, we're talking about this in the context of New York, and you touched on this very quickly, but two-pots being against the world comes out in 1995, which is, in part the calm before the storm, but also in part the storm before the storm, right? Like there are these moments where he has this kind of like lucidity and clarity. And, you know, this is Tupac going into jail. So this is also Tupac giving you dear mama and got to giving you that vibes

while also giving you fuck the world and raging through the record. But it is the record that sets up the rest of the decade, right? The timeline of rap is established or this is a clear inflection point about where things are going. But in a way that none of us could have possibly known. understood when he came out. Yeah. Yeah, you can do a whole podcast on that album. Well, I don't even know where to start with that one.

That's more than listening to Outcast. It was Pock who changed how I received the music. You have to understand, Harlem actually was a hub for Tupac. He hung out there a lot. I saw him at the bodega on 126 in Lexington hanging out front because his, the woman he married and then had the later had the wedding the marriage annulled, I'm sorry, when he was in prison. She lived half a block down from me. So he was there a lot. Ra, Ra, who was on me against the world, is from Harlem. I used to see him

out there, right? By the Jackie Robinson projects. So Harlem was already had love for Pock, and I think a lot of people thought New York didn't like Tupac, which was not true, at least not where I was. But on top of that, he was the first person, for me personally, and I think some people argue Scarface went there too. But for me, it was Pock who did this sort of emotional blues, paranoia, desperation rap that spoke to me for a lot of reasons. One, I was about to drop out of college because I didn't have enough money and I had responsibilities. My cousin had just gone to jail for a cocaine possession. He was my brother.

I grew up with him. And my best friend had gotten shot and killed. And I needed someone who spoke to trauma. It spoke to the way I grew up in the emotions I was running through. And that wasn't in the sort of lyrical. where people are trying to outdo each other with terms of phrase. And I think Poc showed me a new way to rap. It was like, oh, you don't just have to write, you know,

quadruple entendres to get a point across, right? There's a raw, emotional way to do it. And that set me up for the rest of my life in terms of the rap that I like going forward, that you can tap into that. So I just the album was phenomenal. Yeah, emotion as a device. Like, this is the one where he talks about Biggie stole my album for his album. Of course, that is probably exaggerated,

but you can hear and understand in me against the world what he's talking about because it's really thematic and the idea that you were talking about your pain and your depression in your life and all of these things. And this record also makes it interesting is it's a New York-ish record, right?

Like, it's still very much, like, you know, you got shock G beats on there. You got like the Johnny J stuff. But you also got the easy moby joints and he clearly did, like this record was done in large part also in New York City. And of course, this is the setup, right? This one comes out,

while he's in jail and he is stewing and has convinced himself that Biggie Smallers and Puffy had him shot and then everything rages after that. But this also, and I feel like in some ways this puts a cap to a very, a big theme in the early 90s and what you just talked about is the trauma of a crazy murder rate that was the early 90s. Like something I didn't really grasp in the time because my life was fairly charmed. But like, remember the, this is for my homies in the gangstalline song. And like, they were all. a lot of funeral dirges and just songs about people dying at the time because so many people were getting murdered at that point. This is the era of the crime bill that everybody talks about

and all of that stuff. And Pock is kind of the culmination of this post-civil rights movement, like the cats that grew up in that revolution and the disappointment that come after that and then you get to this record and you're just like, oh, okay, this is it all coming together and all that pain as he's headed into jail, which had to be highly disappointing on a number of levels. this is all it right here. Yeah, yeah. And when we talked about branching out too, going out to North Carolina where my friend was murdered,

he was in Winston-Salem. I went to Winston-Salem, and that woke me up, you know, because it's true because of media and the representations in New York, a lot of people growing up thinking, well, this is where the hood is. It's here in Compton, right? This sort of ignorance. And I went to Winston-Salem. The murder rate was the highest it was in the nation at the time.

And I went around the projects there, And I thought, take me back to the projects in New York immediately. This is terrible. Right. And that kind of gave me this feeling that presaged a group like bone thugs too, where it was like, yo, all over this country, people are dealing with the trauma. There's a reason these dirges exist because the entire nation has these pockets where these black people are in the grips of this trauma.

And the music is going to emerge from there speaking to this pain and speaking about this pain. And I think that's what we saw starting to happen in 95 for short. And it's interesting because you fast forward 20 years from that and think about stuff like what was going on when we were in the streets about the police killing us and everything else and there was still no soundtrack to it. Never, never, nobody got around and going in the booth and doing something about it. And it makes you ask yourself why. But coming up next, we got a lot more 1995 wrap coming up on the right time.

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It's really fun to kind of just go through and look at how many albums were just absolute classics. But the other thing is, there are records that, like, Master A. Sitting on Chrome, for example, which was always, he was always this interesting construction because the New York rapper who didn't not sound like he was making New York rap at all, right? It felt like at that time where I was going through the list of hours that came out that year, and it would just be sprinklings of cats.

There was like, oh, yeah, nine, nine lives, the other dude from Staten Island that was making records. It's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about nine, but there would always be these records that might be your joint. Not everybody's joint, but would be your joint. A. Z. Do or Die is a record that comes out that year. But in terms of the big ones, you touched on this right before we went to break, which was the bone thugs. who the year before had come out with Creepin' on and Come Up with Thuggish Rugged's Bone, for the love of money, and they changed the game.

It's kind of hard to dispute, and it was also very difficult to get a handle for a lot of people as to whether or not they liked that. I was in Houston. They could not get enough of a melodic rap group, right? They were the ones. But 95 is when East 1989 Eternal comes out. It was everywhere. Like, I don't really have a great handle on how we talk about DeBonez.

Bone Thugs in the future that has emerged since then. But where I was, it got no bigger than the bull thug. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it was that big in New York, but I also wasn't exclusively in New York at that point. So I was getting it from different places. I would bring music back to people I knew in New York, and they still weren't hearing all of it like that. And Bone Thugs had this. A lot of people I knew in New York called it group home rap.

It was like, this is ironically, ironically, they like the group group. but they were talking about kids who lived in group homes. They were like, that's the kind of kids who listened to us. What I heard with Bone was bizarre and off-putting. And I listened to it enough that I started to love it. But I thought the album was incredibly uneven. Like, I didn't think it was a great album. I thought it was a great breakthrough style.

And the evidence of that has been vindicated, right? Like, that album's been vindicated because everyone rap like Bone Thugs emerging out of it. Everyone was doing doubling triple time flows. everyone was trying to harmonize. I mean, Lord, the whole game is about harmony now, right? Yeah, I think they're a fascinating group, and you look back on them, and they are the weirdest geniuses

that rap has produced, maybe. Like, half of them are these like mulattoes from Cleveland doing barbershop quartet rap. It doesn't seem like it should work whatsoever. And yet here we all these years later, one of the most successful rap groups in the history of the genre. I mean, they were selling records for I guess they were flyover state rappers.

They united everyone. I found out about them from a woman I was kind of messing with from Pittsburgh, you know. So it was very popular in those places where they did not have a firm rap identity. They were speaking in some ways they were group home foster care rappers. They were speaking to the states that were kind of the foster children and hip hop. The irony of it is, 3-6 mafia, you guys, live by your rep, which is called the bone disc, because they're like, hey man, these cats are coming down here, or one of them, it's coming down here during the summers,

and they bit our whole steeds. Now, you fast forward 30 years, and the 3-6 Mafia is now treated as the pioneering group of all the things you talked about, the triple-time rap and all of that stuff. It went back around in 36, which put out a Ganga Records that year, by the way. Like, if you were around Memphis or somewhere where you could get a hand into some Memphis rap,

then you'd get a hold of them. They put out a bunch of records that year, and it was like, oh, these guys say their bones stole from them. I wonder who they are. Now they're the ones that get all the credit for it. My thing with Bowen at the time, especially with that record was, it was like, hey, man, we ain't need 30 tracks or halve-law and that thing was. It just felt like a producer was told that he needed to come up with more beats

that he really could come up with unless you expected some of them to sound the same. Well, you know how people used to talk about Eminem, and they would say there's a thing that black people can't barely relate to is that he's this and his mom. There was a thing like that with Bone, too, where it was like, you know, a thing that the black people Well, I grew up around, couldn't relate to it. We don't want to hear about no Ouija boys, bro.

What's what's going on on this record? Mr. Ouija and all that. This was confusing to me. You're talking to Satan over there? What's happening, man? But I got to tell you one off-color, if I can, one-off color story about 3-6 Mafia. I have an ex-girlfriend who's a novelist,

and she, at one point, when she sold a book, she moved into this giant house in Cincinnati. It was really nice. If you know Cincinnati, there's really no good neighborhoods in Cincinnati. Everything is touching the hood in some way. And so a bunch of skater punks had lived in this, like eight of them lived in this house so they could afford it. And I guess the landlord had painted it over the wall.

And she called me one day and said, you know, you can see this graffiti through the paint. And I said, what does it say? She says, it says, suck a nick a dick or something. The 36 legacy lives. Well, I also like with three six. and Bone being so closely tied, I think an interesting thing about 95 is the building action of Southern Rap, right? So we had the ghetto boys emerge in the late 80s and early 90s in large part because they were scared white people and we love that, right? Obviously, you get my mind's playing tricks on me,

all time, great single. The Scarface solo career has begin to build. But 95, when you go back and look at some of the records that came out out of the South Lake, so Bone is starting to get it going. No Limit is really feeling as much like a California outfit still, but like the second Master P album comes out during that year. But you've also got Goody Mob Soul Food comes out that year. Avon, MJG, on top of the world. And they've already started like with all the outside looking in. They really already started kicking it in.

But that happens. The TRU album that gives us bout about it comes out. So within the South, I told you all those three, six records that came out, ESG for the Cats in Houston. We're building toward what really gets big in like 97 and 98, even if America didn't realize mystical, mind of mystical, which to me is an unequivocal classic record. That one comes out in 1995.

It's all getting there, getting there, getting there to blow up. And if you didn't have an eye on it, you didn't necessarily know what was going on, but it was happening. It's interesting because I think what happened for the South, and that's one of my favorite errors from any region, What happens for the South is everything that was used against it, you know, this idea that you got a bunch of country bammers doing bass records,

you had a total refutation of that. You just got Andre, and I don't want to show a Big Boy at all, because I think Big Bois is incredible. But when I heard Andre, I'm like, this is a different level of creativity that I'm used to anywhere, any region. And then you get Seelow. And you had a taste of Seelow on the first Outcast album, but now you get him setting this album off.

singing and then rapping. You're like, yo, so this guy can sing his ass off and rap his ass off and sound soulful as hell. And the music, the soundscape was incredible. But it was incredible. So everything that had been implied about Southerners being slow, unable to do complicated rapping and having whack music,

it's like, nah. I mean, April and MJG, that was the thing that stood out to me too. Was it different? Hell yeah. But it was dope. That music was dope. The sound was dope. And then MJG will come and hit you with a verse

like he did on Friend Defoe. That blew my mind. That's one of my favorite verses. of all time. Like, this is incredible rapping. And so I just had this feeling because I looked back in New York and I saw it was emerging over there and, you know, the jiggy area is in full effect, right? And it's like, you know, this shit sounds whack. This sounds like Bama music to me now. This sounds like brilliant music. And that was a stark change for me. It was refreshing and jarring. And man, it gave us some of the best music I ever heard in my life. And Space Age Pimpin, the rare,

absolutely perfect rap song. Like, absolutely top to bottom, They made the rap slow jam that made no compromise. Like it is, it's a love song, right? It's a love song coming from different kinds of lovers, but a love song nonetheless. The mystical record, amen, when mystical first drop, because I don't know what this was like for people in other places. So we in Houston, he's in New Orleans.

This is pre no limit mystical. And the joint that dropped was y'all ain't ready yet. And so I had never heard anybody who rap like that, let alone a dude from the South. who rap like that. And he's doing the James Brown up and down and everything else. But it was like, oh, but this dude can rap. And then you got to here I go,

which got a second life much later from the Kings of Comedy of all places. Boon, no, no. Whoa. Whoa. What are we doing here? Right? And so I felt like a big part of this was not just the rise of southern rap,

but the south gaining more familiarity with its own rap, with the rap that was going on all over. because again, the technology is different. The radio game is different. We all kind of had to learn from each other. Like when I talked to my home boy who's from Mississippi, he makes a very interesting point that being from Mississippi, it was the only place where you got a hand on the Houston,

a hand on to Memphis, a hand on New Orleans, and a hand on the Atlanta. Like that place, like if you listen to David Banner's music, you hear what I'm talking about a little bit more. They got all of it. Otherwise, we were still a bit reasonably fragmented in what it was that we got to, piece of it. So now everybody was

hearing what was going on for everybody else. And with Bouty Boutt it, I'm telling you, Bouti Boutt came out and it was the one where you came to school and people were talking about it like a new movie you come out. Like, you heard about it. And all you could do was wait for it to come on the radio. There was nothing that you could do to accelerate the pace of getting it. But it was one where you heard and was like,

oh, nothing was going to be the same for us after this one came out. Yeah, Master P is whack to me, bro. Bada Bada Bada was huge. And it even, I'm not going to say it, like, dominated New York, but people in New York were listening to it, and the beat was undeniable. I've never gotten over Masterpiece's just inability to rap, man. It just never clicked for me because he couldn't rap,

and he was running around looking funny in the videos, doing the high knees to the chest. But, and taking nothing away from that movement in the moment was huge. And he was a guerrilla marketer. And that was, in many ways, there's a through line from him. I mean, from Puffy to him in terms of just like brilliant guerrilla marketing and

incredibly, you know, mediocre lyrics, right? He created the idea that it's all good of his cells, right? Like, he created the idea that you could be the MC just on the basis of not only we selling a lot of records, but I am the mastermind of selling the records. Basically, he flipped it as

yeah, you are rapper, but you would work for me. Yeah. Which hit us all into, ooh, I don't want to be. I don't want to be on the wrong side of the profit equation. Yeah. And he tapped into tribalism. And I actually think that there are some things about tribalism that can be triumphant. That was a region that was totally overlooked.

And suddenly here we are in the middle of spotlight. And there's something good about that. And there are other things and other groups that emerge from out that momentum. And that's great. But something that you said about mystical makes me think of a friend of mine, he divides things into like skills, errors, styles errors, and vibes errors. And there are some emcees who are style emcees. And mystical was a weird one because he's a style and skills MC.

Devin Addo would be someone who's like a style's era MC and a vibes error MC. I'm not saying he's not skilled because he's Stone Cold brilliant to me. But it's like the vibe and the style of it is what hits. And so I think that was what was so interesting about mystical for me. It's like, yo, there are very few people on his level in terms of being a style's emcee. And yet he was also a skilled MC. And you put all that together, like that idea you just put out there and then put that to the Goody Mob, which is like the most unique group that anybody has thrown out here.

Because Gip's my guy. Like, Seelow obviously ascended to stratospheric heights that none of us ever thought that we could see. Gip had this crazy cool thing that was going. And with Kujo, who was just like, do you want to fight? Anytime we could do this if you'd like to. Tmo with the energy. But like, that cell therapy video and just the track, the hook, all of it was like, this was to me that's that was actually a fairly reasonably in specific record to me like it was

southern it was obvious they were southern but the vibes did not speak to me to one place or another I was in the south at that time and I have to say I was totally overwhelmed by the culture and charmed by it I mean this was the era when everybody at least in North Carolina was going dear it is daddy and raising the roof every every other second and there was something that totally fit when that record came out that hit for me because of where I was, where I felt like this is capturing a region in a way that people need to pay attention to. I'm not going to pretend that everyone I took the records back to paid attention to them.

But I mean, I think, again, history has vindicated, in the present vindicated how dope Goudie Mob was, how dope Outcast was, but history has vindicated them as like sort of once in a generation groups, right? I mean, I look back on them, I was playing those records, the Gummy Mop record that we're talking about, And that made me go back to the first Outcast record. And I got chills, man. I mean, it's some of the best music I've ever heard.

I love the era also in that we discuss music in a different way because flattening was the term that you used earlier that I think was important because I think the internet and the need for constant discourse has flattened out a lot of stuff and is not nearly as much variance. At least it doesn't feel like in the public expression of opinions of different records. And so I talked about before, everybody could kind of have their record or whatever. I'm going to run through some records that we have not talked about here, and we don't have to stop on all of them or any of them necessarily,

but just to give people an understanding of the volume, and for those of us who were there, a recollection of what the volume was, I'm going to talk about these records, and sometimes they're just bringing them up because of a single or a video that just cut through and lasted. So we have not talked yet about the roots, do you want more, which is a banger, right?

And nothing had sounded like that because it was a band. We hadn't had a rap band, and they made this jazz rap album, and that's the coolest incarnation of Black Thought that we've ever had. Even if you think there were better rapping versions, coolest incarnation. Two short cocktails came out that year. DJ Quick Safe and Sound comes out that year. The Alcoholics Coast to Coast, E-40 in a major way, comes out in 1995. We already got to the map.

Master A sitting on Chrome, which we got to a little bit, naughty by nature, poverty's paradise. Not a great record, but gave us our annual naughty by nature summer jam would feel me flow. They figured the summer out better than anybody else had. Grand Puba 2,000, which a touch disappointing because Puba, that's a rapping-ass motherfucker that we just forget was that guy. I like it. It's still a single that every time it comes on, people who even haven't, even if they haven't

heard it before, they love it. It hits it party still to this day. That's a great single. But, yeah, disappointing album, but yeah, Puba, you know, we're talking about some people at the tail end of their runs for me. Like two short's album right before that is my favorite two short album. Yeah. Right.

This one is okay, but the one before that, you know. Right. Hold on. Mac 10's record with faux life on it. Mac 10 jumping off the roof. That's right. That's right. With the smile, running off the roof.

He did I jump off the roof. He ran off the roof and ordered McDonald's as he was on the getaway from robbing these people. Ski Lo, I Wish, with gave us an all-time great video that is hilarious to. the most self-deprecating video anybody has ever done. The song's what it is, but it didn't matter because the video was perfect. Well, the Mac 10 running off the roof too is a good segue to, it's like that. Should I jump off the roof? Syke, because I wouldn't be living proof. Group home, one of the worst best albums in history and fair cut proof that what DJ premier value was unique voices. And he says it out loud, right? He doesn't even lie about it. He says it out loud. The

junior mafia record came out that gave us not one, but two classic singles and a classic single that had a classic remix. Big A man, that's the Homeboy Hall of Fame move right there. It's Biggie Smalls being like, hey man, I'm going to write y'all the album so y'all can get some paper. And the remix jumps off of beef with

boot camp clip, which ends up in a beat now for, I believe, the OGC rappers, I think Sturang wonder specifically in D&D studio maybe. So a lot of weird history there. And the most count of B-Line of all. That's okay.

She was old anyway. How do you just keep rapping after you have said this? That third Daz Effects album, Hold it down. And I don't know how well you remember that one, but I loved that one. I remember it well, it had the Mobb Deep remix to it. It had some easy-mo beat beats. It had a whole lot of producers on there.

I like, and it was good for them to bounce back from the second album, which I think was very disappointed people. Yes. would agree with that. WC. in the mass, I mean, excuse me, Koogee Rap, 456, WC, and the Mass, Circle, Curbs serving, AZ, Doer Die, where we always wanted it for AZ. It never quite made it over because, I mean, he jumps off the scene with Life's a Bitch and we're just like, oh, like, he's kind of like the original cannabis, except Doer Doer Die or Die was way better than the Cannabis album. Well, speaking of cannabis, you got Mr. Smith. You do? Oh, yeah, we're

getting there. He dropped this year. KRS one dropped the self-time. I don't care of us one album, which is okay. I think I skipped over to Looney's Drop Operation Stackola, and I got five on it. Yeah, yeah. And immediate, so there was a measure of controversy, though, with that single because the sample was so simple, right? It felt like a bit of a loop.

They were rapping their asses off over it, but there was a purist backlash to that song that clearly stood up 30 years later. Onyx, all we got is us. No little dudes is distal and ballheaded and thugging, but they always brought it, man. The former barbers who used to dance to house music. And I remember when Charlamagne was an interview with Freddra.

And he said, so you used to dance. He said, I used to dance on nigger's foreheads. He stays in character. Last Days was a classic record off there. Most people loved that one. And Channel Live came out that year, and I bring that up because Madism is one of the times that KRS still sounded like BDP KRS. He was so raw on that record.

He was. He was. He was. on Mattism from him is just like that's a record that mattered a lot to me at the time that it was until we were going back I was like oh yeah that one cypress hill tip was a boom because cypress hill is a wild group to look back on the arc of their career because their first album all-time classic and then we looked up and somehow they were white boys favorite rap group yeah and none of us saw that coming ever yeah yeah it was weird for me because they were one of the

first non-black groups that I saw hardcore hood dudes listening to that first album like it was the best album out, right? And then I went off and got a scholarship to prep school, and those kids were listening to the second album, Black Sunday. And I'm like, whoa, this is a real switching fan base here. They turned in Willie Nelson or something real quick. So that was off-putting for me, and I got very confused by Cypersill. But the big, that was it. Dog pound dog food. I think in real time, a lot of people were disappointed by it. And history, again, has vindicated. people love that album. They go back to all of those

that, like, chronic and doggy style era. Right. Albums. And that's the one that, like, the music of Fiscianados I know, they're like, actually the sound of this one is the best. It's the Dre mix, right? It's, you know, it's Daz beats.

Very similar to, like, doggy style notion, right? Like, Daz had some beats, and Dr. Dre was like, hey, let me show you how to produce, huh? Yeah. Let me show you how you actually put all this stuff together. Yeah. A ball and MJG on top of the world.

We got to that one. The Farside Lab Cabin, California is an interesting one because I looked it up. These are the first Dilla singles. The first J. Dilla single, back when he was J.D., but his first single was running. He did four tracks on that record, and three of them were probably of the four best tracks on there. He did bullshit. He did why. He did running and he did drop.

Did he do she said as well? Or did she said remix? Yes. Because, yeah, that's a banger too. And on that Alcoholics album, you get a lot of people's first glimpse at Madlitt. Yes. Who come to dominate, you know, for another 20 years after that, right?

So, yeah, there are a lot of people who are making their debuts. Let's not forget, this is an obscure one for a lot of people. But showbiz and AG drop this album, Goodfellas. The reason I figured up is because they have that one DJ premiere-produced single, the nighttime remix of Next Level. That's right. And that's one that it ends up in eight miles. with Eminem rapping over it,

and it's just been one of those beats that people have been freestyling over now for 30 years. Yeah. And you mentioned before L.L. Cool J. Mr. Smith, don't call him to comeback part two, except that's what L.L. just gave up on the fellas.

Right? Like, and it's funny, because what happened was he did Mama Said knock you out. We were like, welcome back LL. He tried gangster rap with 14 shots to the dome. We was like, hey, chill out. And he was like, you know what? Fuck y'all.

Yeah. I'm rapping for them for the rest of time. And two of the other. Those are near-perfect pop rap songs, man. You know, doing it. And what's the, who do you love? Loungein. Those are incredible.

Hey, lover, he lost me a little. Was that the one where he's tonguing it down with vanilla ice cream? That wasn't working for me. But also, I love that sample. It's just that when they did the Cooley High Paradise remix for Camp Lo, they flipped that Michael Jackson sample better. So I held that, I guess. Yes.

Also, some singles that came out there. year. I pointed out because it's important, not because it's dope, but Gangst's Paradise with Coolio had 1995 in a chokehold. There's, there's, it was, it was everywhere. Um, argument for the greatest rap single of all time is the one more chance, stay with me remix Biggie Smalls, which comes out in 95. Yeah. It's, it's up, it's, it's up there. A example. Yeah. Well, now, for refresh my memory, was how high out in 95? Was that when Yes, because I believe the show soundtrack comes out that year. So, yeah, how high did come out.

That was an all-time single as well. Yes, how high came out. Also, all-time single. The All I Need remix from Meth came out that year. We got through the junior mafia joints, first of the month of both us in Harmony. We got to that. Yeah, like this was,

and this is not the year that we're doing the series on. Right? We were able to kind of run through this year in one episode. The year for the series is coming 1996. So how much of a banger did 96 have to be for you youngsters? It was a thing, man. We got the 96 draft and 96 in rap in the same year. Can I throw out two underrated joints from that year?

Oh, yeah. Mike Geronimo de Natural had like five songs on the air and remixes that I thought were dope. And there's a group out of L.A. called The Nantes that has an album called World. the unlimited, I think. It's a vibes album. You put it on and you smoke and you chill. And I don't think anybody was really listening to it back then, but I still listened to it now. Oh, I would throw one last album that came out in 1995, a name that I'm sure you have not thought of in 30 years. Brother Lynch hung dropped a record. Because there was a horror, there was a horror, a different kind of edge lord rap era that comes around, right? Like, Graved diggers, I think, come in 97 with their version of it. The ghetto boys were,

definitely giving you some of this. But yeah, that was, Brother Lynch-hung was definitely giving you that. I think he's the one who has that viral video of him and a whole bunch of people freestyling. If you ever look it up, one of the weirdest freestyle videos, you'll ever hear that and cool, key, freestalling with the

alcoholics and Exhibit. Some of the funny, he thought Exhibit's name was Everlast. These are two of the funniest rap videos you'll ever see in your life. Look them up. Your brother Lynch was at a time where he became a representative for they own some crazy shit, right? People ain't never heard

a Brother Lynch record once in their lives because that wasn't the point. If somebody made a reference to Brother Lynch, you knew what that meant. Like, Gaines-Nip from Houston was also on that same kick.

Like, yo, man, it was just, I don't know why. Maybe I'm just getting old. But even just throwing out some of these random names just kind of makes me. There's another guy from, I think he's from Houston

who comes out that year as well. And it's a guy, I never really listened too heavy, but people will drop on Scarface will drop his name here. Kay Rhino came out in 95 as well. Count Base D's debut was in 1995. Weird album, he got dropped from his major almost immediately,

but he's a guy who ended up being something on the underground scene going forward. There were so many interesting albums in that year. And that Farside album, that marks two albums that were like comets in hip-hop, because all of a sudden they didn't matter anymore. They broke up, they didn't matter. Fat Lip is smoking crack. Their producer, Jay Swift, is smoking crack. And you never really hear from them again.

But they had this period where these two albums were to the coolest art. albums that ever came out in rap history. Yep, Slim Kid, Trey, on the list of famous people who tried to holl at my girl. Whoa. It seemed to work out okay for me, but on the list, because here was the problem for him.

She just knew him. He was on the real world very briefly. I remember. Dating a woman, I think it was real world Chicago. I can't remember which real world, but he was dating a woman there. And that's how she knew him. and I mean, trying to holl at that white woman

and then trying to holler at her was not, that was not going to work. She did not, she did not think of him is, there comes a time in every man's life. My dear, my dear, my dear, she wasn't, that wasn't when she saw. She told him there's other fish in the sea. Yes, yes, that is it.

But hey, that's my man, Jason England, Google him, check him out. He did a piece on American fiction in 2024. That's one of the best piece of cultural criticism. You're going to find also a more recent one on one battle after another, right? You can check those out at Defector. My brother, I appreciate you joining us for this, man.

Always, man. It was a pleasure. All right, man. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks a much for joining us here on the right time. Remember, the series of 1996 is coming in 2026. Check us out. My man, Ryan Brumley, handling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir.

Remember, follow the right time, subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.