New Video: Lifestyle (Tom Francis feat. Snoop)

Singer/rapper, Tom Francis got the legendary Snoop Dogg on this one. The name of the song is Lifestyle. The beat feels like something Dre made. It has that old school west coast vibe to it. It is always good to hear Snoop on some new artists music.

Snoop Lion Says Biggie and Tupac's Deaths Opened Lanes For A Lot Of Rappers

I think I am getting used to calling him Snoop Lion right now. Anyway, Snoop, who has been around since the early 90s, spoke on how the death of both Biggie and Tupac opened the lanes for so many rappers that were in the background around the time of their death. Read his words to catch his drift-







“You know what, I had that discussion two or three times and I always come to the conclusion that a lot of artists wouldn’t be as big as they are if they were here. And that was with no disrespect. It’s just certain lanes opened up for artists when they were gone…On the bar a lot of rappers wouldn’t be where they are. I can’t say they names because I love ‘em all, but certain rappers that had big years, big albums. When he was gone, that wouldn’t have been there. That would have been his lane and that would have been his lane. And you wasn’t stepping on Biggie or Tupac lane.”








I am certain one of the people he is speaking about is Jay-Z. I consider Jay a rap hustler and all, and one of the most successful rappers of all time, but back then he was really in Biggie's shadow. I am not saying Jay wasn't/isn't skilled, but Jay-Z has always had that mentality of riding the wave of the hottest artist out, but without losing himself. And back in the mid 90s, he was riding that Biggie wave hard. And once Biggie passed in 97, he was the next rapper with that mass/commercial appeal. And being a rapper associated with Big, the world just poured their love on him. As I said, I am, in no way saying Jay ain't skilled on the mic, but he benefited greatly from the passing of Biggie. Look at it, when did Jay blow up? He dropped his first album in 96, it was mildly successful. The second one was in 97, and was highly criticized for sounding too commercial. Big died the same year, but Biggie's second album, "Life After Death" dropped the same year. And then, in 98, there was a big void, especially for a rapper who was lyrical, but could also make commercial radio friendly songs. And, yup! Jay was the right man for the job.

Snoop Dogg Disses Kim Kardashian

Yeah! Snoop Just dissed Kim Kardashian, but not with a record, during an interview. I think the Kardashians are really getting it from all corners at this point. I mean, the public is tired of the show and want it off the air, now Snoop is going at kim. Read what Snoop said about Kim and and the way she did Kris Humphries below-

"Advice for Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian," Snoop asked in the video. "The first advice is, you dumb a** n*gga, you shouldn't have tried to wife the b*tch, man. She's not that type of a h*e. She gets around, man. ... Ray J's the only n*gga that only bounced back from the b*tch, man. She's cold-blooded. I'm pretty sure she'll have a book in a month talking about all the n*ggas she got and how she played them. So my advice is, you can't make a h*e a housewife, man. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Let her do what she was born to do. H*e. Yeah. H*e. Punk b*tch." (GGN)




WOA! I think those are some pretty harsh words from snoop. Maybe if it was the 90s, i wont be suprised to be hearing this from him, but i thought he had gone completely hollywood. When you have a show on the same network that airs the Kardashian show, i don't think comments like this are good for business. I know Snoop had that Fatherhood show on "E!" last year, but i don't think he is on anymore. But, i still think snoop is too corporate now to be calling another celebrity a hoe on camera.




Personally, i think the whole Kardashian family are taking the whole thing with fame too seriously. Drama and controversy sells, and they are a part of life, but when you bank on that to make a living, it starts bothering people if you really value the essence of living in the first place. I am just saying though...not to knock their hustle. I was just watching the re-run of the show a couple of hours ago, and that Kris Humphries dude had me laughing my butt off. I think he is the best thing that happened to the show. And i don't think he ruled of the possibilities off the present eventuality with him and Kim.

Tupac and Nas Beef: Retro News

Back in 1996, Tupac’s first posthumous album was dropped after his death, and there was a track on there that he dissed a lot of east coast rappers, Nas inclusive. Before then, people only knew Tupac for dissing Biggie and the whole Bad Boy, as a click and as a goddamn record label- just as he said in his Hit Em Up song. So, people started wondering what was up with the thing with Nas. But, dead men don't talk, so there was a mystery surrounding the issue.

 Back then, Internet wasn't like it is now, so information didn't disseminate well. And the real truth behind the whole mistaken feud was never known. It was a couple of years later, when Death Row Records had made a lot of money from the whole controversy that surrounded that song, that people started talking. And if Nas wasn't the recluse he is, he would have cleared things himself, but he really kept silent about the issue. He definitely didn't diss Tupac back, cos Pac was already dead; and he didn't come forward to clear the issue either.

The real truth…let me just say, I now know why he didn't reply that diss…he didn't reply because it wasn't really what it seemed to be. What really happened was that Tupac heard one of Nas’s song off the “It Was Written Album” (1996), titled The Message, where Nas was referring to a fake thug that get no love, and Pac thought Nas was talking to him. As I said, it was a misunderstanding. You can read what Tupac said about the issue below-

“I swear to God. I see this nigga Nas at the House of Blues, I was deep with my niggas, I know he didn’t have no guns, we could have rushed him right there. I was like ‘what’s up yo? This east coast west coast thing is not about you, don’t get caught up in it. I swear to God, we love you, we got love for you”…This nigga went back home and started talking that fake thug shit in his album…and that’s wronggg…cos you should have said that to me when I was right there…that means you’re a punk…cos I wont hug a nigga I don’t love.”

But, weeks before Pac’s death, if not days, he was in New York for the MTV Awards and he saw Nas and walked up to approach him. Now, this is the part a lot of people don’t get to hear, because the people that were there that day with Pac (Snoop, Suge Knight…) didn’t talk about It till after several years. Okay, I want you to read what Snoop said about the whole issue. He was being interviewed about the whole Biggie and Tupac beef by some radio personalities, and he was telling them how he wasn’t really into it because he was friends with Biggie even before Tupac got signed to Death Row Records in 1995. Anyway, he got tired of telling that story, and he asked them if they wanted to hear another story…

“…there was a story even more gangsta than that…Him(Tupac) and Nas. It was so gangsta. This was prequel to me meeting Angie Martinez for an interview…MTV had the Award show at Central Park, so Tupac and all of us from Death Row, we mobbing…we see Nas…He (Tupac) walked  up to nas…nas had about a hundred goons with him that I see, that I know that they killers, but pac aint tripping and he just don’t care, so he walk up to nas…nas reached out to shake pac hand, and nas say ‘I got love for you pac’, and pac said, ‘well nigga, if you got love for me, I got a song coming out where I dissed you, Jay-Z, Biggie…’ He named like about 40 niggaz…he named a bunch of niggas, and he told nas, ‘if you got love for me, you aint gon say nothing after this record come out.' Nas shook the nigga hand and looked over his shoulder…he had about a hundred niggaz with him, all them niggaz had their hands on their shit (guns). He did them niggaz like this…like he winked his eye…like don’t do it. And he shook pac hand and he said I love you pac, and they separated. And then pac looked at me (on the way back) ‘I told you, nigga, we got these niggazs…we got this niggas punked out here’. But to me, nas was gangsta, cos he didn’t push the light…He could have pushed the green button, and we’d have been done, cos we didn’t have no artillery in New York and they did.”

Okay, that is Snoop shedding more light on the whole issue, but that still don’t explain some things, like why Nas kept quiet after Makaveli dropped, but Suge Knight cleared that up in an interview. Read what he said about that day…the same day Snoop narrated.

“Pac wouldn’t attack anybody that was real. Like I say, em…Pac was a man with a lot of respect. He had did the Makaveli album…he talked about nas sort of bad…so at the MTV Awards, he met nas, he went to him like “You got a problem with me?”…that was pac. Nas was like ‘wow! I got no problem. We can be cool.’ They had a conversation…they shook and hugged. And they said if we can do music together in the future, we can make a difference. So, on our way back home, pac said ‘when we get to the studio, all the negative stuff I said about nas, I’ma take him out and put someone else in there that deserve that. But I’m not going to say anything negative about nas, cos I broke bread with him, and I gave him my word cos we were friends.’ But, we can’t change things now because pac aint here.”

As I said earlier, Pac died a few days after this incidence, and didn't get a chance to make that change. Suge Knight had two options; he could either completely omit the entire track from the album, or he could live it as it was cos, he wouldn't know how Pac would have wanted to effect the changes; I guess he chose the latter option.

GAME BACK WITH DR DRE.

I remember telling people that DR DRE was planing to use GAME, EMINEM, and 50 CENT as guest artist on his album, DETOX. That is the strategy(using a hot protege) dre uses on all his albums; on the first one, he had snoop all over the place; on chronic 2001, he had snoop again, he had eminem, he had exibit, he had mel man...

I was telling peeps back then that detox would not drop untill game gets on it. Game is from the west, the hottest west coast cat of back then, when dre was really trying to get detox out. Game is still the hottest act from the west, and incidentally, is also from COMPTON, the city dre is from. I just new it was only a matter of time before dre got back with game. Now that the 50 cent beef is almost dead, and 50 is less relevant than he was back in 2005, dre has gotten back with game.

SNOOP, GAME, AND DR DRE are presently in the studio working on DETOX. The picture, which snoop and game put on twitter is an evidence. I wonder what 50 has to say about this. Dre was quiet all that while because he didn't want to take sides, but every body knows who the doc really respects on the mic. Hate him or love him, game is a beast on the mic. And with dre's guidiance, it is another story.



BELOW IS GAME'S TWEET ON THE ISSUE.

"CAN U SAY "DETOX" ??? IN THE STUDIO WIT DRE & SNOOP. WE BOUT 2 MAKE ALOT OF PEOPLE MAD. RIDE WIT US OR GET RAN OVER ! AFTERMATH OR DIE !"

SNOOP ALSO TWITTED ABOUT IT:

"What's more gangsta than dis?," he wrote. "N the studio right now!!! west coast takeover. this is how the west was one!!!"

WHY SHOULD RAPPERS USE GHOST WRITTERS?

I ask that question again, WHY SHOULD RAPPERS USE GHOST WRITERS? If rapping is an art of music that have to do with you expressing yourself, then why do you need somone else to help you write how you feel. This defeats the whole purpose of being a rapper. You might as well be an r&b artist who's career depends on her/his voice and the way he/she can use it.
It is just so absurd and alarming to hear about the rate at which rappers use ghosst writer, and own up to the fact that they do use ghost writers. KANYE WEST has CONSEQUECE and RHYMEFEST writing for him, a fact he did not deny. How sure are we that he even writes any of his songs. No wonder i heard a song done by consequence recently and i thought it was kanye rapping. First i thought consequence was trying to sound like kanye, then i thought deeper, and i came up with the conclusion that this is probably consequence's original style. And because he has been writing for kanye so long, we are used to hearing kanye sound like that. Who knows how many other ghost writers he might have.
I just don't think that is proper, becasue when i think of a rapper, i think of someone that can write rhymes right there on the spot on any topic if he is caught off-guard and asked to flow. Is the rapper then going to start looking for his ghost writer. Or am i the one getting it wrong? Is this the new form that rap is taking?
I heard LIL WAYNE also uses a couple of ghost writers. The thing is, these ghost writers just have to study the rapper's rhyme pattern, and the subject matter you would normally talk about, and then they use their gift to create differenet other verses for the artist. That means someone like wayne could have about 10 different ghost writers, so anytime he is called upon to do a feature on another person's song, the ghost writer just gets the theme of the song, and have the verse written for wayne. I think that is cheating.

I recently heard ludacris rhyme a song that he wrote for dr dre's upcoming album, detox, and it made me feel sick to the stomach. The respect i had for dr dre is slowly flying out of the window. That means all he does is make beats, and then different writers write the verses and the hooks of the songs. He just raps out what they have already prepared for him, that is really cheasy.
Then SNOOP DOGG admitted that he used ghost writers through-out his last album, ego-tripping. How can a legendary rapper like snoop beusing ghost writers. What example is he trying to set for the up and coming rappers?



I just feel using ghost writers defeats the purpose of calling them rappers. I would stop listenign to rap the day i hear that someone like nas has ghost writers. He is just to unique with his rhyme scheme to have a ghost writer.