Legendary producer Pete Rock was 10 years old when The Sugarhill Gang released “Rapper’s Delight,” Hip Hop’s first Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hit.
As one-half of Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, he rose to prominence in the 1990s with songs such as “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” and “Straighten It Out” from the duo’s debut album, Mecca and the Soul Brother. Needless to say, Rock has watched Hip Hop evolve in a myriad of ways over the years, and there’s a sense he’s not exactly impressed with what’s being pumped out to the masses in 2021.
On Saturday (October 9), Rock shared a black-and-white throwback photo of himself with C.L. Smooth to his Instagram account and condemned all the violence in some mainstream rap, while explaining why he thinks rap looks like it does today.
“Was just some clueless youngins here,” he wrote in the caption. “Wish i woulda knew then what i know now. A lot woulda been different but its all good. Being a threat in this business was a real thing for me. Unfortunately the less talented had some tricks up their sleeves to remove us from our message to the people to usher in negativity & fuckery.
“Our talent was the real deal which no part of what we had together talent wise could be fucked with. Remove the threat so we can change the direction of hip hop.”
Pete Rock continued, “Greed with a bunch of other shenanigans has turned real into fake, and fake into more fake smh. Talkin violence in your raps not uplifting our people. Gonna be time when dem street stories gonna get less attention and will have to show what else can you talk about other than thuggin. the real ones this dont apply to you. just the ones on front street rappin.”
He ended his diatribe by imploring people to conserve Hip Hop culture with, “Hip Hop is forever and forever is hip hop. Preserve The Culture!!!!!! With some of us its all we got.”
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Following Mecca and the Soul Brother, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth dropped one more album in 1994 called The Main Ingredient but ultimately broke up. Since then, Rock has released a plethora of solo albums and produced numerous Hip Hop classics such as Nas’ “The World Is Yours” from Illmatic and Common’s Ice Cube diss track, “The Bitch In Yoo.”
Most recently, Rock released PeteStrumentals 3, the third installment in his ongoing instrumental series and first sample-free endeavor.
In a December 2020 interview with HipHopDX, Rock looked back on his expansive career and touched on a plethora of topics, including the controversy over the Biggie song “Juicy,” how a freak accident on a Heavy D tour led to “T.R.O.Y.” and finding out JAY-Z rapped over one of his beats from Young Guru.
Thank you Pete Rock.
I grew up in that era but I didnt listen to these dudes. Got nothing against them, and I get what they are trying to say. But coming from the South, I can tell you as a teen I was turned off by East Coast hip hop. I thought anything “lyrical” was kind of nerdy and anything with no cusswords was corny. It wasnt until years later that I learned to appreciate East coast hip hop from that era. I imagine kids today feel similar about lyrical rappers.
Dependent on your lexile level the vocabulary used in east coast rap could’ve been the actual turn off as the overall messaging was much of the same of the south but a bit more eloquent and detailed in the lyrical content and approach. You mentioned as you got older… I would say you also got wiser… in that growth as did your vocabulary and depth of knowledge so maybe that contributed to you no longer seeing lyrical rap as corny/nerdy?
Times were changing also. It wasn’t the vocabulary that turned people off from east coast rap, it was the sound. Boom bap and old James Brown samples got played out. The west coast brought the p-funk and their lyrics were a better reflection of what was occurring in poor neighborhoods. East coast rap at the time was more about partying and being fly. Reganomics had deflated any feeling of hope and consciousness and the feeling of self preservation became the mentality of the people who were supporting the hip-hop culture.
In between his weirdo vax posts y’all ignore.
Damn. Just saw some of the posts. He’s really one of them. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
He’s really one of who? Vague comments tend to come from people who don’t really know the subject upon which they speak. Elaborate
If encouraging people to employ critical thinking skills is “weirdo” then I’m weirdo af and here for all that smoke