Surell

I dunno, trash Jay Z all you want, sure he sounds like Biggie, but that's like dismissing Action Bronson, a guy I haven't even listened to yet (though i am intrigued because of the following i'm about to say as well as his looking like white Rick Ross), for sounding like Ghostface: It's not easy to sound like such an idiosyncratic musician. Both of those rappers were incredibly complex, and while Biggie was a pioneer many people take influence from, you don't see a lot of people able to completely take on his entire aesthetic. To be able to tackle such a breadth of greatness, and still maintain individuality at the end of the day (who else sounds like Jay really?), takes dedication and talent. Not to say Nas doesn't beat him in the lyrical content department. Jay is all about pizazz, skill, being slick, fly, utilizing sharp wordplay in sometimes odd, pretty much always technically sound rhyme schemes/flow (a classic styled one, of course); whereas Nas was the boom-bap rapper, utilizing minimal, sometimes drollish beats (to me- I'm not fan of Premier's work on Illmatic, regretfully) to get the actual substance of his message across, which is alway dazzling. He's a great storyteller, and one of the few purist's rappers I can really call an interesting rapper, though I do need to listen to him more/listen to more of him.

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