Can't Knock The Hustle

When Reasonable Doubt dropped, it dropped to kind of almost a crossroads in hip-hop.

The whole underground mainstream thing was really kind of coming to a head.

But that summer of 96, Let's say you've got, you know, Nas' second album drops, same day, Daylarz, States' high drop, which is talking about commercial hip hop.

The Roots had the Clone single out, which again, you know, was very much based in talking about commercial hip hop and their album.

Obviously, there was anticipation for that, which dropped in the autumn.

And the underground movement was bubbling as well.

So that same summer, Company Flow had put out their Fun Crusher EP.

Before Raucous, then they put it out independently.

There was other tracks coming out like Lace the Booms, Cut That Weak Shit, Sick Lyrical Damager, Scary Thoughts.

All these underground independent records that you didn't know who these dudes were.

You'd...

You'd never heard of them.

So at the same time as that was happening, here comes Jay-Z.

And I think people who didn't necessarily take the time to listen to Reasonable Doubt in its entirety thought they already knew what he was delivering on that record.

And it definitely wasn't the case.

Club DJ and promoter Snips was impressed with the cohesion in sound among the various producers on Reasonable Doubt.

He also credits Jay-Z's artistic growth to three key individuals in particular.

I don't know how much they communicated through the making of the album or how involved there was, you know, how involved the A&R process was to make sure that there was that.

But it just, everything worked, man.

Even with Clubio records like Ain't No War, Can't Knock The Hustle, those were the records that made me skeptical to even think, am I going to enjoy the album? But now when you listen back to it, it's like, all right, they were slightly more up-tempo records or club-friendly records, but they still held the same sound as the rest of the record.

They still allowed it to sound like a coherent listen.

But I think what doesn't get enough credit is the artist's development of who he was, aside from how he was packaged and sold to the world.

If we have that discussion, we need to talk about Clark Kent.

We need to talk about Kane and Jazz.

I think they are probably the most important figures in PJ's ears.