For all my “stuck in the 90s” ninjas
Last month I saw a tweet that I found to be very interesting, and shocking. My respected colleague, and a fellow hip-hop purist, Combat Jack, [attorney, author, king of marketing strategies] claimed that 85% of the record labels mentioned in GZA’s classic 1995 cut “Labels,” are no longer around.
Compelled by this nugget of rap nerdery, I retweeted, highly impressed that someone had dissected his lyrics and analyzed the current status of each label mentioned. Taking into consideration the obvious shift from the physical state of the record business to the digital era in which we now live, 85 percent seems like a pretty logical number, right? I mean, think about how different the rap game has become in the seventeen years since the release of GZA’s Liquid Swords. Ipods have replaced the Walkman, iTunes is your new neighborhood record store. It’s a new – and sometimes cold – world.
