B-art said:
Really, it's quite interesting to count the number of rhyming syllables in a random Pac verse, you'll see that it's way bigger than that in the verse of other rappers who aren't lyricists. (50 cent or whoever)
Even though I hate 50 Cent, that line you just said isn't necessarily true. He's actually been stepping up his game, evident on his verse on Eminem's "Never Enough" and some of his more recent guest appearances, such as some of his lyrics off the new Mobb Deep album. But don't worry, I still don't give a rat's ass about 50.
B-art said:
Just to prove that Pac indeed made a conscious decision to focus less on the lyrical bravado and more on his content: Check his first verse (and his second if you feel like it,lol) from 'First To Bomb'. Someone mentioned a couple of lines from it earlier in the thread
If you go to the first page of this thread, specifically to post #11, you will see that it is ME who was the first to quote lyrics from "First 2 Bomb" and IRONICALLY I brought up the same song arguing the same thing you are arguing in this thread from July 2005, COINCIDENTALLY also post #11:
http://www.streethop.com/forum/thread142141.html
B-art said:
Anyway, don't tell me this isn't lyrical, this is insanely lyrical for a rapper who is not a pure lyricist but who's biggest strength is his emotion. I haven't even really highlighted the alliteration or the abundant assonance (which Pac uses a lot in his lyrics and which, without people noticing most of the time, makes a verse sound so much better: it adds to the flow or something, I don't know) Ironically, of course, this verse disses Biggie, who we are discussing as well. I didn't do this on purpose to discredit him but this verse just happens to be one of Pac's most lyrical.
There's no need to defend your opinion about this song. This is one of my favorite Pac songs that I have effortlessly committed to memory since I first heard it in 2002. For your purposes, I have re-typed up the lyrics as accurately as I recall through listening to it on an almost daily basis:
Tell me, baby, what's your frequency?
You see I'm making proposals full of verbal indecencies when you're meeting me
Flashlight, I'm buzzed, one right like guns
Three strikes you got 'cause last night's for thugs
Holding my position, my competition is never ready
Rip like a Machete, my alias: Makaveli
So what they tell me through the grapevine?
Niggas ain't trying to see me paid, they'd rather take mine, retaliation takes time
Create rhymes that's so ferocious that the bassline
Run from my vocals everytime a nigga say his rhymes
Spending and busting, you thought tough but you wasn't
Prepared, niggas is scared, I'm eternally thugging
Like kamikazes on a suicide mission, I'm spitting
Multiple gunshots, burning, turning rappers to victims
I kick 'em all day, and my motto: make Biggie Smalls pay
I make it rough enough? You and Puffy craw away
First to bomb, quick to unload
Expose my foes for being bitches, keeping niggas suspicious
Two Glocks is full of ammo, my army fatigues
Ready for battle, lyrical commando, let's get it on
Tell me, nigga, how much you can handle?
Banging on wax, I turn this track into a Roman Candle - BOOM!
My intentions, specifically, thugged-out, no sympathy
Pictures of closed caskets soon as bastards get with me
I'm first to bomb, first is the calm, then the panic
Soon as my niggas break, we earthquake the whole planet
Adversaries can't understand it
The way my niggas strategize, don't nobody die unless we planned it
Life-long committed, I write songs and spit it
No matter how hard motherfuckers try, they can't get it
It's Death Row, West Side, Outlawz till we die
Thug Life motherfuckers on the rise, and we first to bomb
This is all pretty accurate, except for maybe two lines, but I think the "one right like guns" is correct since it might be a simile. (When a handgun fires and unloads the used shell, it gets tossed to the right, so perhaps that is what the line is referring to.)