Yeah, I reckon I'm just gonna post the clip of Mary J. Blige and Grand Puba doing What's The 411 live on Yo! MTV Raps back in 1992 up on here once a year since it was only THE BESTEST YO! SPOT EVER!!!!!!!!! :
This ticks every box for a live tv performance - it enhances the song (the playfulness of the rendition with all the ad-libbing), it has sexiness (Mary), swag (Puba), gear (Puba's POLO Alpine rugby; Mary in Cross Colors from head-to-thigh), a couple of nerdout moments (Stud Dougie in the flesh; a young Puffy chillin' at the back on the left), and it includes a great semi-dance moment by one of the performers (Puba at 1:20 - 1:22), but what really elevates this above every other great YO! performance is that Mary manages to pull off a nose-stud without looking like a Riot Grrrl and Puba somehow manages to wear jean-shorts without succumbing to ECW wrestler syndrome.
Not quite as good as this, but still very much appreciated in the thank-fuck-MTV-aren't-having-their-shit-promptly-removed-anymore stakes is Puba's YO! performance of 360° (What Goes Around); a good companion to not only the What's the 411 clip but also the Puba doing 360° (What Goes Around) on Living Color video The Meaning Of Dope (R.I.P?) posted :
The real reason to be excited about MTV not having their content deleted from Youtube these days, though, is that the Roc-A-Fella hosted freestyle battle from 2003 with Blind Fury is finally back up on there :
"You need to do what LaLa did, homie, and get yourself a Clue" is still a top 5 punchline of the noughties (or, at least, the best Akinyele line which Ak' didn't actually spit), and although Jay-Z is often credited with shutting Joe Budden's career down when he rhymed over Pump It Up on his Reebok mixtape that time, it's the gawd with the third eye vision who claimed Budden's scalp when he freestyled over Focus in the last battle against Swann AKA a genetic hybrid of Questlove, Prop Joe from The Wire & Robert Smith from The Cure's wardrobe. "Salutations..."
6 comments:
Cot damn Mary was bad as fuck back then.
A stallion for sure.
ha cheers, i usually avoid battles like the plague but thank god i didnt this time
man i miss meaning of dope. that, press rewind and thimk had me wishin i was born ten years earlier. the abundance of aforementioned cross colours makes me reconsider tho, theres a good chance ida spent my formative years runnin around lookin like pj and duncan or whatever
Puba's swag was on a hunnid thousand trillion.
Utter, utter class post from start to finish. God I miss Yo Raps - T Money was quality.
Mary J Blige is one of the best things ever invented.
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