When he rhymed, "Said I was affiliated with all the gangsters and killers?/Fuck you thought I was gonna do-turn my back on my niggas?" it was uncomfortable and honest, climactic and heartfelt.
Still he took three separate tracks to introduce himself-the aforementioned "We Tried to Tell 'Em," "Intro," and "Get Ya Mind Right." The music was cinematic, the narrative autobiographical, turning a sequel of sentiments into blockbuster boasts. Young Jeezy was right next to you, his voice gravelly with a gravitas that minced itself from your speakers give a fuck what you niggas think-I'm here to motivate the thugs to get this bread, nigga." Even without knowing about Jeezy's bonafides, real could recognize real from the outset. Young Jeezy, on the other hand, was right next to you, his voice gravelly with a gravitas that minced itself from your speakers, and-unlike most rappers past and present-Jeezy refused to talk down to his audience he wanted to lift them up: "I'm here for thug motherfucking motivation, nigga. Their music was abrasive but polished, their personalities deadly but removed. How real is that, nigga?" It was an approach that 50 Cent had pioneered and perfected in the years prior, but 50's G-Unit had become superhuman and larger than life. Nigga getting show money off mixtapes, nigga. "Niggas playing my shit like albums, nigga. "230,000 units strong in the motherfuckin' streets, nigga," he stated, claiming his music was what was good in the hoods of Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee and points beyond. Young Jeezy was a rapper most of us had never heard of before he introduced himself a cappella, by letting us know that not only had he predicted that he would change the game-he had already done it. And no release quite captured the moment like Young Jeezy's Trap or Die.įrom the outset, Trap or Die was monumental and momentous, foreign and far-fetched, realistically hype and highly surreal. This brew of advances was perfect for the ascension of DJ Drama's mixtape empire. Manufacturing and printing high-quality CDs could be done easily from any desktop computer. Internet service was affordable and widely accessible but not ubiquitous. Music was still seen as a tangible good, but it was readily portable, speedily distributed and easily copied. In short, it was the sweet spot between what was and what would be. We still listened to most of our music on CDs, but-with greater and greater frequency-those CDs were filled with music we downloaded from the Internet as MP3s. The iTunes store had been around for two years, but it was still three years away from being the biggest music star on the planet. YouTube didn't exist, but it would in a month.
Technologically speaking, our relationship to music was very different. Ten years ago this week, things were very different.
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