After all, when you are putting on a hip-hop event, you can expect this sort of thing — big entourages telling security about the connections they have as they try to get into the show.
I called MSG in the morning and tried to work my polite and boyish charm while talking to the person on the other end of the line.
Whether it was Juelz dressed in Americana like a Harlem Bruce Springsteen or the infamous photo of Cam in a pink fur coat talking on his flip phone, Dipset’s fashion choices sit right alongside their music as reasons why they remain so beloved.
In 1999, Puffy released them from Bad Boy, and the trio joined the audaciously disrespectful Ruff Ryders Records where, along with the late DMX, they’d put out a string of bona fide classics.
While Styles and Sheek were pumping up the crowd, Jada looked like he was a part of their security detail, scanning the surroundings for threats.
“I don’t live in Colorado, I don’t live in Miami,” Jada said with ferocity, before going into his classic verse on the Ja Rule cut “New York.” If there was any doubt about who were the better rappers, the Lox put that all to rest last night.
Over the course of the evening, Jadakiss would make quick work of Dipset and prove why he is one of the best New York rappers of all time, dead or alive.
When you’ve had the career that he’s had, you can afford to do that, but in a Verzuz, it played as not being ready for battle.
“We Gonna Make It,” which makes a listener think he can do pull-ups on an NYC street pole, was the final blow.
It wasn’t a nostalgic event: It was an event to show the tremendous importance that hip-hop still holds, the way it brings people together, and why it is a significant part of Black American life.