Eight Boom-Bap Classics Paul Wall and Termanology Think Every Music Fan Should Own
The post Eight Boom-Bap Classics Paul Wall and Termanology Think Every Music Fan Should Own appeared first on Consequence.
Crate Digging is a recurring feature that takes a deep dive into music history to turn up several albums all music fans should know. In this edition, Paul Wall and Termanology team up to share eight essential boom bap albums.
Paul Wall is best known for emerging from the breakout Houston scene with his verse on Mike Jones’ hit “Still Tippin'” and his own “Sittin’ Sidewayz,” while Termanology cut his teeth on the East Coast after being discovered by DJ Premier. On paper, they couldn’t come from more different backgrounds. With their recently released second collaborative album, Start Finish Repeat, however, the duo has once again demonstrated how they bring out the best in each other over boom bap production from the likes of Statik Selektah, Large Professor, and Diamond D.
As Paul Wall tells Consequence, the similarities between Texas hip-hop and boom bap music made it a natural fit. “A lot of the boom bap music has a lot of horns. And it’s a lot of jazz in a lot of it,” he says. “Now, a lot of the older Texas hip-hop music has a lot of blues with bass guitar. There’s horns as well, but they’re kind of tucked underneath the bass guitar and the more of the blues instruments. It’s more of the blues horns as opposed to the jazz horns.”
“Each one has a little bit of uniqueness, but that’s why [when] you hear Bun B rapping on boom bap beats, he kills it because it’s a crossover. When you hear me rapping on boom bap beats, I’ma kill it,” he continues. “The same way if you hear Termanology or you hear Nas or some of these dope boom bap MCs, you hear them rapping on classic Southern beats, like some type of Organized Noise or Mike Dean, they’re going to kill it as well, just because there’s a crossover in there.”
To get more insight, Consequence asked Paul Wall and Termanology to pick eight of their most essential boom bap albums. Read on to find out how Paul Wall was drawn to New York rappers like Nas and GZA while growing up and learn how Termanology drew influence from Big Pun, Mobb Deep, and Black Thought. As a bonus, Termanology explained how he was drawn to West Coast hip-hop through two classic albums.
Check out Paul Wall and Termanology’s full deep dive into the crate.
Sean Price – Mic Tyson
Paul Wall: Sean Price, he’s in my Top 5 rappers of all time. The production on this, the song architecture is something that really sticks with me. How Sean Price puts songs together is so unique. The way they’re formatted is not like a traditionally formatted song with three verses in a hook. Sometimes it’d be just one super long verse. Sometimes it’d be a short verse.
Sometimes it’d be a whole lot of scratching and a few bars. The bars would be spaced out so that you could really place the emphasis on his lyrics, what he was saying. Sean Price bars, they’re so fearless to me. His fearlessness, he reminds me so much of one of my other Top 5 artists, the Jacka from the Bay Area in California. And unfortunately, both of them passed away. I always wish would have collab’d.
Nas – Illmatic
Paul Wall: Nas is somebody else who flowed poetically, not just like how a rapper would flow with the DJ Premier beats, Large Professor. “The World Is Yours,” “It Ain’t Hard to Tell,” “N.Y. State of Mind,” I love the production on there. Just the way it was orchestrated. The horns and the samples, how they blended was seamless.
Same with Nas. He wouldn’t just give you 16 lines of rhyme. It’d be like a literary masterpiece in his story and coincidentally it would rhyme. I always get lost in his poetry just ’cause it’s so masterful. And coming from Texas, this album right here had a lot of heavy New York slang that I didn’t necessarily understand, but through the context clues and through his poetry, I would get it, you would get it because struggle is a universal language. So Nas’ story on there — perseverance, overcoming struggle — it really resonated with me.
GZA – Liquid Swords
Paul Wall: Growing up, this was my favorite. GZA was always my favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan, just the way he would come in, his swag and style in the videos. The production, the interludes on here, man, the interludes, they always stuck with me. Coming from Texas, I would hear things in there that, I don’t exactly know what he’s saying because the slang don’t translate or maybe his pronunciation of whatever word don’t translate for me to understand what he’s saying.
It was like a cinematic masterpiece for me. This was the first album that I listened to with my eyes closed. I would close my eyes and listen to and I could see everything he’s talking about. Even though I don’t necessarily know, it’s the same when you watch a movie, sometimes you see something and I don’t know what the fuck that is on there, but it makes sense.
Gang Starr – Moment of Truth
Paul Wall: DJ Premier being originally from Houston is something that was always special for us. In Texas, we always felt like we were represented at the highest roundtable of hip-hop. We always felt like we were well represented by having DJ Premier there at the roundtable, just really holding it down and paving the way, leading the way.
Boom bap music, it has a lot of horns. A lot of the boom bap music has a lot of horns. And it’s a lot of jazz in a lot of it. Now, a lot of the older Texas hip-hop music has a lot of blues with like bass guitar. There’s horns as well, but they’re kind of tucked underneath the bass guitar and the more of the blues instruments. It’s more of the blues horns as opposed to the jazz horns. I always felt like DJ Premier did well to blend that, where he brought the blues and the jazz together and incorporated it into his production.
Even though I never met Guru while he was living on this earth, I met him through his music and he lives with me every time I hear it. He’s right there. And I see a picture of Guru the rapper right there every time I hear his music. He lives with me, lives on.
Scarface – The Untouchable
Paul Wall: The last album I’m gonna say on here is a like a wild card maybe. I just spoke on the instrumentation differences between some of the southern classic hip-hop and a lot of the boom bap classic New York hip-hop where there was horns but it was a different type of horns. I know it’s not boom bap, but it’s definitely classic hip-hop. And there’s elements of boom bap in the instrumentation in there. That’s why I had to throw it in there.
It’s the first album by a Texas rapper to go No. 1. And I was the second rapper to go No. 1. So, there’s a huge connection right there. The production on there, Mike Dean, N.O. Joe, and Scarface produced some of the songs on there as well. I always have felt like Scarface is one of the GOAT of the GOATs. You ask any of the Top 5, those five people are gonna have Scarface in their Top 5. He’s somebody who I always felt like was somewhat slighted being from Texas because we were so geographically away from New York or LA, or even Atlanta. Texas and Houston specifically, our slang, our lifestyle, our culture was so unique to where when you talk about it, you don’t understand the slang, the same way I had trouble deciphering the Wu-Tang slang when I was a kid.
Once you understand what people are saying and you decipher the language, then the music is universal. Scarface would always talk about the struggle in a way where it wasn’t like from the perspective of a victim, although you know he went through it. It was from the perspective of a survivor where he survived the struggle and he’s living, reaping the benefits of his hard work and how he managed his struggle. I just always felt like, man, if Scarface was from New York, man, he’d be everybody’s top rapper.
Big Pun – Capital Punishment
Termanology: If we’re just talking lyrics and nothing else, I feel like nobody could ever top this album lyrically. It came out 25 years ago in 1998. And to this day, I have not heard rhymes better than Big Pun when he was in his prime. Shout out to Pun, one of my biggest influences being that he’s the first solo Latin rapper to go Platinum. He’s the first Puerto Rican rapper to be accepted by everybody as a GOAT. I think if he would have kept going, his name would still be talked about more. Unfortunately, he only had two albums. But shout out to Fat Joe for keeping his legacy alive and all that.
Mobb Deep – The Infamous…
Termanology: Rest in Peace to Prodigy. Shout out to Havoc. I got the opportunity to work with both of those guys and them being my favorite duo when I was a kid. Listen to The Infamous… every single day on CD, taking the bus to school, driving around on my bike, listening to the CD over and over and over. 16 tracks, just an incredible album.
Havoc’s beats are so incredible. If you do the knowledge, you find out that he was taught by DJ Premier, he was taught by Marly Marl, he was taught by Large Professor, he was taught by Q-Tip. So, how can his beats not be incredible in their own right with having GOATs like that to mentor you? And then Prodigy just being one of the best rappers ever in the world. Coolest voice, coolest slang.
I also love the fact that they were short. I’m short, so it’s like sometimes you walk in the room and they look at you like the little homie or they look at you like they could maybe punk you or something like that because you’re not that tall. But these guys were like giants. It didn’t matter. That really motivated me, just watching Mobb Deep and feeling like I could do it. I could do what they were doing, especially with my man Easy Money. Easy Money, my partner in rhyme, before I became a solo artist, I was in a group called S.T.R.E.E.T. with my brother, Ea$y Money. So me and Ea$y Money kind of modeled our whole style after Mobb Deep. We really, really wanted to be basically the Boston version of Mobb Deep.
The Roots – Illadelph Halflife
Termanology: Illadelph Halflife was just like something I never heard. I never heard a live band do boom bap. So that sonically just really was so crazy to me. And Black Thought being one of the best lyricists in the world to this day helped me mold my style with the way that I bend words. Like, he would say like “lyricali” instead of “lyrically,” “vitale” instead of “vital.” Now, me writing my rhymes, I might bend words a certain way where I kind of got that influence from Nas, from Eminem, from Kool G Rap. These guys, Big Pun, Black Thought, these guys bent words in a way that nobody’s ever used these words in the English dictionary yet. So that’s kind of where I got my name, Termanology. “Terminology” means to study a word.
Bonus #1: Dr. Dre – The Chronic
Termanology: This is the first album that I memorized as a kid. I remember getting the tape. I had the tape. I used to walk around my hood listening to the tape on cassette and flipping over to the other side. We had like 30 minutes on each side, whatever it was. So, you know, shout out to Dr. Dre. That whole album was masterful. He put that together in a way that helped me for the rest of my life when it comes to sequencing albums: a blueprint of how you do an intro, how you do an outro, how you put your homies on some songs and background vocals and naming stuff cool, stuff with your slang name and all that.
Bonus #2: Snoop Dogg – Doggystyle
Termanology: Doggystyle is my number one overall album and Pun is my favorite lyrically. Snoop is probably my favorite to just listen to, just vibe out. There are too many good songs to name, but “Gin and Juice” is probably my favorite because he just had the coolest beat ever in the music video with him driving down the street on the handlebars and getting his hair braided with the big Afro. Me not being from LA, I didn’t know nothing about LA. I didn’t go to LA until I was a grown-up. I was probably like 21, I had my first show over there or something. But as a kid, man, just seeing LA on TV, it looked so cool and so fun. And it was definitely running the game at that time.
Eight Boom-Bap Classics Paul Wall and Termanology Think Every Music Fan Should Own
Eddie Fu
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