Full disclosure: I have nothing against Nature, the Queensbridge MC most people know through his associations/work with Nas. That being said, I was realllllly taken aback during a taxi ride earlier this year when the driver and I got to talking about hip-hop. Why? Because dude had to be the biggest Nature fan in the world.
Before I get to that, let me explain how we even got there. Typically, I get into pretty lengthy and/or in-depth convos with cab drivers, mostly because I’ve been drinkin’. But that night, I was on the way to drink and just felt like talkin’ to dude. And at the outset, he’s asking me about my favorite rock bands, even after I mentioned that I used to be a rap blogger and blahblahblah.
After rattling off a few names and talking about Radiohead for, like, two minutes, we moved on to hip-hop and his apparent obsession with Nature. He told me I just had to hear some mixtape on DatPiff—”wait, real people know about DatPiff?!” I thought—and then told me how he thought Nature was going to be next after Nas blew up. We also talked about AZ a lil’, but it quickly went right back to Nature.
It turns out the driver is from Philly, which he explained made him more of an “East Coast” (read: New York area) hip-hop fan. That means he’s really into Jadakiss and whatnot, which I thought was fine, but it also means he felt the need to take a dump on Southern hip-hop. Yeah, I felt like I was in some terrible rap forum listening to an elitist New York rap head talk about how NYC has the best (only?!) rappers and so on.
We then got to talkin’ about more current rappers. Bad move. He’s a huge J. Cole fan because—wait for it…—he thinks J. Cole raps like he’s from Queensbridge. Holding in the shame I felt for him/agreeing with him because he was friggin’ driving me somewhere, I tried to bring up other names he might know. Like Kendrick Lamar, for example. Nah, he’s not a Kendrick fan. Why? Because Kendrick raps in weird voices too often.
By the time I got out of the cab, I was loving the feeling of fresh air and pretending to take a note on my phone that I’d check out the new Nature tape. It’s a shame that I did that, because I’d actually like to give it a listen. Sorry, cabbie.
Rap Convos is a new feature at Potholes in which we write about conversations with random people about hip-hop.
Right, that’s why I wrote about this guy, because I was pretty surprised to meet such a huge Nature fan.
Aight, I feel you with this shit. Just don’t let it get out of control. This doesn’t need to turn into a “look who disagreedwith/validated me” series. No one gives a shit what a random nobody (esp if they’re identified as being nobodys) think unless there’s something poignant and new there; much like music. That said, if you can keep this series up without fucking the baby, I’m all for it.