Were only 23 by the time they gave us Southernplayalistic, ATLIENS, and Aquemini. I'll never be able to wrap my mind around that. https://twitter.com/stevozone4_/status/1285719612135477248

It's mindblowing how young so many rap legends of the 80s/90s were when they first took off. Rakim was 20 when Paid In Full dropped. Snoop was 20 when he had his coming out party on The Chronic. Nas was 20 when his debut dropped. BIG was 21 for his. LL was 17 for his

Cube was 17 on Straight Outta Compton. Tribe dropped their debut at 20. Ball & G were 20 for theirs. Bun and Pimp were 19 for theirs. Pac died 3 months into his 25th year. 99% of the 48,792 song he gave us were done by the time he was 24. Pete Rock was 21 when he produced TROY

Scarface was 20 when Mind's Playing Tricks On Me took off.

Twenty.

Prodigy told us he was only 19 but his mind was old on one of the greatest raps songs of all time.

But to circle back to LL. Rock The Bells is one of the most fascinating rap songs ever for me. Go back and listen and keep in mind that this is a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD talking this heavy. And he's talking his shit over go-go drums that Rubin lifted from DC's own Troublefunk

And on a note that has nothing to do w/this but everything to do w/this. Im of the generation where DC folks would go crazyyy for go-go. Made quite a few homies from the DC urrea in college. And lots of em were on some "yeah of course we fuck with rap.But we FUCK WITH go-go" shit

And that shit blew my mind -in the best way- that there were black dudes my age in this country who put rap on the backburner for a genre of music that was distinctively unique to only their city. Dudes would talk about BYB 7-23-98 like it was The Chronic.