The Long Beach lyricist is well known for his extensive understanding of the art and craft of rap and his ability to educate people on it.
Recently, he had to expand on his “EPMD2” comment in a Twitter exchange that started with the question of whether or not Eminem bodied Nas on his own joint. Crook respectfully disagreed:
Not in my opinion. Both did something dope but in two totally different ways.
Some hot heads took it personally, so Crook had to point out that as much as opinions can differ, so can the approach to riding the beat:
Believe it or not some people believe the only way to kill a beat is the way Em did on EPMD. I’ve been told many times that “slow flow” or non syllabic raps cannot kill beats. Those who believe that to be true need to be open minded enough to learn a few things about rapping. No?
This comment provides an excellent point for further discussion, and Crook picked up the conversation in his audio conversation with hip hop fans later:
A lot of people were like, “Man, why didn’t Em have to go so hard on his verse?”. I see his fans, they tweet me all the time, and if he does not do that, then they say, “Oh, he didn’t kill it this time. He should have killed it”. Or he laid back, or he took his foot off the gas pedal. I feel like those people need to be a little more open-minded and be educated on different ways that you can kill a beat.
If they believe that the only way to kill the beat is to aggressively attack it and butcher knife it to death, just be a little more open-minded. That could be your preference, that’s fine. Just be a little more open-minded because there’s a lot of slow flows that have killed beats over time. We talk about Rakim, BIG, King Tee, Ice Cube, Scarface. The list goes on. They’ve all killed beats with slow flows.
Do you have your favourite examples of Eminem handling the slow flow? Share them below!
