Although it might sound loopy now—contemplating their personalities, and 5 years after Dice nearly ended N.W.A. on “No Vaseline”—Frequent annihilated Dice together with his response. The Pete Rock-produced “The Bitch In Yoo,” issued because the A-side of a cut up single with No I.D. in 1996, is considered one of rap’s most brutal diss tracks. The primary verse alone is a radical dismantling of Dice’s profession, with Frequent claiming his West Coast cred is ridiculous (hiring the Lengthy Island-based Bomb Squad for his debut), calling out his blatant careerism (“Went from gangsta to Islam to the dick of Das EFX”), and insinuating he’s a foul actor (with sly references to Greater Studying and Friday).
It took the deaths of 2Pac and the Infamous B.I.G., and the intervention of Louis Farrakhan, to squash the meat. On the Hip-Hop Summit in Chicago in April of 1997, Farrakhan addressed the assembled rappers, together with Dice, Frequent, Snoop Dogg, and the Dogg Pound: “All this turf you preventing for—East Coast, West Coast—who owns it? Not you.” Farrakhan is acknowledged for ending the feud, however the deeper reality is that each males had modified. For Dice, he’d efficiently made a transition to appearing and was steadily assuming a job as a household man. Frequent had additionally just lately turn into a father, and he was reworked by the Million Man March, which he attended. As he writes in One Day It’ll All Make Sense, the occasion impressed him to be comfy with expressing love and solidarity.
Up to now, Resurrection has offered fewer than 250,000 copies, however it earned Frequent Sense respect. It additionally attracted extra nationwide consideration, together with from a California-based reggae band with the identical title that sued the rapper over the rights. Frequent dropped the “Sense” earlier than the 1997 follow-up LP, One Day It’ll All Make Sense, which concurrently refined and expanded on the strategy he and No I.D. took on Resurrection.
Shortly afterwards, he’ll go away Chicago and transfer to New York Metropolis. He’ll go and be a part of the Soulquarians collective, garnering him bigger audiences and additional accolades; then he’ll drop an bold, experimental, psych-informed album that may bomb. He’ll date singers and athletes and film stars; then he’ll suppose he can act. He’ll turn into an actor, questionably; then he’ll struggle Keanu Reeves, believably. He’ll always cycle via success and embarrassment. He’ll come remarkably near an EGOT. And all alongside, the solar will nonetheless rise day-after-day over Lake Michigan.
