Dress Archie's Great Rap Verses (Song #4: Nas - I Gave You Power)

Alright, and now for #4. Hungry has laid a daunting task ahead of us all, and there are so many directions one could go. We have BIG (an installment this list was made for, a true master of the verse--I would have put up the first verse of "Respect" had abriendo not posted his choice), we have METH (one of the sickest sounds and hottest spitters ever), and $HORT (the godfather of bay rap, not to mention a fucking amazing flow paired with an incredible voice). So what the fuck do I do? One aspect of rap verses that I really enjoy is when they hold content to them other than fucking bitches and making bitches go down on other bitches and making bitches do coke off of their d**ks and having bitches rub their feet and etc. That is why the best rappers are the ones who come from rough backgrounds; imagine slangin' crack to feed your daughter, and then having the ability to rap over music with such skill that you could earn enough money to buy your daughter a fucking Ferrari for learning to wipe. Tracks like "My First Song" [Jay-Z] and "Respect" [BIG] are so incredible because they demand credibility. These artists come from a world so far from ours (I am speaking for myself, I dont know about abriendo--he's strapped), and the songs that I feel hit home with me are the ones that let me experience their anger, joy and frustration in coming up from and out of the streets. One verse that does this for me is Nas' second verse off of "I Gave You Power". Spoken through the perspective of a gat, and the journey that it goes through (being loaded, left on a shelf, jamming up leading to his owner's death, craving being loaded, etc.), and what you feel from this song is the agony that violence causes on the streets. A song that overshadows "I Gave You Power" on It Was Written, "Tha Message", speaks of the pain that Nas felt in the death of Pac and BIG, and this track goes deeper into that plight and talks about it more generally and brings it to the street level. The first time I really listened to this song and tried to understand what it meant other than the story of a gun told in the first person was when I was walking to the bus stop in Tufts. I took the train to central Boston and then to Providence, and after listening to that verse, everything seemed dirty and riddled with violence. No song had ever done that for me. Thank you Mr. Nas. Now I am cured--listening to enough electro, Wu-Tang and BIG has brought me back to earth.