BLACK MUSIC MONTH (OLD SCHOOL): Jay-Z

Have you ever heard anyone negate the quality of A Reasonable Doubt? Try it. The conversation will stop making sense.

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BLACK MUSIC MONTH (OLD SCHOOL): Jay-Z

POSTED: Wednesday, June 22, 2011, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Music | Blast from the Past

Black Music Month rolls on. All June long, Critical Mass will be featuring videos of some of our favorite artists from now and then.

A Reasonable Doubt is larger than legend. Its greatness is so widely understood that it resides in a place for the beloved, universally championed and undeniable, like the hip-hop quintessence that lies in “Juicy” or Dilla’s divinity. Have you ever heard anyone negate the quality of A Reasonable Doubt? Try it. The conversation will stop making sense.

Being a young jawn, I had to be put on to its glory, but when I was, I venerated it like everyone else I knew. My brother played “22 Twos,” and after I lost my mind, he was kind enough to replay it. Where had that flow gone?

“I don’t follow any guidelines cause too many n****s ride mine
so I change styles every two rhymes, hah, what the fuck”

OK, so Jay-Z explained himself in that very song. But, I still wanted more of his early pace.

My brother copped a Jay-Z retrospective mixtape off the street one day, and of course I had to have it. (Remember the days when dudes sold bootlegs and mixtapes on the street? The internet put them all out of business, huh? I wonder what the guy who used to sell stuff off Chew is doing now. Working in telemarketing? Who knows.) The mixtape was packed with singles and began with Jay-Z’s first ever, “In My Lifetime.” That, I had heard before. What I hadn’t heard was the B-side, “Can’t Get Wit That.” I freaked out. It was almost like discovering A Reasonable Doubt again.

Although “Can’t Get Wit That” had its own visuals, it never made it on to an album, and before YouTube, fell into obscurity. This video was shot before Roc-a-Fella even existed, when Dame and company were selling singles out of their trunks. No SoundScan records on those sales.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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