08/02/2025
Reasonable Doubt was bigger than it's mere musicality alone. If you understand what Hip Hop signifies, only then you can you begin to understand the deeper context of that album's brilliance. To simplify, it was deeper than just a compilation of hit records. There were few on that album, but each cut was layered with deep, peripatetic thought and energy. Morally, the album was no great shakes but yet it carried a dark spiritual power about resilience, toughness, intelligence and self-reliance against the odds. Again, understanding Reasonable Doubt's greatness forces one to go outside the realm of just counting hit records. 95's Purple Tape was similar in to it in that regard. Real hip hop heads who were around to see the evolution of the sound from 80s to the 90s and see the swings from the east to west, back to east coast, right before the rise of the south, KNOW that Reasonable Doubt was vintage, top-of-the-line art. Nobody had rapped like that until then. That album set the bar and introduced the world to one of its living geniuses. Get it now?
