the greatest that never was
 

who you got

basically name rappers who got a bunch of hype and did nothing with it.

bonus points if you showcase their progression. like a couple early tracks and then whatever bullshit they ended up making or made

i got my pick. but i'm too lazy at the moment to grab vids and do it justice.

also shout out to jay electronica, not who i was originally thinking about because he didn't squander it with subpar material, he squandered it by putting out NOTHING.

to put it in perspective i was taking my GED. feels like 10 years ago i dunno exactly, but my homie was also taking his, who i hadn't seen since high school. there was a break, you basically do part 1 and you had an hour off inbetween. we went and smoked a blunt and he played this in the car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_cSsVgQpF4

and i was like wtf thats that jay electronica? he was like what? this is that 400 bars. and i was like obviously its game dummy im saying the beat. he didn't know what i was talking about.

but basically like 10 years ago i was hype for jay electronica and whats happened since

WHATS HAPPENED

name people though. i'll post an indepth post of my original thought prolly tomorrow after work

Memphis bleak easy.
His first album was dope to me. Dope to everyone for real. Still wasnt his full potential. The bars he dropped on s.cart vol2 were better. But he went straight garbage. He does got this one track that isnt that old that i fuck with called for me.
Heres a couple joints from his first album i thought were dope and remember being hot..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bquaWFlcdY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bm8EKK3ZK4

This beat was dope imo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiSqRnWBpWk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0A6eR76Cig

This was dope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zzD7ZVS7i8

Prolly my fav track from the album
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rsBS-ubJo

Favorite beat off the joint. And the sigel ft is dope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpwJzUO5uvQ

Thats all tracks from his first joint i liked

This song is my fav memph bleak joint tho and its a lot newer and recent.

Called its for me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_muaFW8aKfQ

Gotta also nod to canibus in here.. I remember he was gettin so much hype on them dj clue tapes and then his album dropped and everyone was like yo wtf is this shit. Had them beats been on point he woukda killed it but that shit set the tone for his shole career imo. He spent all his time trying to reprove himself after that tape.and never got out of it.. I thought the second album 2000 b.c. was raw as fuck tho and his best work hands down.. But still.. He never reached the level he could have. Ge was way ahead of his time with the shit he rapped about and then army of the pharoahs and jedi mind xame out and just took over that style with way better beats abd schemes. Oh well

Some of his shit with clue i mentioned..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3rPeVvte0U

Thus is camron. Big pun. Nore. And bis but bis kikkes this shit off a clue tape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Eb53zz7eM

This aint off clue but is a dooe freestyle. This is the bis i remember being so hype for where he actually felt like he wasnt trying so hard and just killing shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbNrTjZUEyc

i accept canibus more than bleek. i feel bleek went above and beyond his hype, but thats a personal thing probably, as i never bought in really. i mean i always thought he was dope, but i didn't look at him as anything crazy, the way jay and everyone tried selling him as the second coming it was like ehhh he's nice but everyone was nice. the last gasps of the hype train could be seen during the rocafella freestyle takeovers lol, bleek had bars for days but no one wanted to hear them. there was a hungry beans/free etc who were more interesting and dynamic at the time.

canibus was too underground for me at the time honestly. by the time i was hip to him i just figured what he ended up as, was what he was always. but i missed the LL beef and the hype train surrounding him

Ya.. Bis hype train is why im so dissspointed how he turned out. Idk. I remember it and then it was like wtf happened to dude.

Im at a loss for more atm will check in if i think if anyone i kniw there tons

Lil shyhiem from wu tang
Sorry. No examples atm. Except of course the freestyle he did after biggie and pac on the infamous biggia and pac freestyle. Pretty sure shyheim is that third vidk he fits the subjext matter tho. Seems hes done way more than i thought

AZ

Saigon

Warning shots was classic

Jay Elec
Saigon

Sly Boogie (little obscure) but I thought he was on the crooked i path.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU-Eb6WKwNU

Feel like it would be remiss to not mention shyne

Saigon was my initial thought for this thread btw

He had so much FIRE

I think it was the jail bars. On the outside he was doing to well and just wasnt as dope using wack beats after awhile and i dunno

But his hype was ridiculous.

I feel like Young Dro should have blown up.

His verse for One Blood was the most memorable off those remixes

Biggest disappointment ever has to be Em man. After Eminem show he did Encore and I haven't really liked anything from him after his 3rd album. Now he's trash. Steepest drop off ever. Next it's Dre. After doing 2001 we were hyped for Detox. Em even said on that one song "we're gonna make Dre put out detox" I heard Detoxification which is a rough leak of that record and a ton of that shit was amazing, it was just shitty quality rip. I wish Dre would have just put it out.

Not what the thread is smh

How so?!

In that this said person never became famous, or never reached their potential? Because if it was just never got famous that's an entirely different conversation, I agree.

That being said, Crook is a good example as well.

I think Earl also has retreated into himself instead of capitalizing on hype. Doris was a great "freshman" album but IDLS went into a direction contradictory to something that would achieve mainstream success. I, for one, enjoy the latter more but that is preference. Doris received much more widespread critical acclaim. There was also zero fanfare around the 2nd release, by design. My prediction is that his music will continue to fold in on itself

I took it as the former

like there was some underground buzz surrounding the rapper but then they just never blew

em is one of if not THE most successful rappers in the history of the music....regardless of personal oppinions

how bout rich boy lol

man when I first heard his throw sum ds on it I remember bein hype cuz he was just enuff south and enuff barzz to be a dope unique talent at a time when the south was cranking out laffy taffy and line dance songs

but word he aint do shit ever


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudIZbCRq_c

another1

madd skillz

man he had that ghostwriter track and then he dropped the shit below an I was like you this dude is the 2nd coming.....and then he dropped an album that took way too long to come out and it sucked :/ now he does those rap up songs every year that only even ever checked like 10 yrs ago....his uncle murder beef is the only reason I even remembered he was a person

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=897ijPO4xRk

Heinek'n

Heinek'n is an OG rapper from Rotterdam, Holland. This guy got his first buzz around 2004/2005 when he released his first street mixtape. There was a lot of ppl talking about this guy coming up. Dude was basically an actual street hustler making his way into music.

His earliest music video from 2004, rappin on classic Who Shot Ya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgMRnib2kwA

So a year or two passes by and the hip hop genre in Holland was gradually fading away from copying 50 Cent / The Game style and were more focused on their own lyrical, down-to-earth aesthetic style. Heinek'n hasn't dropped any new stuff in the midst but his name was still ringing in the underground scene and dropped his now classic street anthem "Loyal To The Game" it reached the urban charts and was frequently seen on the urban MTV channel back then.

Loyal To The Game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uocM50Gjqlg

Even though he was around for a few years around this time in 08, i truly believed this guy was destined for "hip hop stardom" or whatever that meant at the time, this guy was in a lot of featurings and generated a lot of views at the time back when a youtube video was big when it had 100k views. This dude even had his own NPO (imagine like a dutch PBS) documentary in 08. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGe0czzQdPg

2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxx3DT7UGJg?t=2m42s

...and after that, nothing lol. Literally this guy just got quiet and didn't make shit. He would be in a random featuring of other newcomers every year or there but every year that passed those newcomers climbed up higher, got bigger and did eventually better than him. I seriously remember he'd have 1 song in 2009 and then another in 2011 and it wouldn't even go up more than 20k views. Forget about charts lmao. After that it was as if he either got locked up, dead or just went and did his own thing. I'm guessing the latter because a year ago I recently found his instagram and dude was just living life, seemingly has his own restaurant/cafe and just chilling. He did a featuring one song a year ago which was dope.

2017
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg8VYyOn9GI?t=30s

I'm saying, this guy could've been a major player and was promising for a while but imho was never quite there.