It's June 16, 2024, 10:34:57 PM
I was on the internet in 1997. Google wasn't really effective and most used a variety of search engines, AOL, Lycos, Yahoo etc. With a lot of free web pages with an address link that wasn't easily picked up via search or easily typed in. There was no YouTube and most audio had to be streamed from whatever website it was on through a real audio player plug in. (Hitemup.com being one I remember later on) There were no major hiphop news broken out on the internet other than what had been replicated from magazines and publications (unless you knew someone who knew someone to get an inside scoop, but those were few and far between) but I remember getting on at a time when there were floods of unreleased material circulating and different pages having different material and forums picking up members quite quickly. Some of those early pages merging to put together their cash to create a dedicated website (with or without a forum) musicfantalk.com was an example of an early one. They were mostly 2Pac, and even had a 2Pac is alive section on there (though did have an Aalyiah & Biggie section too) because at that time, the only news was on the news or in magazines, so if people weren't out buying every little piece of news.Kids today don't really understand how difficult it was to 'know' what was going on. A monthly magazine only gave you a little article, or perhaps a little biased 40 second news segment during the death, or investigation afterwards. So, the only other method people really had were hearing the artists themselves on their own records to get their side of a story......So when 2Pac music surfaced early 97, people are like "Is he really saying these words"? Many fans were ignorant, mainly due to part that they were 1) Very young and 2) Didn't have access to EVERYTHING. I was 12 / 13 at the time so didn't really have an understanding of industry or business. The 2Pac is alive thing is something most people looked at as plausible because of the sheer volume of continued music surfacing, the content and because it also made sense. Maturity and time however steered most of us away from that theory making it laughable today. I think there is at least 5 or 6 that I see still posting here today (at least periodically) who were around in those days. Those were the good 'ol days. DJ Quik still bringing solid albums, Warren G dropping a classic in 98, Daz and Death Row still hot with a lot of unknown new artists people were eager to hear. Variety and choice in forums, websites and content was probably greater too. The industry is nothing like it was