Though he didn’t receive lead production credit, Dawaun Parker - who describes his own style as “halfway between G-Unit and A Tribe Called Quest” - laced the underlying gusto that made these Aftermath singles bang harder than Jenna with a jackhammer.
Eminem - “Crack a Bottle”
If one cut marked Eminem’s inevitable reemergence, it was “Crack a Bottle,” which leaked this past December. “The demand was crazy, so Dre and 50 [Cent] hopped on it too,” Parker says about his Steinway-driven ripper that initially featured just Shady. “It became my first number one single, so I’m definitely not mad.”
Busta Rhymes - “In the Ghetto”
This slow-burning Rick James redesign was the fourth single off The Big Bang, which was the first chart topping project of Busta’s career. The track is a lesson in minimalist execution, with Parker providing synthetic claps and sporadic ivory accents beneath his MC’s legendary staccato flow.
Jay-Z - “Lost One”
On every Jay-Z album - once you get past the bling and bullshit - there are always heartfelt gems for his true fans. On the 2006 disc, Kingdom Come, “Lost One” hit that spot, with Hova negotiating fame and fortune over a poignant Parker loop that Tupac would have likely horded if he was still kicking around Dre’s studio.
Related:
Review: Akon | Freedom, Photos: Snoop Dogg with Method Man and Redman, Get shorty, More 
- Review: Akon | Freedom
Back in April 2007, R&B singer and rapper Akon dry-humped a 15-year-old girl on stage, an incident that led to some overblown criticism in the conservative media.
- Photos: Snoop Dogg with Method Man and Redman
Photos from the Providence stop of Snoop Dogg's Wonderland High School Tour
- Get shorty
"It's not like Jay-Z saw me on the street and discovered me and made me into a superstar! I was doing my thing already."
- 2008 Listravaganza Part 2
Everything you wanted to know about the year in music, in tidy lists of 10.
- An abridged history of the Roots' collabs
Collaborations
- He's not a doctor . . .
Around this time four years ago, contemporary hip-hop tastemaker Dawaun Parker faced the same dilemma that most soon-to-be music-school grads negotiate: should he become a performer, a songwriter, or a barista?
- Send in the clowns
The New York Post got to resurrect its priceless "Wacko Jacko" headline. Barbara Walters scored Super Bowl-level ratings without having to lift a pretty little finger. And Michael Jackson, well, no matter how you slice it, he got screwed royally.
- Hip-pop redux
Nelly Furtado’s not the first pop diva to embark on a lucrative hip-hop detour.
- Chief roca
For imposter pimps in top hats, frighteningly dumb suburban barbarians, and hypocritical hip-hop frauds like me, Jay-Z's Mohegan Sun show this past Friday was a gala shindig complete with pre-and-after-party gambling and boozing.
- Busta Rhymes | Back on My B.S.
Increasingly surrounded by Soulja Boys and Lil Waynes, Busta Rhymes has of late taken on the look of hip-hop's Father Time.
- Guest lists
What small, private lists like this remind us is that big, honking institutional lists are largely fictions, mirages of a consensus that no longer exists, if it ever really did in the first place.
- Less
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Music Features
, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Music Stars, More
, Celebrity News, Entertainment, Music Stars, 50 Cent, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Eminem, Eminem, Less
