Anderson .Paak: "Don't Be Cocky You Don't Know Hip Hop History"

Anderson .Paak is speaking out against willful ignorance.

In a tweet posted on Saturday (August 27), the 30-year-old made a callout to anyone who steps into Hip Hop without knowing its history.

“Don’t be cocky in the fact that you don’t know anything about hip hop history. Real artists are students of the game first,” he wrote.

Though he didn’t mention Lil Yachty by name, the message could be seen as a response to Lil Boat, who made headlines this past week for unapologetically admitting he couldn’t name five Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. songs. In an interview with Billboard, Yachty added, “But if I’m doing this my way and making all this money, why should I do it how everybody says it’s supposed to be done?”

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Yachty is the most recent champion of a new generation of rappers more concerned with what’s happening now than with what’s happened over the last 40+ years. The Atlanta rapper was born in August 1997, less than a year after the deaths of Pac and Biggie.

Paak’s most recent album Malibu album definitely pays tribute to the classics, merging influences from older Hip Hop, as well as from the sounds of jazz and funk.

In his 4.0 review of the album for HipHopDX, Andre Grant wrote: “Malibu is jazzy, but not in the acid jazz way that was K. Dot’s To Pimp A Butterfly. The rhythms are sumptuous and contextual; the songwriting honest and playful. Anderson .Paak and his sunlit septum piercing may be just be gearing up for a breakout 2016.”

The saying goes that if you don’t know your history, you’re doomed to repeat it. Something many older Hip Hop fans might not think is such a bad thing.

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Check out the tweet below.