Artist: AZ
Genre(s):
Rap: Hip-Hop
Discography:
The Format
Year: 2006
Tracks: 14
One of the legion thoughtful, literate gangsta rappers to come forth from New York during the mid-'90s, AZ ne'er garnered the attention of peers like Nas and Jay Z. Instead, he adage his debut album, Doe or Die, become a critical front-runner in late 1995 earlier his life history suddenly went downhill after such modest and ephemeral success. Critics and b-boys likewise far-famed AZ and his debut album for a literate approach to the gangsta life-style. Like his aforementioned peers Nas and Jay Z, AZ non only brought tidings to his rhymes simply as well an telling catamenia and delivery that farther set him aside from the flood of New York MCs fighting for survival in the crowded belt game. Unfortunately, disdain Energy or Die's quiet success, AZ stumbled in sequent old age, in conclusion marking a modern major-label kinship with Motown in the early 2000s.
Born in Brooklyn as Anthony Cruz, AZ number one came to the greater pat community's attention in a large way afterward his stellar performance on Nas' "Life's a Bitch" in 1994. Given AZ's similarity to Nas and the overwhelming reply to Nas' Illmatic record album, it was merely a matter of time earlier AZ would account a record book deal, a feat he accomplished in 1995. The resulting debut album, Energy or Die, shook the New York hip-hop vista as Nas' Illmatic and Mobb Deep's Infamous had through short earlier it. Like those albums, Energy Department or Die reveled in the street life -- hustling for cash, hawking drugs, crimson encounters, mandatory boasting, struggling daily just to keep up -- merely took a literate and thoughtful glide path to the ofttimes exploitative gangsta motifs. Furthermore, like Nas, AZ had Pete Rock crafting the beats, which south Korean won the young knocker instant credibility among the hip-hop community.
When holy Writ impinge on the street that AZ was an official appendage of the supergroup known as the Firm, his position only rose higher. Anchored by Nas, Foxy Brown, Nature, and AZ on the mics, with Dr. Dre and the Trackmasters on the beats, it would appear as if the group could do no faulty. The group's 1997 record album all over up being a surprise failure, though, buried under silly expectations and too much ballyhoo. But AZ's bad chance didn't hitch there. He returned a year after with his sophomore album, Pieces of a Man, an record album that came and went relatively unnoticed and uncelebrated. For the next few days, AZ became a forgotten describe. No thirster with a major-label concentrate, he managed to release the little-heard S.O.S.A. record in 2000. It didn't sell many copies or resurrect his career but rather re-affirmed the fact that he was indeed a gifted rapper whether the public and the industry treasured to notice it or not.
Inside a year's prison term, AZ secured a new major-label relationship with Motown, a label that had never had much, if any, success with rap artists. Still, the Brooklyn doorknocker wouldn't let the label's report defy him back, as he illustrated on 9 Lives, unofficially billed as his comeback album. Though wanting big-name production and employing a skimpy roll of guest rappers, the record album did vitrine AZ's lyrical prowess and his endurance, anchored by the sample-laced atomic number 82 unmarried "Problems." Aziatic from 2002 received positive reviews boilersuit and deuce long time later by the double magnetic disc career overview Decade 1994-2004.
Die Form
