at the Philadelphia Spectrum.

Besides PE & NWA that was the dude I was trying to see most, I'd been rocking Born to Mack & Life Is.... that year (initially because like 2 Live Crew/Ice-T/NWA it was so explicit).

But while Ice-T & 2 Live sorta faded out of my listening rotation, those Short records (Freaky Tales, Dope Fiend Beat, Cusswords, Don't Fight The Feeling, Life Is...) *still hold up* more than twenty years later.

I mean I literally just threw some shit on while reading this & felt that bass/808 with the stacked/echo-chamber vocal (no one will ever convince me that Pac didn't hear Short while in Oakland & then run with that approach).

Anyway, the Spectrum tried to boo Short off the stage.

Folks tossing shit at em, fights, Short's people antagonizing the nasty-ass crowd while Short just walked back & forth (in a cocksure laid-back manner Jay-Z would later build on) kicking his raps not giving a fuck.

I couldn't really understand why or what was happening then as a kid but I guess Short (who by no coincidence was big in the midwest then later the south) was one of the early examples of a 'regional rapper' even though he was platinum & even though rap was too new/niche-based-in-the-mainstream to even be able to tell the difference yet.

But it's also likely not a coincidence that Master P was in Oakland before he came back down south, there was a DIY blueprint in the Bay that could be forged in other ignored parts of the country.

All that to say that this motherfucka is an essential figure in rap music history, he found his lane & continually worked toward perfecting it.

Like AC/DC in rock music, he/they will always be too crass lyrically & simple musically to get critics to write manifestos on them like they might Elvis Costello or Common but the bottom line is both are likely more important to their genre plus figured a way to boil down the music to its base/most-simple-yet-powerful elements and then respected their audience enough to give them what they wanted while staying true to themselves.