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Celebrating 2 Years on March 25th (B&S JA W/O)Mar 28 '07 (Updated Apr 03 '07) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line My 2nd year at Eps began a few days ago. Forgive my lateness.
Being here at Eps for two years, as a result of passion for writing and a good amount of work, is a damn hard thing to comprehend – because back at the age of twelve, I was registering onto this very website that had intrigued my eye by the looks of the members and reviews. It definitely wound up being a worthwhile decision, to say the least. And the time has flown, for I’ve written 103 reviews (which is another additional hard-to-comprehend factor) gotten 19,000 page views, 61 members that trust me, and have continually moved up the most popular authors in music list over a steady combination of months (even I’m nowhere near my W/O partner, balogun, who is moving up at least 50 notches a month). Plus, I’ve earned friends whom I heartily respect and admire through both their writing and their personality – not to mention quite a few up-and-coming emcees that I’ve kept in touched with over the months and years. So, I'm writing this article to basically collaborate with Dayo (balogun), one of the best hip-hop reviewers to emerge here in a long time, the fact that we share the exact same Epinions anniversary date! Since I've done shouts before, I'll just messily ruminate on my last 2 years below. I think it’s a given during these types of retrospective pieces that you talk about your particular view of the “golden” age of the site – but you know what, this site’ll always keep up the great work as long as the writing wherever you happen to be doesn’t become flat and stagnant. I personally think that the time in which I entered the realm of Epinions, early 2005, was definitely not a bad time for the hip-hop section of the site, where many greats were still writing consistently even though I wasn’t much of a force to be reckoned with in the music section. I think there are some newbies out here in Eps that have a lot of potential such as ardentscriptor, chaostamer, and foureyedfrog – plus of course there are the more consistent hip-hop writers that continue to hold down the section (Headcase, balogun, and speeddemon531). But there are times in which this site seems to have very little of the appeal that it once had in the hip-hop section, so it’s all I can do to appreciatively scroll down the archives of my favorite hip-hop reviewers, past and present, and look upon the legacy they’ve left. Even if you aren’t heralded as the one of the best reviewers in your field, I do that to almost everyone in my WOT – and that goes to show, hopefully, the reverence that I have for the writers on this site. There are times I wish I knew where people where paulyoungotti and madtheory went, why Big D, crypticcradle and discoinfernal are so sporadic, and why most of the other hip-hop writers that’ve held the site down in the past are MIA, but I guess it really isn’t my problem to worry about it. But even though I’ve done shouts in the past, I just wanna say that everyone in my WOT is there for many concrete reasons, so I hope y’all respect that. As for what’s coming up for me? Well, there’s no doubts in my mind that I’m gonna eventually sit down on my a** and finish up my Common & Canibus albums I’ve yet to write-up, and I’m keen on doing a Top 10 Songs of All Time for the former artist, containing his best and most underappreciated songs in his entire career, because if swytchblade can do Canibus and gangstarrx do Nas, I may as well do one for one of my favorite emcees! There are some obvious ones that'll be on the list, but some of my underrated personal favorites will be making it on as well, so I'm hoping you'll all look forward to that. I may catch up on a few classics such as “Liquid Swords” and “Illmatic” (which I have a kickass title for, don’t you worry) and there’s plenty of hip-hop that comes out this very year that intrigues me enough for me to review it. Not to mention, I don’t feel that justified with my one 2Pac review being one star, and my only one star review being on 2Pac, so I’ll be purchasing more of his better works so that I won’t seem as biased. And goodness knows the search for tight hip-hop, whether old, new, or buried other new Eminem & 50 Cent mixtapes is pretty much neverending, so I’ll be searching in stores for years to come. Also, there’s a bunch of reviews that’ve been on the to-do list for the past few months (Black Star, De La Soul, Viktor Vaughn’s two albums and a few other MF Doom ones) that’ll get done soon, which is a promise. Hopefully as well as that, I’ll be able to keep up some of the prolificacy – my problems with anxiety have taken a toll on my output on the site (and, in all honesty, have also kinda decreased my self-esteem in certain ways), but it’s slowly getting better and next week is Spring Break! Big Whoop! And there’s still so many classic albums and legendary artists I need to catch onto after much procrastination, so I will be doing that too. And there's a Top Albums of All Time list I wanna eventually complete...I don't wanna get in over my head, so I'll stop there, but I do have ambitions for larger things in store, and y'know, that's one of the main reasons I persistently contribute to this site. As for how I’ve done over the last two years on Eps? I’m not going to be conceited and say that I’m a hip-hop legend (I just don’t think that’s true) on the site, but to quote Posdnuos of De La Soul, “you’re damn right I’m proud of myself, man, and I’m proud of my team, man”. As much as I’d like to say my W/O partner’s contemplation of leaving the site is an early April Fool’s joke designed to peeve the community, I’m afraid that’s not true – but I’d be very surprised if this is the last of him. And it ain’t the last of me, either. So wish us both a happy anniversary, and sorry if this article seemed overly conceited. Might just be worried for no reason, but I don’t know. Don't worry about Dayo, everyone, we'll lure him back in... :) snik1  |
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