Start Afresh!!

Kid One:

Bam Spiderman goes down.

Bam Daredevil goes down.

All them niggas is goin down.

Punisher be takin' they ass out.

Kid Two:

X Men take out the Punisher.

Kid One:

X Men baby stuff holmes.

All they costumes and powers aint shit.

Punisher the real dope homie.

Kid Three:

Word, I seen a seven foot tall white terminator nigga

With twenty guns on my roof just the other day.

Kid One:

Punisher be takin' out all your stupid heroes.

He be sayin'

Bam

Bam

Bam

take that nigga

Bam

Bam.

Back when VHS was the norm and you had to go to the videoclub for your weekly fix of obscure indepedent cinema, a mere scene could leave you with a lasting impression and 15 years down the line just watching it brings back instant memories of what now seems like another era. Some masterpieces have that ability to recreate for your own mind to decipher a complete picture, feel and atmosphere of what it felt like to be alive in those days. It could be a dialogue with clever wisdoms and witticisms or the beat of the drums on a particular song. A prime example of this could be any sentence from the 1994 motion picture film Pulp Fiction or any song from the soundtrack. However that same year another movie produced by Lawrence Bender went relatively unnoticed by the public though carrying the same vivid intensity.

Fast forward to 1997.

A puerto rican kid born in 1971 in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City who had witnessed his mother's drug abuse, his father leaving the family and spent some time on the streets as a homeless had now turned into a beast of a rapper verbally assaulting tracks, lyrically and litterally crushing the competition on his way to the top. On his debut album entitled Capital Punishment he left heads in jaw-dropping awe at the "dead in the middle of Little Italy" rhyme delivery while at the same time freaking clubs with tales of sexual conquests. His overweight lover persona made it believable that a 600 pound latin rapper could sexually please two arguing women not only by fuckin them but also by "putting away the wood and giving them the moustache" on skits like Taster's Choice. His choice of music during the aforementionned activities is also a matter of taste since an attentive listener will automatically recognize the thumping beat and dusty groove of Davina's 1997 hit "All Good" but this could be an entire post in itself since skits had back then an importance that simply cannot be denied.

It was a way to entertain the listener while showcasing versatility, humor or even acting abilities. It was a way to introduce the listener to your style and what better way to do so than to select a booming intro to your debut album? Just like Nas picked Wild Style for his timeless classic Illmatic to show his influences and where it all started for him, Big Pun chose an extract that symbolized the gritty, urban and gang ridden environment he was given the challenge to live in.