- 30th of 1996 : Digital Underground Money B's project of promotion for friends, with many people connected to the first years of 2Pac.
Tracklist - Discogs page (links to most songs in that page and also in that channel)
- Digital Underground - How Long
- Vickia Brinkley - Like To Freak Ya
- Clee & John Doe - Heartbreaker
- Money B - Money Talks
- Shock G - People Over The Stairs
- No-Coast (from Detroit) - U JUSTA
- Neighborhood Kinpinz - Murder Stance
- Clee - Pick-a-Part
- Money B - Hookers Go To Heaven Too
- TMF - The Motherfuckers
- John Doe - One Hoe
- The Kumpny - Some Of That Kumpny Funk
- Shay - Come N' Bounce
Producer - Shock G (1,5,8,13), Money B (2,11), Big D (3,6), DJ Fuze (4,9), D The Poet 151 (7), Dotrix 4000 (10), Mac Mone (12)
- Shock G & Digital Underground tracks "How Long" and "People Oner The Stairs" were re-released in Digital Underground Lost Files in 1999.
- Vickia Brinkley gave vocals in Funky Aztecs' first album Chicano Blues (partners of 2Pac in T.N.T. Records) and in Ant Banks' Do Or Die in 1995.
- Clee will record an eponymous promo EP on Bobby Beats records in 1996, with two featurings fof Money B. With Jone Doe, they will be featured in "Holla Hell" in Digital Underground's Who Got The Gravy ? album in 1998. Clee will finally release the album Good Laaawd That's A Lot Of Drank in 1999 in combo with Drank-A-Lot, pseudonym for... Knumskull of Luniz ! with featurings of Yukmouth, Money B, Ras Kass and... Bad Azz !
- No-Coast are a duo from Detroit, who had a first single in 1994 before releasing their first album Coastales in 2000 with featurings of Redman and Kurupt.
- Neighborhood Kinpinz is the group of Pook-Daddy and D Tha Poet who also appeared in "Pass The 40" (cf. Tales of the 90's N.I.G.G.A.). Together, they released Kingpin Status in 1997 with featurings of Money B, Spice 1, Del The Funkee Homosapien, Vickia and beats produced by Ant Banks, Black Jack and Bobby Ford...
- TMF (Truth Means Facts) is a group from Staten Island.
- The Kumpny & Mac Mone released the album Members Only in 1995 and another single Some Of That Kumpny Funk / Late Nite in 1996, its song "Late Nite" features Saafir & Shock G (here is the YT uploaded song).
- Shay (Erika Sulpacio Jones) is an R&B singer from Berkeley. She gave vocals on Digital Underground's Future Rhythm in 1996 and in Nadanuf's first album Worldwide in 1997, with beats produced by Def Jef and one by Tony Pizarro.
Big D was a too rare producer after his work with 2Pac.
This is the second Digital Underground project to be published this year of 1996 with the 4th album of the group, Future Rhythm, published in June 4, with featurings of Saafir, Mac Mone, Luniz, Del The Funkee Homosapien and the unfortunately very little known Black Spooks (who made a wonderful album never released also in 1996, maybe they were counting on the promo of having a feat with Digital Underground... like 2Pac or Saafir to become a new hip-hop phenomenon...). But Money B was only featured in 4 tracks, so he had time to prepare that side project.
The title of Money B's second solo song B "Hookers Go To Heaven Too" strangely reminds of some 2Pac's songs : "I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto", "Where Do We Go From Here", and the late "Hell 4 A Hustler" (early concept of it was presumably "Ghetto Heaven"). But the shift with 2Pac (hooker instead of thug) is revealing... Did 2Pac not totally give up the cool mood, the fantasy, of his beginnings with Digital Underground ?... "Money Talks" is in the same vein. Won't reverse the history of hip-hop. Just a cool vibe with dirty rhymes given with this typical voice. John Doe and Clee are some kind of new Shock & Money B... Their songs are OK. The whole compilation is quite cool but if the goal was to push forward new artists...
Unfortunately, Digital Underground and other off-the-wall artists were not anymore trendy in 1996... The gangsta rap, the coastal war swept away everybody and everything in its path... it kills its own heroes and destroyed the fun and the hip hop itself. It is clearly against that groundswell that a rapper like Nas tried to make a U-turn in 1998 with the original version of I Am... The Autobiography where he made up the story of the death of his persona Escobar, the gangsta rap in himself, who commits suicide, in order to avoid that tragic fate written for the gangsta rap, and so symbolically for hip-hop... and to draw for himself a new direction, positive, creative, ambitious... In late 1998 part of the album was leaked before the release, and Nas and Columbia totally reshaped the project into a poor average mainstream gangsta rap album...
In a way, 2Pac also tried to "change" the direction of his rap in the first months of 1996 when he wanted to drop a positive album, respectful, conscious, return to his basics... with a kind of Me Against The World pt. 2... the project sank pathetically (sample issues, key tracks being sold, including diss songs, obsession of being the godfather of his Outlawz...). 2Pac will then fall entirely into his dramatic Makaveli/Mr. Killuminati character... The obsession to be "true" to this, to be street, to be a real thug, to play the game, trapped him into his character... trapped the whole Hip-Hop into a tragic fantasy, which looks like 2Pac's fate... whereas Shock G with his mask, his nose, his avatar, was playing the game, initially telling the same hood stories but from a safety distance. Derision. Unlike him, 2Pac dropped the mask... and the funny guy from "If My Homie Calls", "I Get Around", became Bishop, the character he was playing in Juice... In "Ballad of a Dead Soulja", in 1996, he didn't need anymore to pitch his voice : it would be ridiculous to his new profile of serious rap in a serious rap world... and above all, it would be absurd because there was no difference anymore between him and the soulja... "It's real now, feel it or fantasize it, ain't nothing colder", he says. "I can be lost in my own mind" ; "completely lost"...
