The Immersion: The Early Days of Slaughterhouse & Internet Rap Posted by DJ Dharmic X on 09/27/12 | Filed under Opinion, The Immersion

Eventually, I had to abandon the forums. The main problem was that these sites would frequently shut down, leaving me out to dry. Tired of this, I started googling “hip-hop websites,” trying to find a reliable, consistent website that would keep me updated on the latest releases, particularly aiming more towards the underground. After all, at this point Immortal Technique and Ill Bill were two of my favorites; there was no way I could turn away from that... I wanted a site that would fill a gap in terms of providing me content that my friends were not talking about.

The first site I visited as a result of my searching was allhiphop.com. And ironically enough, this was the first song I found in the audio section of the website:



At the time, I had already become a fan of Joell Ortiz and Crooked I, the latter through some of the dope tracks off of Hip-Hop Weekly and his blistering guest verse on Immortal Technique’s “Lick Shots.”. I had started listening to Royce da 5’9” ("The Bar Exam 2" had just been released) and found him pretty dope. Meanwhile, I knew who Joe Budden was but had never really listened to any of his music, and I had no clue who Nino Bless was.

Regardless of a listener’s background knowledge to the five rappers on “Slaughterhouse,” no sincere fan of hip-hop could deny the strength of this song. It was a mind-numbing posse-cut, with each MC ripping through the insane Scram Jones instrumental with natural lyrical dexterity. The punchlines were ridiculous. Highlights from each rapper:

Joell “Y’all be makin up stories the little kids is buyin, I do everything my Penn States like a Nittany Lion.”

Nino: “The lust for cheddar you owe me, Leave holes in your vest that’ll open your chest like a sunken treasure.”

Crooked: “I don't write I kill a pen, leak its blood on the page, I breathe bars like oxygen locked my lungs in a cage.”

Royce: “Ridin shotgun with Chris Martin my DJ, Not the white boy but I'm down for the Coldplay.”

Joe: “They say he a bastard for real, then they see the ass on his girl, So they wonderin, why's he so mad at the world?”

While “Slaughterhouse” didn’t convert me into a full-fledged “Internet Soldier” (there was something a little unnerving about spending 24 hours of a day attacking other people I would never see in person with relentless abandon), I became a diehard Slaughterhouse fan from this point, eventually buying the first album when it dropped the following year and religiously following every interview or viral video the crew dropped. Eventually I would go back to the dense catalogs of both Budden and Royce, discovering gems from before that would resonate with me and serve as therapy for my life’s ordeals later on.

I’m still a fan of Nino Bless, and was very excited to see that he was back to releasing music this year after what was essentially a 2-year hiatus.

I’m not a frequent visitor of AllHipHop anymore (there are simply waaay too many hip-hop sites these days, including this one right here), but the site forever holds a dear place in my heart for introducing me to a group that eventually reached major label heights (and outsold Kreayshawn, proving that lyrics > youtube hype), right at their inception.

This was my transition into visiting more conventional hip-hop outlets, as from this point on, I visited both AllHipHop and HipHopDX.com (a site I am a regular visitor of even now) to get my fix of new music and keep my ears rooted to both the popping mainstream tracks and more importantly, the underground music I was fiending...


(DJ Dharmic X is the host of This Culture Never Dies, 11PM-1AM Saturday on wnyu.org. Fans and haters, can follow him on Twitter and check him out on Facebook.)

See Also: The Immersion: Ill Bill Delcares “The Hour of Reprisal”