Daily Stuntz — A Win in 2020: The E40 and Too Short Event from Verzuz

I like highlighting wins, especially this year, and the battle from Saturday night from Verzuz with E40 and Too Short playing decades of music and telling stories of 30+ years of making bay area rap was certainly that.

In roughly 2000/2001 a friend’s older brother introduced me to E-40 and the Charlie Hustle album became, and still is, one of my favorite hip hop albums. The lingo, the unique rapping style, the bay area style beats were new and I loved it. It was great see him celebrated (250k live viewers at any point in the night) along with Too Short who himself has put out albums in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020 and who helped shape parts of rap music.

There were many great moments (and a truly incredible number of words I am not comfortable including this in post ) including a few captured in this post by Verzuz — https://twitter.com/verzuzonline/status/1340834067437240327?s=20.

If you need just two things to take away from this particular battle and not the music in general, first, E-40 is a phenomenal dancer. https://www.vulture.com/2020/12/watch-e-40-dancing-in-verzuz-battle-against-too-short.html documented it nicely and yes I tried a few of his moves myself. Steph Curry also tried, but E-40 is a tough act to follow https://twitter.com/Ballislife/status/1340649531730497536?s=20

Second, the E-40 lingo is amazing. “ankle low to a centipedes toe” “aint no telling what jack told hellen” and many others are going to lead me to a whole lot of searching lyrics and internet research.

I like seeing legends get love especially when they never got the recognition they deserved in the moment (LA, NYC, ATL, and probably a few other places have gotten most of the rap attention and not the Bay) and it is great to see people just have a bunch of fun doing what they clearly love. Thanks to everyone involved and I hope Verzuz keeps it up in 2021.