also hard not to miss the condescension and low grade contempt he has for hip-hop and the people who love it. “look where it got them.” this dude would kill to get the tiniest fleck of biggie’s skill with language.
Replies
Kinda besides the point, but this is pretty terribly written. Like I'm almost certain I could've produced a better quality paragraph in high school
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 am • 12 0 • view
No way this dude has ever had to solve "the problem of success and authenticity" in his life.
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 am • 12 0 • view
Imagine looking at Biggie and Puffy in the 90s and thinking Puffy was the more talented one..
jul 27, 2025, 7:23 am • 6 0 • view
Or cooler
jul 27, 2025, 12:11 pm • 2 0 • view
Whew…just…wow
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 0 0 • view
He could be the dad from Freaks and Geeks.
jul 27, 2025, 12:24 am • 2 0 • view
Know what happened to him? He DIED
jul 27, 2025, 12:13 pm • 3 0 • view
What is he talking about? We were in law school buying every CD that No Limit Studios put out. I just went to the No Limit Reunion tour. There is no hater like a self hater. Ghettoized? It's really pitiful.
jul 27, 2025, 12:37 am • 7 0 • view
Wait is he... is he victim-blaming them for being murdered???
jul 27, 2025, 12:25 am • 69 1 • view
Hmmm. Isn’t there suspicion that Mr Combs had some involvement in Tupac?
jul 27, 2025, 12:36 am • 4 0 • view
Yes that's exactly what he's doing
jul 27, 2025, 12:25 am • 33 0 • view
wouldn’t be a first
jul 27, 2025, 3:58 pm • 1 0 • view
Is it wildly out of pocket for me to say that feels kinda racist?? 😅
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 11 0 • view
What a nightmare we inhabit
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 4 0 • view
Pretty good chance they were both murdered by Diddy
jul 27, 2025, 2:17 am • 22 0 • view
Seems bad idk
jul 27, 2025, 2:20 am • 5 0 • view
TCW didn't have friends in high school
jul 27, 2025, 1:55 am • 0 0 • view
“the problem of success and authenticity” is a wild statement
jul 27, 2025, 6:51 pm • 0 0 • view
“confrontational” disgraceful reduction of two gifted artists. also two regular ppl. biggie was hurt that Tupac went after him. He hadnt wanted to start serious beef bc he rly liked him. Tupac was WILDLY intelligent. Confrontational is what black ppl get called when the speaker is thinking a slur
jul 27, 2025, 11:44 am • 13 1 • view
"Unlike most rappers, Diddy was sophisticated and respectable and not """ghettoized"""" is an especially weird thing to, uh, completely make up? Like, he acted and dressed very similarly to his contemporaries!
jul 27, 2025, 1:28 am • 3 0 • view
Hip hop is helping to make this rapper our next mayor! I am sure you saw his Wu-Tang appearance video. youtu.be/DZ1OblYm5YY?...
jul 27, 2025, 12:28 am • 1 0 • view
This man would have turned in escaped slaves
jul 27, 2025, 1:05 am • 8 0 • view
Any source for the claim that P & Birdman were ever turned away from any “establishments”?
jul 27, 2025, 12:38 am • 3 0 • view
it’s crazy cuz me and my friends in the late 90s were also struggling with notions of success and authenticity, but we found resolution in the Ma$e Gumbel performance in the “mo money mo problems” video
jul 27, 2025, 1:52 am • 1 0 • view
Thomas *Chatterton* Williams has solved the problem of authenticity. His solution is to have none, and sneer at any he accidentally encounters.
jul 27, 2025, 2:46 pm • 3 0 • view
"look where it got them" is especially heinous in a paen to Combs given his role in all that
jul 27, 2025, 2:16 pm • 17 0 • view
Hahahaha This is unbelievable. He basically sneers at rappers who exhibit personality traits that most white people view as black coded and instead thinks the embodiment of “black cool” is Puff once he started to make his brand Ruthless Grindset CEO.
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 am • 22 2 • view
this entire thing reads like aaron mcgruder wrote it for a boondocks character
jul 27, 2025, 12:24 am • 1,413 33 • view
Good God, this is SAVAGE
jul 27, 2025, 1:15 am • 4 1 • view
I mean it when I say I truly enjoy the venom in these posts.
jul 27, 2025, 12:31 am • 8 0 • view
the character of TCW was of course rejected by McGruder for being too unsubtle.
jul 27, 2025, 12:25 am • 185 0 • view
It's painful because he's doing a joint Uncle Ruckus/Thomas Lancaster DuBois performance. But even that does them dirty bc despise all the shade AM throws at them, they each had more dignity & self respect than TCW. Ruckus is honest about his White Supremacy & Tom strives to be virtuous/honorable.
jul 27, 2025, 12:25 pm • 23 2 • view
Tom dubois wrote this
jul 27, 2025, 2:11 am • 0 0 • view
And we know The Character, lol. Except he would straight up yell "And look where it got 'em...DEAD!"
jul 27, 2025, 12:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Puffy added nothing of value to legitimate excellence of 90s musicians. That was his skill.
jul 27, 2025, 1:54 am • 1 0 • view
I think he thinks he’s doing a sort of inverted McGruder satire on the trope of “black cool.” Don’t you see, Atlantic reader, that the savior faire with which the black youth regards you (since you are certainly not one and never have been one yourself) is an empty shell of abusive bravado?
jul 27, 2025, 12:31 am • 9 0 • view
Instead of burlesque in the suburbs for the benefit of a black audience, like the Boondocks was. He’s telling the 63 year old reformed neocons over at The Atlantic how silly black men are.
jul 27, 2025, 12:32 am • 15 0 • view
Wow, that’s cold.
jul 27, 2025, 7:08 pm • 0 0 • view
Even dude's name feels like a Boondocks character. "Thomas Chatterton Williams."
jul 27, 2025, 12:26 am • 84 0 • view
If you told me that was the neighbor guy's name, I'd believe you
jul 27, 2025, 2:52 am • 15 0 • view
Funny thing, the neighbor's name IS "Thomas," but his last name is "Dubois."
jul 27, 2025, 3:09 am • 12 0 • view
Too bad his interests outside of the music business were perverse. With all that money and name power, he could have helped Black farmers with their farms, he could have started up breakfast programs for poor children, like the Panthers. So many things he could have done and he did nothing.
jul 27, 2025, 6:42 pm • 0 0 • view
This
jul 27, 2025, 12:25 am • 5 0 • view
I’m sure this is witty-just wish I got your references! But I’ll keep reading.
jul 27, 2025, 2:30 pm • 0 0 • view
This whole “problem of success and authenticity” phrase feels like a problem to me. And I am not Black.
jul 27, 2025, 12:28 am • 10 0 • view
😀🏆
jul 27, 2025, 12:48 am • 0 0 • view
It appears you're unfamiliar with the ouvre of Thomas Chatterton Williams, wanna-be 1920s Rich White Guy. I recommend you cherish that unfamiliarity. To say his brain is soft-serve implies a capability of pleasing someone by being sweet of thought. He is capable of neither...
jul 27, 2025, 12:44 am • 16 2 • view
Jamelle is not, in fact, unfamiliar with TC Williams
jul 27, 2025, 11:54 am • 12 0 • view
I am aware. Knowing this, you might appreciate the sarcasm.
jul 27, 2025, 12:58 pm • 1 0 • view
I apologize. In my experience, text being notoriously ineffective at conveying tone on its own, sarcasm is generally presented in the form of a clever joke. My mistake for missing this one
jul 27, 2025, 1:15 pm • 1 0 • view
The First Take-ization of politics.
jul 27, 2025, 3:03 pm • 0 0 • view
💯💯💯
jul 27, 2025, 12:26 am • 0 0 • view
lol
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 0 0 • view
“that my friends and I had been struggling to solve” can you imagine where we’d be today if they had won that struggle??? utopia, no doubt
jul 27, 2025, 12:35 am • 3 0 • view
A man who reinvented himself on the regular, yes, the apex of authenticity
jul 27, 2025, 12:48 am • 2 0 • view
well, his middle name is “Chatterton” after all.
jul 27, 2025, 12:35 am • 1 0 • view
Jesus, that just reads as "look at the hip hop guy who not only didn't scare white people, he made them feel confortable around him! He's what I aspire to being my columns!"
jul 27, 2025, 12:33 am • 2 0 • view
"That my friends and I had been struggling to solve." Where, in the dorms at Phillips Exeter?
jul 27, 2025, 2:37 am • 2 0 • view
I mean they sure solved that issue of success and authenticity, you gotta give em that one.
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 am • 1 0 • view
Man, that “look where it got them” really REALLY rubs me the wrong way.
jul 27, 2025, 12:19 am • 57 0 • view
I can absolutely hear that line in the Uncle Ruckus voice
jul 27, 2025, 12:21 am • 29 0 • view
I only bothered to look at a picture of Tommy Chatterbox recently. His middle name, or that he uses it, screamed Prepster On Crack, so when I saw that he was black, the popularity of his weak schtick with Very Serious Contrarian Loving Elites clicked. You gotta debate that hack, Jamelle!
jul 27, 2025, 12:33 am • 2 0 • view
Yeah, and it's a tell. Thomas Carlton Banks has sold himself as "confrontational" to out-groups for which he knows he can get paid handsomely posing as A Professional Contrarian, while remaining a loyal lapdog to the check-writing class.
jul 27, 2025, 6:06 pm • 0 0 • view
His solution to the "problem of success and authenticity" was the like the guy people seemed to think was the fakest of the bunch? That tracks.
jul 27, 2025, 1:23 am • 4 1 • view
I mean didn't he literally try to kill kid Cudi?
jul 27, 2025, 3:18 pm • 0 0 • view
Okay I checked, merely violently destroyed his property to emphasize that he could kill him
jul 27, 2025, 3:20 pm • 1 0 • view
he's written not one, but two (terrible) books about the subject!
jul 27, 2025, 12:34 am • 1 0 • view
oh no, now he has a THIRD out
jul 27, 2025, 12:48 am • 2 0 • view
Jesus, whoever wrote this doesn't know shit about hip hop or whats actually happening. Puff was and is still one of the biggest scumbags in the industry. Why you think Big and Tupac got killed? FBI told Puff he could be the head N in charge if he just made crap music with no message. He took it.
jul 27, 2025, 4:34 pm • 0 0 • view
i don’t understand how a person can apparently have zero aversion to the emotion of embarrassment
jul 27, 2025, 12:20 am • 2 0 • view
This is incredibly cringey.
jul 27, 2025, 1:29 am • 0 0 • view
This is also… Biggie? Confrontational? The guy who laughed off the allegation that Pac slept with his wife and made a joke line of it on a Jay track? That Biggie?
jul 27, 2025, 12:24 am • 36 0 • view
"Long Kiss Goodnight" isn't so funny
jul 27, 2025, 12:27 am • 1 0 • view
He literally toned it down because he thought it was originally too harsh, removed all overt references to Pac, and didn’t release it at all until after Pac’s death
jul 27, 2025, 12:32 am • 5 0 • view
He RECORDED it after Tupac's death, a thinly-veiled diss about a dead man, and then went and performed part of it on LA radio.
jul 27, 2025, 12:37 am • 1 0 • view
Point being, it’s ridiculous to say that Biggie being confrontational got him shot and to contrast him with Puff who may have actually put money up to kill Pac.
jul 27, 2025, 12:37 am • 7 0 • view
What Williams is saying is ridiculous but it's also ridiculous to believe that Biggie just laughed off what Tupac was saying about him and his wife.
jul 27, 2025, 12:39 am • 0 0 • view
I’m not sure I can think of a more inauthentic account of one’s own cultural experience.
jul 27, 2025, 12:28 am • 16 0 • view
His last hip-hop purchase was the song Puff Daddy did for the Godzilla soundtrack
jul 27, 2025, 2:54 am • 2 0 • view
"Authenticity"? Did he catch a lot of hell for sampling?
jul 27, 2025, 12:47 am • 0 0 • view
Biggie was murdered in cold blood for reasons that had nothing to do with him. What the absolute fuck.
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 57 0 • view
Yeah. White parents in suburbia liked his yacht rap and Sean John jackets
jul 27, 2025, 1:40 pm • 0 0 • view
if you think Puffy is a solution to the problems of success and authenticity you weren’t trying to solve the problem of authenticity
jul 27, 2025, 12:39 am • 76 2 • view
His magnificent solution is sacrificing authenticity for success. QED.
jul 27, 2025, 5:04 pm • 1 0 • view
Grunting to “Every breath you take” felt more like a scam than artistic expression.
jul 27, 2025, 12:21 am • 2 0 • view
TCW has absolutely said "I'm tired of all this "Yo yo yo" crap" multiple times in his life.
jul 27, 2025, 1:39 am • 2 0 • view
"White people who were scared of other black people liked Puffy."
jul 27, 2025, 12:30 am • 3 0 • view
Didn't Diddy have something to do with one or both of their murders?(I can never remember which)
jul 27, 2025, 4:22 pm • 1 0 • view
"My friends and I" have been trying to solve the problem of success and authenticity? Can't wait for TCW to drop the Bard-Paris accords where he and his friends reach that solution that I think he's saying Diddy already did. But his will be wrapped in the fabulations of a seminar table.
jul 27, 2025, 12:29 am • 5 0 • view
“Out on the town solving the problem of success and authenticity with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, solving too.”
jul 27, 2025, 3:03 pm • 4 0 • view
Is it just me, or does he sound like he wishes he weren’t Black? Everything I’ve seen or heard about this guy is about him hating on Black culture or pushing alternatives to it.
jul 27, 2025, 12:21 am • 12 0 • view
On his book, he talks about being incredibly relieved that his baby daughter was white (passing at least) so she wouldn’t have to be black
jul 27, 2025, 2:40 am • 3 0 • view
That is Uncle Ruckus levels of messed up.
jul 27, 2025, 3:32 am • 4 0 • view
Why does this exist? Who is the audience for this? Bizarre
jul 27, 2025, 2:03 pm • 5 0 • view
White centrists who want to believe their aversion to black culture isn’t racism
jul 27, 2025, 3:09 pm • 12 0 • view
Isn't this the guy that wrote a book wherein said rap made him beat his girlfriend?
jul 27, 2025, 5:43 pm • 0 0 • view
Is he saying he and his friends copied Diddy’s authenticity? Does he know what words mean?
jul 27, 2025, 12:22 am • 3 0 • view
"Look where it got them: murdered by the serial rapist I was praising."
jul 27, 2025, 2:16 am • 48 1 • view
“Master P’s contributions to hip hop pale in comparison to Diddy pulling Brett Ratner for the annual White Party in East Hampton”
jul 27, 2025, 2:27 am • 16 0 • view
Once again we should consider checking Tommy Chats' laptop.
jul 27, 2025, 2:30 am • 20 0 • view
S car go My car go 150 So swiftly
jul 27, 2025, 11:57 pm • 0 0 • view
He likes rappers who are businesses, not artists. Fubu means more than any turn of phrase could to Chatterton.
jul 27, 2025, 12:23 am • 4 0 • view
this is the guy who blamed hiphop for him hitting his gf at the age he's speaking of
jul 27, 2025, 12:28 am • 13 0 • view
I am as white as it gets, and him drooling over Puff’s “authenticity” is sending me loooool. Did anyone ever give him credit for that before this piece?
jul 27, 2025, 12:49 am • 0 0 • view
‘pac and big are legends and have been for decades and will be for decades more. Look where it got them, indeed. People have a hard time with hip-hop because understanding art, life, history, music, and stardom is too much for them to wrap their (small) minds around.
jul 27, 2025, 12:43 am • 3 1 • view
I feel even as a little white child in the 90s watching Making the Band season 2, when Diddy showed up I was like “Oh… so he’s not cool…”
jul 27, 2025, 2:54 pm • 0 0 • view
📌✨
jul 27, 2025, 12:18 am • 0 0 • view