So I thought I posted this last night, but I apparently only saved it...I rule. So here's some nice, quiet Sunday morning music for you. This is from a group called Blue Scholars, the rare hip hop group from the Pacific Northwest. As you'll read in my forthcoming "My Month of Entertainment", I recently discovered this group, but as you'll also read, hip hop is starting to redeem itself...slowly but surely. Anyway, the storytelling I've heard in Blue Scholars' music is of a quality I haven't seen recently. I'm very optimistic about their future.
Showing posts with label Hip Hop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hip Hop. Show all posts
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Saturday Night...er, Sunday Morning Music Club
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Is Hip Hop Racist/Sexist?
In a word...yeah. Duh. Well, some of it anyway. The fact that I’m even addressing this question means that those sudden bastions of free speech (as long as they agree with it, anyway) on the right have been allowed to change the subject from Imus, but...yes, a lot of commercial rap is slightly racist and greatly sexist. It just is. For mostly those reasons, starting about 15 years ago, white males in junior high and high school started to dig listening to it as a form of rebellion.
But Don Imus hasn’t been a white teenager for quite a while. Centuries, actually. And if hip hop hadn’t introduced “nappy-headed ho’s” into his vocabulary, he’d have called them something else. He was making fun of them, not trying to rap.
But since we’re on the subject...
Salon today asked a number of different “hip hop scholars” about hip hop’s inherent sexism, etc. They did a good job of asking the right people, too. The first two on the list—Nelson George and Bakari Kitwana—have wirtten some of the best hip hop essays and books around. Here’s a sample (though since you have to pay for the content or watch an ad, I’ll keep the sample small):
From Kitwana:If the question is attempting to address the corporate, commodified and packaged hip-hop music industry, which has helped enrich major record labels and corporate conglomerates, then the answer is no because even within the arena of corporate hip-hop there are rap artists whose music doesn't peddle racist imagery. For example, Lauryn Hill, Public Enemy, the Fugees, Queen Latifah, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West have all created very popular rap music that does not promote racist imagery. The answer to this second question is mixed … yes, the corporate attempt to put hip-hop in a bottle has often relied on racial stereotypes: black men as criminals, pimps and hustlers and black women as oversexed bitches and hos.
From Greg Tate:Regardless of your wording, I know Salon means to ask, "Does the hip-hop industry promote sexism, racism and greed?" Absolutely. "Now just who owns the hip-hop industry?" would of course be Salon's follow-up question. Obviously, as we all know, the same captains of the American consumer products and media industries who decided Imus had to go -- and not because his decrepit comedic tongue flagrantly, unconsciously and unconscionably conflated racism and sexism in ways that hadn't been heard flowing so trippingly in public off a well-established and feared white man's tongue since Thomas Jefferson, but because he had suddenly become a very bad investment. Thank God for laissez-faire capitalism, the self-correcting invisible hand of the market, and all that other good doo-doo kaka.
That’s enough of a sample. If you’re not a Salon subscriber, it’s worth your while to take a moment to watch the ads. The people interviewed are both appreciative and critical of hip hop, and that's important to me for the sake of the argument.
First of all, it should go without saying that a lot of hip hop is not racist/sexist/misogynistic/bad in any way, which is the problem with the stereotype. I’ve talked about The Roots and Mos Def and Talib Kweli at length here, and you’ll have trouble finding too much in their music that fits the angry hip hop stereotype (aside from maybe Mos’ “The Rapeover,” which pushed those boundaries a bit. But having seen the other things that Mos has written, I give him the benefit of the doubt for that one.).
Maybe the commercialized version of hip hop really does veer more toward the negative stereotype, but is that the fault of “hip hop” as a whole, or is that the fault of a) the record companies that choose who to promote, and b) the consumers of hip hop music (mostly white) who snatch up the offensive stuff and leave the strong, smart choices on the shelf? Granted, (b) pretty much tells (a) who to promote, but I’d say there’s enough room to blame both to an extent. When Nirvana and Pearl Jam made it big, major labels desperately searched out bands that sounded exactly like them (STP, Bush, and Creed say thank you, by the way). They passed up on better bands for those that would sell. It’s the same thing in hip hop. And now that hip hop has proven how much money it can make, we find rappers willing to sink lower and lower down the common denominator scale. Mos Def himself touched on this a while back (though he did use a couple negative ‘hip hop’ terms in the process):“Our priorities is gettin’ fucked. Lil Jon-I love his music. But why are the East Side Boyz names Big Sam and Lil Bo? What the fuck? What’s next, Kunta and Kinte? The South should know better. This is the same country that ran up in Fred Hampton’s crib and shot him in bed with his pregnant wife. You think the rules changed cause niggas got No. 1 records? What are we supposed to tell our kids? After Malcolm, Martin and Dubois we got Sam-Bo? I’m supposed to be down with that ’cause it makes me dance?”
To be sure, there are problems with hip hop and language, but it’s important to stay focused on the actual problems and their actual causes. In his latest Low Post, Taibbi (as always) says it much more creatively than me:I love rap music, always have. But as an adult white male I also know a minstrel show when I see it, and that's what rap has turned into.
Every type of music gets exploited and reduced to its lowest common denominator at some point—this is why I say hip hop is in its “hair metal stage”—and while I’m sure the quality of commercial hip hop will rebound at some point, the fact that a) mainstream hip hop artists are almost uniformly black, b) hip hop uses quite a bit of profanity, and c) the ‘n’ word is involved, makes it seem like a bigger deal. It’s not. It’s a rebellious form of art just like grunge and punk and Elvis. Using it as an excuse for Imus’ idiocy is a ridiculous waste of time, but since the subject was raised, I figured I’d share my thoughts.
Satan himself couldn't have designed a more effective vehicle for marginalizing black culture than modern hip-hop. In the early days rap music was scary social commentary; it was raw and real and it vividly described a violent street culture that white people didn't know about and didn't want to know about. But very quickly rap turned into a multibillion-dollar industry in which the same corporate behemoths who sold us crap like Garth Brooks and boy bands and Britney Spears made massive profits selling a stylized, romanticized version of black misery to white kids in the suburbs.
That was bad enough, but even worse was the way black politicians and black intellectuals so easily bought into the idea that these endless video images of gun-toting, ho-slapping black men with fat wallets, rock-hard tattooed abs and fully-accessorized rides were positive living symbols of "black empowerment" and "black manhood." Like Tupac was the next Malcolm or something.
Yeah, right. Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to not see through this shit? Here you've got the modern-day version of The Man signing big checks to back your record deals and cheering along as all the artistic talent from the black community starts walking around in public wearing one-word stage names like strippers, writing song lyrics featuring preschool-level spelling and primping endlessly for the cameras with gold teeth and swimming pools and pimped-out cars -- all of them absurd caricatures of the capitalist wealth fantasy. How exactly is any of that that different from the minstrel show, the conk and the zoot suit? The black man who can dance and sing, but can't control his urges, can't resist pussy and just can't get enough of what Whitey is selling, can't stop preening in his Caddy...that's innovative? That's empowering?
Bullshit. Rap was real once, but once it became an industry it turned into the same con white people have been playing ever since they set foot in this country. It's a bunch of shiny trinkets for the isle of Manhattan. Here's your Hummer and your bitches, knock yourself out. You need us, we'll be buying the African grain market. Oh, and, thanks for the cap, my kid loves it, he wears it sideways just like you...No matter how catchy the music is, on a deeper level, that's what big-money rap acts amount to now. And the longer the black community eats it up, the more time Whitey is going to have to laugh all the way to the bank, like he always has.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
I’m telling you…Hair Metal Stage…
CNN, of all places, has a pretty decent write-up about the present state of hip hop. As you loyal Good Nonsense readers (all 10 of you) know, I’ve been a fan of hip hop for a while—The Roots, Mos Def & Talib Kweli, Jurassic 5, Common, Outkast, and others are still making great strides and great music—but I’ve also said on numerous occasions that the current state of hip hop...well, it sucks.
Creekmur says music labels have overfed the public on gangsta rap, obscuring artists who represent more positive and varied aspects of black life, like Talib Kweli, Common and Lupe Fiasco.I took enough business and econ classes to understand the very basic concept of Supply & Demand, so I realize why crappy, generic, stupid rap music gets on the radio and good music that make you think a bit does not. But how do we fix it? Eventually people will start looking for actual value in songs again. If this is the hair metal stage, and we’re currently witnessing the Motley Crue’s and Poison’s of hip hop, then when will the hip hop Nirvana and Pearl Jam come to save the day? And when they arrive, will the current state of the music business prevent them from making the impact they need to make?
"It boils down to a complete lack of balance, and whenever there's a complete lack of balance people are going to reject it, whether it's positive or negative," Creekmur says.
Yet Banner says there's a reason why acts like KRS-One and Public Enemy don't sell anymore. He recalled that even his own fans rebuffed positive songs he made -- like "Cadillac on 22s," about staying away from street life -- in favor of songs like "Like a Pimp."
And better yet, can I choose who the hip hop Nirvana and Pearl Jam will be? Because I have some pretty good ideas.
All I know is, hip hop’s in pretty bad shape at the moment. And people are desperate for a savior. When somebody makes even a decent album, like Nas’ Hip Hop Is Dead, it’s immediately labeled a classic, but when it doesn’t hit people like a classic (because it’s actually not), it dies just like the rest of them.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Mos Def & Talib Kweli: A Primer
In most cases, there are two types of valedictorians: 1) the overachiever—the person who works harder than everybody else, takes unbeatable notes, organizes study groups, and does whatever it takes to get ahead and stay ahead in the classroom; and 2) the wiz—the person who grasps everything faster than everybody else, has never had to really work hard at their craft, and seems to move on from one idea before fully developing it. In the case of hip hop’s two young(ish) Brooklyn valedictorians, Talib Kweli is the overachiever, and Mos Def is the wiz.
They’ve only made one album together, and they’ve basically worked as solo artists for the last 7-8 years, but I figure it would be pretty fitting to do a Primer on the two of them together.
1. Definition, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star. My first introduction to Black Star (as they are known when they are a duo) came in a Mizzou dorm in ’98. I was making a tape of a friend of mine’s hip hop collection (he owned turntables and lots of vinyl), and he insisted that I record their first single. That song was called “Definition,” and it knocked me over. I set a record for how long it took me to completely wear that tape out, then I headed to Slackers in downtown Columbia to buy the whole album.
(Seriously, how great was late-1998 for hip hop? Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 2: Hard-Knock Life, Outkast’s revelatory Aquemini, and Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star all came out in the last four months of the year. Those might be the best four hip hop albums of the last decade!)
Black Star was one of my first introductions into underground hip hop. I’ve loved hip hop for a long time (as have hundreds of thousands of white males my age), but until that point, about the furthest-from-mainstream I’d ventured was Aquemini. Even though Common and The Roots had been around a while by that point, I discovered them because of Black Star. Black Star was my gateway drug.
2. (Re)Definition, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star. Something that immediately showed Black Star's uniqueness was this creative departure—they took “Definition’s” chorus, threw it behind a different beat, and created a brand new song with a completely different feel. Focusing on a theme of “too much violence in hip hop,” “Definition” and “(Re)Definition” are two of the most musically intense songs on Black Star, as the rest of the album focused on old school hip hop techniques and departures into the jazzy, soulful sounds of acts like The Roots and Common (Common actually had a verse in “Respiration”). There was intelligence and quality oozing out of every song, from “Brown Skin Lady” to “Thieves in the Night.” When I bought the cd for myself there was an insert advertising the then-upcoming Mos Def solo album, and though I’d known of these rappers for less than a year, I’d never found myself looking forward to a hip hop album this much before.
3. Ms. Fat Booty, Black on Both Sides (Mos Def). Despite the horribly unfortunate name of this song, this is one of my favorite hip hop songs ever. It’s also one of the rarest, in that it’s a non-cheesy hip hop love song. There aren’t many in this category. This song is great simply because of Mos’ lyrics and impeccable delivery.
She spot me like paparazzi; shot me a glanceIt’s at this point, about a quarter of the way through his solo debut, that you realize that Mos is one of the most charismatic and talented musicians (in any genre) in the last few decades. Whether he’s telling you about a failed relationship or injustice or pain, you believe every word he says, and you want to hear what he has to say about just about anything.
In that catwoman stance with the fat booty pants, Hot damn!
What's your name love, where you came from?
Neck and wrist blazed up, very little make-up
The swims at the Reebok gym tone your frame up
Is sugar and spice the only thing that you made of?
I tried to play it low key but couldn't keep it down
Asked her to dance she was like "Yo, I'm leavin now"
...
Scene three: weeks of datin’, late night conversation
In the crib heart-racin’, tryin’ to be cool and patient
She touched on my eyelids, the room fell silent
She walked away smilin’, singin’ Gregory Issacs
Like “If I don't...if I don't...if I don't...”
Showin’ me that tan line and that tattoo
Playin Sade’s "Sweetest Taboo"
Burnin’ candles, all my other plans got cancelled
4. Four Women, Reflection Eternal (Talib Kweli & DJ Hi-Tek). You get the impression that Mos Def has never written down a lyric in his life. He just walks into the studio and nails his part. (Not saying that’s what he does—I have no idea—but that’s how it feels when I’m listening to him.) No matter what he’s saying in his lyrics, a laid-back feel almost always pervades his vocals. Kweli, on the hand...you get the impression that he works for it. Hard. Like, lots of notebooks of lyrics in his bedroom. The Chuck D-esque intensity which which he tends to deliver his vocals and the slightly more harsh sound of his voice perfectly complemented the smooth Mos on Black Star. However, Kweli quickly proved that he was more than capable of carrying an album by himself. While Mos was putting out Black on Both Sides, Kweli was preparing his first solo work, Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek. It was good, but it was no Black on Both Sides, which was the best album of 1999. Amazing, however, was the hidden track, “Four Women,” a take on an old Nina Simone song. And honestly, Kweli has really turned himself into hip hop’s Nina Simone—powerful, opinionated, talented...and a bit bitchy. But he gets his point across and writes some of the more poignant lyrics around.
I got off the 2-train in Brooklyn on my way to a sessionNot just any rapper would even think to attempt painting a portrait of four women in different stages of struggle and life, much less do it well.
Said let me help this woman up the stairs before I get to steppin'
We got in a conversation she said she’s 107
Just her presence was a blessing and her essence was a lesson
She had her head wrapped
And long dreads that peeked out the back
Like antenna to help her get a sense of where she was at
Imagine that—livin’ a century
The strength of her memories
Felt like an angel had been sent to me
She went from nigger to colored to negro to black
To afro then african-american and right back to nigger
You figure she'd be bitter in the twilight
But she’s alright, ‘cuz she done seen the circle of life
5. Get By, Quality (Talib Kweli). Mos may have won the first round of the solo album battle (though it was a split decision), but Kweli’s more prolific output and increasing maturity have won the later rounds. “Get By” is, simply, the most inspirational hip hop song of the past decade or so, and likely the best song either of these artists has put out, together or solo. This Voices of Civil Rights article/column was beyond complimentary:
In a genre that has rightfully been criticized for its sexism, materialism and violence, rapper and native Brooklynite Talib Kweli is quite possibly the most prominent artist today in the tradition of socially conscious music.Some lyrics:
This morning I woke up feeling brand new/I jumped up feeling
my highs and my lows /And my soul and my goals.
The lyrics are from “Get By,” a populist anthem praising the heart and resilience of everyday people. The song appears on Kweli’s album “Quality.” In the opening verse, Kweli urges his listeners to become politically active: Even when the condition is critical/and living is miserable/your position is critical.
“I definitely feel like hip hop artists have more musical knowledge than any generation before us because the nature of hip hop is to build on the past,” he says in his trademark raspy voice and deep-Flatbush accent. “The more you get invested in hip hop the more you learn about other music.”
...
Songs of conscience may not come to mind immediately when one hears the words “rap music,” but hip-hop is making an important contribution to the tradition of protest music and the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. “There are a thousand hip-hop songs that share those themes,” Kweli points out. If anyone believes differently, he says, “they just aren’t listening.”
We keep it gangster, say "fo shizzle", "fo sheezy" and "stay crunk"It’s pretty clear that Kweli has a goal—to use whatever fame he can garner to affect positive change in the world. He’s an artist and an activist (though, as he’s sure to tell you, not a politician). And his music is the perfect example of the good that can come out of hip hop.
Its easy to "pull a breezy", "smoke trees", and "we stay drunk"
Our activism’s attackin’ the system, the blacks and latins in prison
Numbers in prisons—they’re victims—lackin’ the vision
And all they got is rappin’ to listen to
I let them know we missin’ you, the love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical, when the livin’ is miserable
Your position is pivotal, I ain't bullshittin’ you
Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? Just to get by? Get fly?
TV got us reachin for stars
Not the ones between Venus and Mars, the ones that be readin’ for parts
Some people get breast enhancements and penis enlargers
Saturday sinners, Sunday morning at the feet of the Father
They need something to rely on, we get high on all types of drugs
Man, all you really need is love
To get by ... just to get by ... just to get by ... just to get by
Our parents sing like John Lennon, "Imagine all the people", watch
We rock like Paul McCartney from now until the last Beatle drop
This reminds me of a passage I read recently from a Wright Thompson (Mizzou grad!) article about a couple of players from the Portland Trailblazers visiting Memphis’ Civil Rights Museum (h/t to True Hoop, a fantastic basketball site, for pointing this one out to me).
They walk past the bombed-out wreck of another bus, past photos of angry white faces at lunch counters, past metalwork from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They listen to gospel singers belt out freedom songs.In a lot of ways, I’ve stuck by hip hop the way I stick by Mizzou and the Pittsburgh Pirates (though at least hip hop rewards me occasionally...at least maybe once a year), and it’s because of artists like Kweli. Hip hop is entrenched in its hair metal stage at the moment (“I’m so cool! Look at what I can buy! Look at the women that are in my pool!”), but everything is cyclical, and when people start looking for value in hip hop again, hopefully they’ll find that in Kweli.
"Hip-hop was freedom songs when it first came out," Bowles tells the group.
"Now it's about how many cars you got," Aldridge says.
6. What’s Beef?, Chappelle’s Show (Season 1, Episode 12). For once, I was ahead of the curve on something. In February 2004, Season One of Chappelle’s Show came out on DVD to almost no fanfare...and ended up one of the best-selling DVD sets of all-time. Nobody knew the influence this show was having until stores were swamped with requests. How does that show I was ahead of the curve? Because I was driving around mid-Missouri the night of its release, trying to procure a copy before everybody else. It was a great show, and I watched every episode at least twice, but the reason I wanted the DVD so badly was so I could watch this performance by a briefly reunited Black Star.
One of the great things about what Chappelle did was, he went out of his way to say, “If people are actually liking what I do, and I have this bright light being shone on me, then I’m going to shine it on my friends, too.” He began featuring musical acts like Black Star and De La Soul, getting them some extra exposure. It was this thrown-together song that had the biggest impact on me. Kweli went first, and his verse was solid—he actually ended up using it as a verse in the first song on his next album, The Beautiful Struggle. But Mos, who hadn’t been too prolific lately because he was too busy becoming an award-nominated actor (it’s really not fair when people are so good at so many different things), came up with a Pantheon-level verse of his own. So many references in so little space, however a lot of it was based in reference to the ‘feud’ between Jay-Z and Nas at the time—I will always think that it was at least partially made up to sell records and get attention.
Beef is not what Jay said to Nas7. Black Jack, The New Danger (Mos Def). I’m getting carried away here. I’ll try to limit the copy-pasting of lyrics, but it’s just so much easier to show the profundity of what their saying than to actually try and describe it myself. Maybe I’m just being lazy. Anyway, after doing quite a bit of acting and fighting with record labels, Mos finally returned to action in 2005 with his second solo album, The New Danger. He brought with him a hard rock band called Black Jack Johnson (named after the heavyweight champion, not the surfer/acoustic rocker, of course). About half the album was recorded with the band, and it’s a pretty interesting experiment. The plain old hip hop is pretty solid too, but only because Mos has so much talent. The first time I listened to this album, all I could think was, “I can’t wait to see what he does next time,” because while he went in interesting directions, it didn’t sound like he had put as much time into this one as he did on Black on Both Sides. It’s pretty hard splitting time between being a badass musician and award-worthy actor, and I think it shows on New Danger. “Black Jack” is one of the more interesting experiments, taking off from a standard blues guitar lick and bassline and incorporating mostly Mos’ singing, not his rapping.
Beef is when workin' n----s can't find jobs
So they’re tryin’ to find n----s to rob
Tryin’ to find bigger guns so they can finish the job
Beef is when the crack kids can't find moms
Cause they end up in a pine box or locked behind bars
Beef ain't the Summer Jam for Hot 97
Beef is the cocaine and AIDS epidemic
Beef don't come with a radio edit
Beef is when the judge is callin' you "defendant"
Beef, it comes with a long jail sentence
Handed down to you in a few short minutes
Beef is when your girl come through for a visit
Talkin' bout "I'm pregnant by some other n----"
Beef is high blood pressure and bad credit
Need a loan for your home and you're too broke to get it
And all your little kids is doin is gettin' bigger
You’re tryin’ not to raise 'em around these wild n----s
Beef is when a gold digger got ya seat and a
A manicured hand out like "pay me n---- or I'm tellin' your wife”
Or startin' up some foul rumor that'll ruin your life
Beef is when a gangster ain't doin it right
Another gangster then decided what to do with his life
Beef is not what these famous n----s do on the mic
Beef is what George Bush would do in a fight
Yeah, beef is not what Ja said to 50 (another feud reference, this one between Ja Rule and 50 Cent)
Beef is more than Irv not bein here with me (couldn’t tell for sure what he said in this line)
When a soldier ends his life with his own gun
Beef is tryin' to figure out what to tell his son
Beef is oil prices and geopolitics
Beef is Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip
Some beef is big and some beef is small
But what y'all call beef is not beef at all
Beef is real life happenin' everyday
And it's realer than them songs that you get at Kay Slay
Also notable about The New Danger was the bit of trouble Mos got in for his anti-industry song, "The Rape Over," in which he said both "some tall Israeli" (Lyor Cohen) and "quasi-homosexuals" were running hip hop, getting him called both anti-semitic and homophobic. You get in less trouble when you do something harmless, like threaten to kill somebody on your record. The song got removed from later versions of the album, but since I bought it the first day it was out, it's on my copy. I'm special. Or hopeless. One or the other.
Anyway, any excitement I had regarding Mos’ third album, however, was tempered when I read an interview with him a short while after New Danger came out. He expressed his disgust with the major labels and said he was going to crank out his third album pretty quickly so he could fulfill his contract and do what he wanted to after that.
8. Broken Glass, Beautiful Struggle (Talib Kweli). The best song of 2005. When you’re dealing with pain and wasted lives, not every song can be hopeful like “Get By.” Sometimes you have to tell the story of those who didn’t manage to just get by. With one of the best beats Pharrell Williams has ever produced, this song is the perfect combination of hard-hitting music and lyrics, telling the story of a girl with “dreams too big for a small town” who crashed and burned when she hit the big city. Not much else I can say beyond that...just a perfect hip hop song.
9. Ms. Hill, Right About Now (Talib Kweli). The best way to show just how prolific Kweli has been over the last few years is to look at the volume of ‘non-release’ releases (sometimes referred to just as ‘mixtapes’) he’s put out (Mos does this too, but Kweli does it more). One of the better ones was 2005’s Right About Now. It’s nothing special, really...the beats are relatively primitive and predictable, and he seems to have saved his best lyrics for official releases, but he just has too many great songs and verses to share, and quite a few of them will end up on these collections. The most notable song from Right About Now was “Ms. Hill,” a tribute to Lauryn Hill, an amazing artist and friend of Kweli’s, whose struggles with the music industry, religious machinery, and herself, have been pretty well-documented.
10. Dollar Day (Katrina Klap), True Magic (Mos Def). Two songs came out within, it seemed, just a week or two of Hurricane Katrina, that perfectly captured the anger and outrage that millions felt (and only thousands apparently still feel) about the neglect and abandonment of hundreds of thousands of people every bit as American as you or me or Mos Def or anybody else: Ben Harper’s “Black Rain” and Mos Def’s “Dollar Day (Katrina Klap).” I posted the video for this song a while back.
The thing about Mos Def, compared to most other musicians (and celebrities in general), is that his conviction doesn’t just last until the next big party. Outside last September’s MTV Video Music Awards, Mos got himself arrested for performing “Dollar Day” in the street without a permit, putting on an impromptu concert to remind people of things they were starting to forget.
I can’t, however, say that Mos’ third album, True Magic, truly followed up on the creative momentum stirred from “Dollar Day.” As I said above, this was cranked out a year after New Danger, and Mos cared so little about its success that he didn’t actually produce any liner notes or anything for it. If you go to your local Best Buy, you will likely find it in a clear plastic case, nothing but a disc and a price tag. And, after showing potential with Black Jack Johnson, he ditched it for True Magic. Again, it’s listenable because of Mos’ talent (he did get a Grammy nomination for “Undeniable,” after all), but let’s just say I’ll be expecting a lot more out of him next time around, when he’s on an indy label and not realizing that his success would put money in pockets of the suits at Geffen Records.
Mos Def and Talib Kweli will always be thought of in the same boat, and I doubt it bothers either of them too much (other than in the context of the roughly 14,526,353 times they’ve heard “So when are you gonna put out another Black Star album?” in the last 8 years), and while I could have pretty easily made a “Primer” about each of them individually, I figured that accentuating their differences best highlights their relative strengths. These two Brooklyn MC’s are the best hip hop has to offer and have been for quite a while. One is a charismatic presence, one is a workhorse. Both of them respect hip hop’s history and constantly tinker with ways to move hip hop forward.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
My Month of Entertainment – December 2006
An explosion of indie music, and...well, that’s about it this month. That’s what happens when you upgrade your subscription to eMusic.com and get iTunes gift cards for Christmas.
Books
Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader – Again, very little in the way of new books this month. I spent most of the month finishing off the Bob Dylan: Performing Artist series (Volume 3 is quite long and a bit tedious) and plowing through Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down (which is way better than I thought it would be).
DVDs
Pat McGee Band: Vintage Stages Live – A pretty solid CD/DVD from a band I’ve discussed here before. They put out a live CD, General Admission, about seven years ago, but this is the first time you can watch them perform. Honestly, it’s a pretty accurate look at the band. It goes a long way in showing how they’ve managed to develop a strong foundation of fans despite a lack of radio play.
This month’s Netflix rentals:
An Inconvenient Truth
We’ve made plenty of comments about this one in the past.
A Prairie Home Companion
Going into this one, I had no idea whether I would love or hate this movie, and...well, it was pretty much directly in between those two. Companion the movie is, I figure, a lot like Companion the live performance—hokey, amusing, comforting, and unchallenging in every way. It was probably worth seeing because of the performances of Kevin Kline and Maya Rudolph (and for the disorienting effect of watching Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsey Lohan performing together), but it’s probably not something I’ll ever need to watch again.
Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
I have a rule: when your main motivation for watching a movie is a) action scenes and explosions, and b) attractive people, then that movie should never ever ever last more than 1 hour, 45 minutes. There’s just nothing that vital to the plot to take it over this length. Well, Pirates 2 is a relatively entertaining 1:45 movie...stretched to 2:30. Seriously, just an inexcuseable length on this movie.
Clerks 2
As with Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, if you enjoy the characters Kevin Smith has created in the last 12-14 years, then you’ll enjoy the movie. Unlike with Jay and Silent Bob, though, this movie isn’t just an “Aren’t these characters funny? You know they are!” victory lap. There is a decent streak of creativity and plot (all of which is quite perverted and crude, though not all of which is believable...I mean, come on, Rosario Dawson hooking up with Dante?? Sorry if you haven’t seen it and didn’t want a spoiler, but you need as much mental preparation for that one as possible), in this one. However, just like with Jay and Bob, if you didn’t enjoy the other Kevin Smith movies, you should just let this one pass you by as well.
Music
(Can’t really call this section “CD’s” anymore since I don’t actually buy cd’s anymore)
Vintage Stages Live, Pat McGee Band
While it is nice to have a live DVD, I’m glad there’s an audio-only version of this concert in this set as well so I can listen on the iPod. Again, it’s a good representation of where PMB were musically (before the death of Chris Williams, anyway), though the inclusion of “Who Stole Her from Heaven” and the exclusion of “Hero” was a bit disappointing to me. But then, only PMB obsessives (or former PMB obsessives) would find that strange or disappointing.
The Greatest, Cat Power
Moon Pix, Cat Power
It’s relatively conventional wisdom at this point (among music nerds, anyway) that if you’re a long-time fan of Cat Power, her latest album, The Greatest, will be your least favorite as it recycles old material and incorporates a Nashville band, very much unlike her previous material; however, if you’re a Cat Power newbie, you’ll find The Greatest much more accessible and enjoyable than her more sparse-sounding earlier work. Well, I’m a Cat Power newbie, and I think The Greatest is fantastic. I found 1997’s Moon Pix a lot harder to enjoy overall. For me, the best albums are the ones that vary tempos and instrumentation, and Moon Pix is all sparse and slow. With The Greatest, the aforementioned band is involved, and even though the songs are still mostly mid-tempo or slow, there is a fantastic R&B feel to the album, and I’m liking it a lot.
Best songs (from The Greatest): “Lived in Bars,” “Living Proof,” “Love and Communication.” Best songs (from Moon Pix): “American Flag,” “You May Know Him.”
Under the Red Sky, Bob Dylan
I am slowly but surely filling in the gaps of my Dylan collection, and while reading Vol. 3 of Bob Dylan, Performing Artist, I went ahead and picked this one up. This is known as Dylan’s “songs for children” album, or something like that, but while the lyrics are definitely not his sharpest (nor were they necessarily supposed to be), I liked this album more than I thought I would, mostly because his band for this album was on fire.
There isn’t a lot of creativity in the song structures or instrumentation—most of the grooves are basically generic blues or R&B—but good grooves are good grooves, and just about every song has one. Not saying this would make my Top Ten Dylan Albums list...just that it was worth getting. I pretty much agree with the sentiment of the album’s 1990 Rolling Stone review (“Old masters sometimes pare their statements down stylistically to attain the mythic or universal – their work gets simpler, easier. Under the Red Sky, certainly, is Dylan taking it easy. Sad to say, he's taking it far too easy. It's disheartening to find the writer of "Visions of Johanna," and a hundred other cryptic, haunting songs that have inspired countless poets, coming up with titles like "Wiggle Wiggle" and "Handy Dandy."), but the music is still worth hearing. It probably helps to know that Dylan didn't stick with this lighter style, too...if I were hearing this as Dylan's latest album, I too would probably be a lot more critical. Best songs: “Wiggle Wiggle,” “Cat’s in the Well,” “Unbelivable.”
Hip Hop Is Dead, Nas
Hell Hath No Fury, Clipse
I’ve said this before, but hip hop has most certainly entered its “hair metal” stage, where primping and pimping are more important than actually saying something of value. There has always been this aspect in hip hop, just as there always has been in rock music, but it’s successfully come to the forefront now. And that doesn’t make Nas very happy. I’ve always been a relatively casual Nas fan, meaning I own most of his albums, but I honestly can’t remember too many of his songs. He’s a strong lyricist, especially when he’s taking on tough subject matter, and that makes his music worth listening to, even if he’s never really had beats that were all that great. I still have to listen to this album a few more times to get a grasp on the vocals, but I can say this for sure: these are the best beats a Nas album has ever had (“Where Are They Now,” in particular), and “Still Dreaming” with Kanye West (who I really hate liking as much as I do) and “Black Republican” with Jay-Z (“I feel like a Black Republican/Money I got comin’ in”...it’s creative, at least) are fantastic collaborations. Nothing but good songs and good beats on this one.
And I should mention that the title track samples “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”...you know, just so you’re not as taken aback as I was by that.
As for Clipse, I am so desperate to discover new good hip hop groups that I’ll pretty much take a chance on anybody who gets a lot of good press. It took four years for Clipse to put out their second album, and it’s a good one...though that is almost totally because of the productions of The Neptunes. Clipse get the first crack at these innovators’ beats, and you can tell. The beats on this album are about as good as I’ve ever heard. The lyrics are decent (the rhymes are pretty good), but not creative in the least. In other words, lots of bitches and hos and guns and the like on this one. However, the lyrics are good enough in songs like “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)” and “Chinese New Year” (“I was in and out of homes like the Orkin man”) to make those songs as good as anything else that came out in hip hop in 2006.
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Tom Waits
I’d never really thought about checking out a Tom Waits album before, but this was generating lots of good press, and his appearance on Daily Show was quite entertaining. I had reservations, “His voice is just so damn weird” being the most prevalent, but I decided to go ahead and check it out one disc at a time on eMusic. I will say that some of the covers he chose (pop standards like “Sea of Love” and “Young at Heart”) don’t do anything for me, but every time he pins his ears back and rocks out, it works tremendously. He absolutely nails songs like “Buzz Fledderjohn” and “The Return of Jack and Judy,” and a lot has already been said about “Road to Peace”...
Young Abdel Mahdi (Shahmay) was only 18 years old...that there’s really not much I can add. This one definitely belongs in the Liked It More Than I Thought I Would category.
He was the youngest of nine children, never spent a night away from home
And his mother held his photograph, opening the New York Times
To see the killing has intensified along the road to peace
There was a tall, thin boy with a whispy moustache disguised as an orthodox Jew
On a crowded bus in Jerusalem, some had survived World War Two
And the thunderous explosion blew out windows 200 yards away
With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace
A Blessing and a Curse, Drive-By Truckers
I’ve heard good things about the Truckers for a while...that they were an extremely competent mix of southern rock and jam band...things like that. I compare them to one of my more recent discoveries, My Morning Jacket. They are indeed both one part Black Crowes/Allmans, but they both like to explore new ideas. Neither of them worry about technical perfection and polish in their studio recordings, which can either lead to sloppiness or raw perfection (to me, the chance for raw perfection is worth the risk of sloppiness), and they both utilize a shaky falsetto from their singer part of the time. Overall, I think I’ll stick with MMJ, but this was worth getting for songs like “Easy On Yourself” and “Daylight.”
Live: Austin City Limits Festival, Flaming Lips
I stumbled across this 4-song set of the Lips’ performance at ACLF this year on iTunes, and it was a lovely surprise. A video download would have been better, since so much of the Lips’ performance is visual, but for the money (<$5), this was more than worth it.
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, Yo La Tengo
All the Music Nerd magazines were raving about this a few months ago, and since I had a few more downloads to use, I decided to give in and give it a shot. Every song from this poppy, sometimes-falsetto, upbeat, nerdy group (who most certainly couldn’t beat your ass) is good, and I gave them pretty much all **** on the iPod, but when the album was over, I couldn’t think of one single, memorable song beyond the adventurous 10-minute jam (“Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”) that kicks off the album. For the most part, this is pretty much the definition of “light and enjoyable,” but there’s enough risk-taking here to set Yo La Tengo apart from most.
As with most everything else I got this month, this was worth getting (and it falls into the ever-referenced Liked It More Than I Thought I Would category), but it still falls behind The Greatest, Hip Hop Is Dead, Vintage Stages Live, and possibly Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards on this month’s pecking order. If this came in fourth, though, it was a pretty damn good month for music. Best songs: “Beanbag Chair,” “The Room Got Heavy,” “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.”
Saturday, December 30, 2006
A week late on this one, but...
...I found this while catching up on Okayplayer tonight.
When Mos Def speaks, you listen.
When you listen to Mos Def's lyrics and statements, you start to realize that he's as close to a true folk musician as there is out there today. He speaks for his people, and he does a magnificent job of it. Unfortunately, he's also a great actor, and he spends a lot of his time doing that instead of writing songs. He's got a new album coming out soon, and I can't wait.
I hope to expand on the "folk music -> rap music" idea in a later post. In the meantime, here's his video for "Katrina Klap," one of the more poignant "folk" songs in quite a while.
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