When the MC's came to live out their name and to perform

You may or may not know that I'm a big fan of rap music. Especially 90's era gangsta rap. It is strange to think about now. How easy it is to find music similar to something you like. As I put on my horn rimmed glasses, twist my moustache, and lean my cane to the side, I will play on your nostalgia and reminisce about the olden days. I'd watch music videos on tv, back when there was music on MTV, even though we were already complaining about there not being enough of it, and on VH1 and a station called The Box, which was a station where you called in the music video you wanted to see. I say that because we only had that station when I lived in PA so I have no idea what areas actually had it. I bring this up because I remember seeing Wu Tang videos and was pretty much sold from there out. Especially Triumph, which was admittedly much later but was still so awesomely weird. I had heard Dr. Dre and Ice Cube when I was younger but didn't really get into it until I was older. I suppose it's because my sister never listened to rap so I didn't have as much exposure to it than I did to all of the 90's alternative bands.




The reason this is at the front of my mind is because I was in a hot dog place with some friends/coworkers and the restaurant was playing rap music from someone's ipod, and GZA's Liquid Swords album came on. This is one of the best rap albums of all time. I love it, and I announced it. I may have literally said "Oh shit this song is awesome," the second the intro started. It's got the kind of lyrical mastery that makes me love rap music. It also has tons of samples from Shogun Assassin and a couple from Five Deadly Venoms, which are both awesome movies.

Which brings me back to the Wu Tang Clan. GZA is in Wu Tang for clarification. As is Method Man, ODB, Raekwon, U-GOD, Masta Killa, RZA, Ghostface Killah, and Inspectah Deck. They are my favorite, probably because there is significant evidence that they are nerds. The most gangsta ass nerds in existence. But there are all the references to these old Kung Fu movies and comic books which I also grew up on. They rap about the way every guy wants to imagine themselves. A rogue following his own honor, the ronin still living by the bushido. Up until a man is 25, maybe even 30, he still has certain thoughts. Maybe if I train really hard, pack up and move to a Shaolin temple in China and just train, I can be a total badass. Just quit and be a hitman. But a righteous one. Kill dictators or something. By all this I mean, it is both accessible instantly because it just sounds good, but like all the best music has depth.

As always, I'm having problems discovering not to mention maintaining any kind of main thesis. I guess it's because people think it's weird that I not only like rap music but am pretty open about it. I can't figure out if this is just a race thing or what. I don't really liked Eminem (though catchy and when I was young I did like his early songs), but I think he opened up rap music for a lot of white people, especially given Dr. Dre's endorsement. Which is really weird because little white kids (me) have always loved rap music. I think it was probably 1990 before they figured out that half the people buying rap albums were suburban white adolescents. This became kind of joke, check out the movie CB4 if you haven't before, it's pretty funny (and has Charlie Murphy!). What people thought this said was that we need to censor music to protect our children from terrible things like bad words and lyrics about sex and drugs which they don't even understand, but probably really said catchy songs with good hooks, and music your parents are against you listening to tend to become really popular. More than that, music about isolation and life's difficulty speak to everyone.

Maybe it's not the race thing, and just a general appearance thing. It apparently surprises people that I like heavy metal and punk, too. But, back to rap music. It has changed. Can we all agree that crunk rap is shit? That dance music is not hip hop? Even Nas says hip hop is dead, the fact that he does it with will.i.am is so ironic it hurts me.



Is it too corporate? It has always seemed that selling out degrades music but I am not even sure what that means anymore. Repeatable success is just hard, and studio influences can obviously be detrimental to the music. I dunno, underground hip hop, indie hip hop, is still pretty awesome. It is somewhat more complicated than that though. Like Common. Dude has some great songs. To me, for awhile, he was one of the best rappers that didn't break mainstream. And it was pretty obvious the reason he wasn't is because he didn't rap about what the record labels said would be successful. Now he collaborates with Kanye a lot and there's a lot of influence there. It's different. It's more main stream. Some of it is still really good, but some of it isn't as good. Maybe I'm just biased.

So Kanye. He seems like an ass. That said...his music is pretty good. Kanye always bothers me because I feel like he could do better. His ego is so huge it makes the music worse. If he could stick to anything in a song without saying how he's better than everyone ever, or making attacks on people that had a joke at his expense, his music would be much the better for it. I think specifically of him trying to get back at South Park for the fish sticks thing. By bringing it up he kinda proved their point. All that said, he has made some good music. But he's a dick and he's at the point now where he's successful because he was successful and that just sucks for music. Although My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a good album. Way better than 808s and Heartbreaks. But the ego is like a slime over the whole thing. You can see how good it could have been, but bleh.

Wu Tang - Cream
GZA - Liquid Swords
GZA - Shadowboxin
Method Man - Release Yo Delf
MC Lars - Ahab
Wu Tang - Triumph
Common - What a World
Sage Francis - Little Houdini
Kanye West - Monster (The Jay-Z verse is terrible, the Nicki Minaj one is awesome)

Grooveshark link because it takes forever to upload stuff to share and my dropbox is full