Other than a trip into hick hop last year hip hop hasn't featured here much, mainly because it doesn't feature very much in my musical life anymore. Me'n'hip hop go back a while and it's music that I mostly left behind, settling for sudden bouts of craving some "bomb beat from Dre" or other from time, mostly when I'm driving. A recent listen on a drive to work to en early version of this comp made me push to finish it and the accompanying write-up.
Ah, it has been a good long while that this write-up has been kicking around as the beginning of a doc, but I never got around to finishing it, mostly because I wrote down thoughts and personal memories about some songs, but didn't see how to turn that into a text. The soultion: make these into liner notes! The ensuing problem: If I do it for a handful tracks, I should do it for all of them. So off to wrok (and work it turned out to be, foolish me...). The next ensuing problem: word count! I didn't think the longest write-up on this blog would involve hip hop! At a cool 2500 words plus, get ready to know more about my hip hop favotites from the late 80s to the early 00s than you ever dared to ask!
Fun fact: I added some fun facts to my liner notes!
Other fun fact: That of course made these liner notes even longer!
OBG twenty years from now, listening to hip hop after all these years (artist illustration)
You will see that my predilection of hip hop tracks is as old school as most of these tracks, as a cool sample or hook will get me anytime. Great word play is the cherry on top of that. But yeah;, hip hop for me is a music that has to move and make you want to move when you listen to it. Which is why most odern rap variations (trap etc.) with their barely there grooves, often somnolent rhythms and electornically enhanced beats really don't do much for me. When some of my young wards try to play a modern rap song to me, I'm mostly "Meh. That's not real hip hop, folks". But whaddayaknow, middle aged man and clouds...
Anyhoo, since there is a lot of stuff to get through, let's get to it shall we?
Be Faithful
Let’s start the bash in
style, with an absolute banger from my clubbing days. In fact, this
was THE banger in the nightclub of my choice, the After Shave (RIP).
Whenever the first beats of this kicked in, everyone stormed the
(really small) dancefloor, followed the call-and-response type
action, did the “engine no. 9” nursery rhyme and yelled “pick
it up!pick it up!pick it up!”, and then went crazy when Scoop’s
“let’s go!” brings the beat back, turning into human pogo
sticks. Ah, good times. So, ladies, fellas: “If you got long hands,
throw your hand up/if you got short hands, make noise!”
Fun Fact: Clearance issues
of the copious samples and interpolations in the song prevented an
official wide release of the (revised) track until 2003, but
enterprising DJs around the world, such as the ones in the
Aftershave, had it since it got first released in 1999.
Not Fun Fact: Sadly,
Fatman Scoop died while performing last year, so also RIP.
The retro dancefloor of the Aftershave (notice the miniture mirrored disco ball!). This is where the party started, continued and ended...
Cold Rock A Party
The soundtrack of my high
school graduation. Fantastic sample from “Upside Down” that won’t
let you keep your feet still. A buddy of ours with the best sound
system would fire this up, open the trunk for mightier sound and then
we would groove to that tune in the high school parking lot. My dance
moves for this were inspired by John Travolta’s twist in Pulp
Fiction. It was pretty fly for a white guy.
Fun fact: MC Lyte was the
first female rap artist signed to an album deal.
X Gon Give It To Ya
DMX mostly passed me by
during his heyday, but this banger – last year revived for an ad
here in France – is what I like about my hip hop: irresistible
hook, endlessly propulsive. Darkman's rough vocals aren't something
I'd listen to all day, but for a one-off I'm all in.
Fun fact: The ad in question is for automatically passing the toll booths on France's paying highways...
Young OBG trying to impress with his hip hop dance moves (artist illustration)
Hit ‘Em Up [Single
Shooter AK 47 Version]
Veteran music journalist
Mikal Gilmore called this song in The Rolling Stone The Decades of
Rock'n'Roll “the hardest-hitting, most eventful song...of Shakur's
career...I had never heard anything remotely like Tupac Shakur's
breathless performanceon this track in all my years of listening to
pop music.It contains a truly remarkable amount of rage and agression
– enough to make anything in punk seem flaccid by comparison”.
He’s a hundred percent right. Whatever you think of its content,
it’s an astonishing track. Tupac opens the hostilities before the
music even kicks in and goes right for the throat (or the nuts): “So
I fucked your bitch, you fat motherfucker!” he launches in the
direction of Christopher Wallace a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. a.k.a.
Biggie Smalls a.k.a. (insert a hundred other nicknames). And it
doesn’t get any friendlier from there. This is essentially the
sound of someone running amok verbally, and there is something
perversely exhilarating about hearing Tupac unloading clip after clip
of verbal ammo into Biggie and the entire Bad Boy crew.
The original version
featured Outlawz, a group of young protegés Tupac tried to launch in
the last months before his untimely death, but their guest verses are
run of the mill bragging and threatening that distract from rather
than add to Tupac's tour de force. So I got rid of all the Outlawz
verses, . thus the “single shooter version” with only 2 Pac
(you'll get the AK 47 part when you listen to it). “I don't even
know why I'm on this track” he says at the beginning of the original version, but we know,
Tupac, we know.
Paparazzi
My introduction to Xzibit,
before he became way more known in Europe for MTV's Pimp My Ride
series rather than his rap releases. Nothing much to say 'bout this
one, just a very solid brag track dissing weak and wannabe MCs with a
memorable hook.
Fun fact: Proving no one
is safe, the operatic female 'backing vocals' are from a sampled
Barbara Streisand!
"Hit 'em up...until they come and hit me up..."
Sunshine
Just a good, breezy rap
track feat. prime support of Babyface on the sung chorus and Foxy
Brown duetting/dueling with Jay-Z. I really like the beat (built on
four samples) on this one.
Fun fact: One of the songs
sampled is by Kraftwerk!
I Got 5 On It
Jordan Peele's interesting
if uneven Us made great use of the spooky properties of Luniz'
biggest hit. The hook, built on Club Nouveau's “Why You Treat Me So
Bad” is just an absolute killer. I didn't get the lyrics about
splitting up your bag of weed at the time, but it didn't matter, if
was just a really cool groove to get into to a teenage OBG.
Funky Cold Medina
The oldest track on this
comp and one that never fails to make me smile. Tone-Loc's deadpan
delivery of his misadventures involving the can't seem to fail
aphrodisiac of the title always cracks me up. It's also crackin'
storytelling, a comedy of errors in which Tone-Loc's weary narrator
gets from one uncomfortable situation into the next: “I got every
damn dog in the neighbourhood breakin' down my door!”. “But when
she got undressed, it was a big ol' mess – Sheena was a man!” et
al. Funky and funny as hell.
"Don't worry guys, everything is going a-okay with that funky cold medina, easy peasy..."
California Love
“Well, let me welcome
everybody to the wild wild west, a state that's untouchable like
Elliott Ness”. The first time I heard Two Pac and Dr. Dre (two for
the price of one!). The music video has the weird distinction of
being a soul brother to Duran Duran's “Wild Boys” - as both rip
off the apocalyptic imagery of the Mad Max universe, here riffing on
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Dre's rumbling delivery and then
Pac's rapid-fire second verse set up nicely their mission statement,
set to a super funky hook made up of three samples, but especially
Joe Cocker's “Woman To Woman”.
Gasolina
More proof that this music
can be more about rhythm than lyrics, since I speak just enough
Spanish to order a beer, yet the feel of the track is much more
important than whatever Daddy Yankee says (it’s all about sex, man,
or so I'm told). The video version was a weird sort-of medley with
another, much smoother r'nb song, capped by a really cool, agressive
rap section. So this newly created mix by yours truly is the single
version with the rap verse from the longer version edited smack dab
into the middle. This is the way the song should have been issued in
the first place. Ladies and gentlemen: start your engines.
Everybody loves Raymond!...(he's a bit noisy and excitable, though)
Fire It Up
Busta Rhymes', uh,
extroverted rapping style can become exhausting over the long run of
an album, but be exhilarating for a single track, such as on my
favorite track which brilliantly samples the theme from Knight
Rider (why did it take so long for someone to do that?!?) which
of course I was a fan of when I was young. Turbo boost!
Fun Fact: Busta mimics The
Hoff talking to K.I.T.T. In the middle of the track.
Regulate
Another brillant sample,
from the opening of Michael McDonalds' “I Keep Forgettin' (Every
Time You're Near)”, proving once again how you can even make L.A.
soft rock sound ominous and menacing in the right reworking. G-Funk,
as Warren G dubbed his smooth style, promising 'a whole new era'
(which, well, didn't necessarily come to pass), was an outgrowth of
new jack swing, and indeed, even the gangsta rap part by Nate Dogg is
incredibly smooth, rapping about shooting up people in a relaxed,
even casual manner: “Now they're droppin' and yellin', it's a tad
bit late, Nate Dogg and Warren G had to regulate”.
Fun Fact: The opening,
explaining what a regulator is, is of course from
better-than-you-think Brat Pack western Young Guns.
"We regulate any stealin' of this property..."
Ride Wit Me
Coming at the tail end of
me actively listening to hip hop, this was pretty much inescapable
during my college year in the US. Nelly, putting the midwest on the hip hop map, never was as big in ol'
Europe as he was in the US, but the light, good-natured flow of this
makes it a perfect bop along party anthem. Hey! Must be the money!
(Holy Matrimony) Letter
To The Firm
When female rappers really
broke through big in the mid-90s (not counting influential acts like
Salt'n'Pepa or TLC before) most of the attention was focused on two
very young ladies, Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown and their supposed rivalry
(mostly invented at the time, but which later turned into a real
one). I always largely preferred Inga Marchand a.k.a. Foxy Brown: her
delivery was crisper and there's a smokey timbre to her voice that
always gave her tracks the edge, in my humble view. Foxy has been
cited by tody's reigning rap queen Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee
Stallion as a major influence.
Fun fact: Quentin
Tarantino had the good taste to put this into Jackie Brown, in
the scene where Robert Forster's lovestruck bail bondsman Max Cherry
goes out to buy a Delfonics cassette (!). It was of course also a cheeky
callback to lead actress' Pam Grier's most famous role in a film nerd
easter egg, thus very Tarantino kind of way.
"'Suggestive album cover' you say?...frankly, Mr. Shankly, I don't know what you mean..."
Jump
One of my first exposures
to hip hop outside of, erm, Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. Unlike those
two, the young Chrises from Kriss Kross had some legitimate mic
skills, even at just 13 and 14 years old which explains the slightly
squeaky voices, though most credit should probably go to producer
Jermaine Dupri for coming up with “Jump”.The 'totally krossed
out' gimmick, where the two would wear their clothes backwards –
probably also mainstream's first exposure to extremely baggy baggy
pants – was a nice touch, but this track is a banger with or
without it. “Some of 'em try to rhyme but they can't...”
O.P.P.
Built on an
immediately recognizable sample from the Jackson's “ABC”, I
let Treach from Naughty By Nature take this one: “'O.P.P.'
is about crazy messing with other people's girls...girls messing,
guys messing...so everybody could relate, the fellas and the girls,
and it's got a hook for the party and everybody can crazy groove to
it”. What
he said. Just a really good groover that burst into the pop charts
and was one of the genre's first mainstream crossover hits outside
of..you know..the aforementioned Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer.
"Gentlemen, absolutely no smiling, alright...remember your band name..."
Most listennnnnnn
[skit]
What would a rap album be
without a skid?
Well, probably a whole lot
better, really, as skits were one of the banes of the 90s and 2000s
rap albums, needlessly filling up space with stuff that either was
never funny in the first place or skippable after one or two listens.
Coupled with most rap artist overegging the pudding by wheeling out
thirteen or fourteen tracks, most rap albums of the time are running
close to or over 70 minutes which is awfully long to sit through
relatively like-minded and similar sounding music.
Having said all that,
there's a couple of skits that never fail to amuse me, including this
diss from the G-Unit into the direction of Ja Rule. They're not even
on the track, they have a radio announcer advertise a fake duets
album of Ja Rule rapping over the mainstream hits of the day by
Shakira, Pink, Britney Spears and Nickelback. The fake Ja Rule
stumbling through these without any regard of rhythm or fit is never
not funny. Hard clowning, but funny clowning. Hollaaaaaaaa!
99 Problems (Grey Album
version)
Ah, The Grey Album,
one of the first big mash-up releases that really caught on in the
early aughts and in an instance made Brian Joseph Burton a.k.a.
Danger Mouse into a household name in 2004. It was an ingenious idea,
combining Jay-Z's vocals from his Black Album with samples
from the songs on the Beatles' eponymous album, known to everyone and
their mother as The White Album.
“99 Problems” is for
me by far the strongest track from The Grey Album because it takes
what is Jay-Z's best rap and marries it to the rock-based samples of
“Helter Skelter”, giving the whole thing a propulsive energy that
the original “99 Problems” simply doesn't have. The little
“aaaahs”, the guitar riff and descending guitar line and furious
drumming of Ringo – what a ruckus, over which Jay-Z spits some of
his best rhymes, relating a driving while black encounter: “'Son,
do you know what I'm stopping you for?' 'Cause I'm young and I'm
black and my hat's real low? Do I look like a mind reader, sir, I
don't know! Am I under arrest or should I guess some more?”
Fun Fact: Danger Mouse
founded Gnarls Barkley with rapper Cee-Lo Green shortly afterwards, a
duo you no doubt remember for their monster hit “Crazy.
Great concept, great cover art...no snark on this one
Changes
The first posthumous
release in what turned out to be a huge amount of unreleased and then
fnished after the fact recordings by Shakur. This is certainly one of
the best, leaning hard into the hook from Bruce Hornsby & The
Range's “The Way It Is”. The soulful backing vocals by Talent on
the chorus are great, and Tupac is in peak form here, spitting out
socio-economic rhymes about being young black men prone to a life of
crime and violence in the city. It isn't quite “What's Going On”
for the 1990s, but it's pretty close. And it of course ominously
points to the end: “And as long as I stay black/ I gotta stay
strapped / and I never get to lay back / 'cuz I always have to worry
'bout the payback / some young buck that I roughed up way back /
comin' back after all these years/ rat-rat-tat-tat-tat / That's the
way it is”. And that's the way it (almost) was.
