No Trivia

So uh, first thing’s first. This entry doesn’t negate this entry. Driving home from work, listening to ‘Everything I Am’ it sort of hit me hard, like I started crying. The song’s tugs the heart-strings so it’s a little embarrassing because I was sort of “had” by Kanye, but it’s still pretty affecting. I’m sure it was the combination of my friend John, text messaging me and wanting to take all of my friends out to dinner on him because he’s got a real job and is getting paid. See, that’s really nice and comforting, especially when one of the people in said group of friends blew his head off because see, even if you’re really fucking close, it kinda pulls you apart or at least changes shit. Just little nice things like that mean even more because as those guys who made the year’s actual best album once said, “One day you’re here and then you’re gone”…So, that linked with the you know, the cloying but still emotional beat on ‘Everything I Am’ kinda messed me up. Premier’s scratching is purposefully amateurish, stumbling, moving forward and then back but not like artfully but sloppily- which fits Kanye’s mind bouncing around from bragging to poignant observations and everywhere in between. That’s also what life is, no? You sloppily move forward and then fall back and then forward again…

Sampling Jay-Z’s voice on ‘Good Morning’, the line “hustlers, that’s if you’re still livin” is appropriate because this album represents a transition away from this idiotic, watered-down, cool to a fifth grader version of street rap. If those hustlers are still living by the time this album ends. If those hustlers will know what to do when they hear ‘Graduation’, an album that really isn’t street on any level but isn’t pussified either. If those hustlers are still livin’ and didn’t turn to stone listening to an album by Kanghey…on ‘Everything I Am’ there’s that line: “Just last year,Chicago had over 600 caskets/Man, killin’s some wack shit/Oh I forgot, except when niggas is rapping” which is harsher than anything Lupe or Talib or Common will rap. See, there’s no condescension there, he doesn’t get to feel better than those guys rapping about murder because he sounds so fucking sad about it. He’s basically implicating the “it’s only entertainment” argument, not on some ideal, moral level but just sheer facts: 600 dead.

The album tries to break down the fake and not only bitch about it but offer some kind of answer. On ‘Good Life’ he exclaims “We like the girls who ain’t on TV/Because they got more ass than the models” and that’s as brave to say as it is true. The album is about replacing the fake with the real but Kanye’s real is rightfully conflicted and still features drunk, hot girls and parties and shit. The real isn’t some kind of Utopian, political correct world of wonderfullness…

‘Graduation’ is not the future of rap as many have eloquently claimed but it’s the first step towards that future. It’s a scary future too because apparently, it means sampling Krautrock instead of the Dramatics and rapping really slow so uh, drunk, hot girls can enjoy the music too. I’m scared and a little annoyed with it but I’m willing to go along. I just wish Kanye had made the album he wanted to make and not the album he felt was supposed to make.

Dear Kanye…

Dear Kanye,
I hate leaks, they’re like seeing your Christmas presents a week before. In this case however, I love leaks because hearing the leak of ‘Graduation’ just saved me $15 because there’s no way I’m buying this shit. While ‘Late Registration’ was a noble failure, a mix of too many things on the same plate without ever touching or interacting, ‘Graduation’ is just remarkably mediocre. I know you’re into like, indie rock now where boring albums are considered good but this is recockulous. Congratulations Mr. West, you made another pretty-good album.

Actually, to call it an album isn’t really correct because it’s just a collection of songs. How hard are you really working these days? I don’t expect you to be doing five beats a day for three summers, you’re probably ankle-deep in pussy, but just making a collection of good songs isn’t enough. ‘College Dropout’ was an ALBUM, each track fits with the next and it all bleeds together into a perfect mess/statement. Other than ‘Drunk & Hot Girls’ which is truly terrible (more on that later) none of these songs are bad, some of them are great, but most are not-bad and not-bad isn’t enough.

‘Homecoming’ which on paper, I should hate is really kind of great. It has this sad, legitimately affecting, particularly the “do you think about me now and then?” part of the chorus. That’s like deep and moving on like this ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ holy shit we’re-all-so-connected-in-this-fucked-up-world and that’s both scary and touching kind of way… like when you see some old girlfriend or something after like five years and now she’s got like this Tara Reid bar-slut voice but somehow you still kind of have the same feelings for her or something? You know, real crazy human feelings type shit which I think everybody has about their hometown too. It’s also on some Christopher Cross laid-back 80s shit and I LOVE THAT.

‘Good Life’ is a surprise, sampling the strangest part of M.J’s ‘P.Y.T’ and of course, T-Pain, who is really just great all around. I heard ‘I’m Sprung’ on the radio the other day and was thinking about how much he’s already kind of evolved as an artist, fully embracing his Roger Troutman-ness and taking it to another level…you’ve got a good, discerning ear for the great, radio musicians, the way you put Paul Wall on ‘Drive Slow’ or although you didn’t get around to putting him on a song until ‘Late Registration’, you had been repping Cam’ron before most people. Smart, smart, smart. It’s the same as when you used to think it was cool to put Freeway and Mos Def on the same song and in a way, show how they’re kinda similar and also hopefully, introduce fans of one to the other.

‘Champion’ is a flat-out success, inspired in the same way that ‘College Dropout’ is inspired. It’s over-the-top from the beginning, with the corny-as-fuck-and-therefore-great “Do you reaaaalllizzeeee that you are a ChamPIONNNNN” and then you pull back to a wordless, artful Dilla-esque sample. It’s got these great rap nerd lines about how you wish Lauryn Hill was still rapping and then, this totally inspired, faux-Jamiacan bridge/chorus “This is the story of a champ-e-on”! Oh fucking shit. And it’s short. This is the natural progression of your production style if you weren’t surrounded by a bunch of lame-as-dick whitey-whites like Jon Brion and A-Trak. Ruining my once favorite new rapper.

KANYE! YOU SHOULD HANG OUT WITH ME. I’M THE WHITE DUDE TO TALK TO. SERIOUSLY. I know who CAN are and could introduce you to them and way more obscure-ass shit (Brainticket, anybody?) but when you bring me a song that samples CAN, I’ll be like “Dude, that’s a bad look. At least fucking rap on this shit…” and then I’d send you back to the studio with my CAN ‘I Want More’ single to cut-up, yes, cut-up, actually SAMPLE not just loop and put some Mos Def wailings under. This is like something my friends and I would do one night when we’re bored. Seriously. Like, make this song about drunk chicks to the tune of ‘Sing Swan Song’?! Get the fuck out of here with that. I remember thinking, when you were, for some reason- all excited about Franz Ferdinand “I wish I could give him some like Joy Division or Wire records, you know, the stuff FF wants to sound like…” but I didn’t realize that the minute you discovered non-soul songs it meant you didn’t have to make beats anymore and could just loop shit.

When you really rap as on ‘Stronger’, the looping is excusable but when you do this slow-ass enunciating rap, it starts to hurt. The whole slow rapping thing has got to stop. It’s a sell-out move. You rap real slow so that non-rap fans can hear what you’re saying more clearly, that’s bullshit. It’s also pretentious as if your lyrics are just so important that they need to be enunciated. Even if it takes a few listens, the people who care about the lyrics will get them. If you’re so next-level leave all those other cocksuckers in the dust…

Here’s how to fix your album…I told you how to fix ‘Late Registration’ here, but I was two years late, this time I’m two weeks early…

1. Homecoming (featuring Chris Martin)
As I said above, I really like this song. It has a certain sadness to it that works but doesn’t totally fit with the sound of the other songs. Sort of sounds like a ‘Late Registration’ track, so start with it, making it almost like a layover from your last album. I suggested you do the same with ‘Late Registration’ putting ‘Late’ as the first track, a way to kind of ease listeners into your latest, crazy ideas.

2. Good Morning
The proper beginning of ‘Graduation’. That main percussion has a certain ‘Elevators (Me and You)’ feel and this album, reminds me of ‘ATliens’ in its hyper-consistency; consistent to the point of maybe being a little boring? ‘Midnight Marauders’ is like that too…but those are probably like two of your favorite albums of all time, so maybe this is a compliment?

3. Champion
You know how to begin an album and really, the first seven tracks of this album are kinda perfect it’s just you got a bunch of good songs on the back-end that don’t cohere, so I gotta start fucking with the tracklisting…

4. Good Life (featuring T-Pain)
5. Flashing Lights (featuring Dwele)
These three songs are sort of like this extended party-time suite but they have tinges of darkness and sadness that becomes clear with ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’.

6. ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’
I read somewhere that the remix might be on the final album and that would maybe be a better idea because you kill the verses on that, none of this slow-flow bull.

7. I Wonder
The disembodied “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh” voice that pops up throughout ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ kinda sounds like the sample that begins this song, so it’s a cool transition. I think you should cut the intro by a little though, especially because you play it out later. Also, this moves the album into a mid-paced middle which is better than going out on a bunch of songs with low-ish BPMs…

8. The Glory
The return of the chipmunk vocal is cool. I wish it had never gone away. I know it was getting played-out and co-opted but it made me sad that you listened to your critics for ‘Late Registration’ and avoided it. This song contains elements of just about every song that precedes it on my tracklisting, so it’s appropriate to put it here because after this point, I make ‘Graduation’ shoot-out in a bunch of different directions.

9. Barry Bonds
The beat on this song is so good and so fucking, like, final. The tight drums and the keyboard melody, it demolishes ‘The Glory’. As in, as soon as this beat hits, you forgot what you previously heard. This song is so immediate and moves so quick that it feels like an interlude, like it’s there more to actually announce a hit than to be a real song. Putting it before an actual hit (‘Stronger’) just makes sense and also, the transition to ‘Stronger’ sounds good.

10. Stronger
This song needs to come in later because it needs to be further away from ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’, the other single. It sounds way cooler and out-there late in the album, an added boost of energy as listeners’ interest begins to wane. It’s also annoying that rap is so stupidly immediate and fickle that you need to even drop two singles before an album comes out. I loved how you called ‘Jesus Walks’ a hit before it became one, that was awesome. If you had saved ‘Stronger’ and put it after ‘Barry Bonds’ it would have been a similar thing…

11. Big Brother
I understand why you’d want to end the album with this song but it seems a little odd. I know it’s an act of humility, ending on a song that pays homage to Jay-Z but you’re Kanye West and that’s not really how you roll. The song is cool and actually touching, much more so than ‘Hey Mama’. It also just feels anti-climactic to end on ‘Big Brother’ it just doesn’t feel right.

12. Everything I Am
Moving from the epic ‘We Major’-ish drums and synths of ‘Big Brother’ to the laid-back piano is a way to end on a song about yourself but minus the hubris everyone expects. The scratching on this is great, some real ‘Stroke of Death’ type shit and it acts as a contrast to the loose, near-lament feeling of the rest of the song. Also, the outro to this song is way too long but if you have it as the penultimate track, it works. It should really end when you say “That’s enough Mr. West, please no more today”. Your exit would be real and palpable but not the way it was at the end of ‘Late’ where you did it to show how you were needed but in a calmer way, like you took yourself out of the game early. Real classy-like.

13. Drunk and Hot Girls (featuring Mos Def)
Really, I’d just remove this song but if you tack it at the end, it’s excused. Like the weirdo songs that end the middle few Outkast albums. It also feels more like the lark you’re aiming for when it doesn’t get in the way of the album. Putting it in the middle of the album is nearly aggressive to your listeners. Doing what you did to a Chaka sample with a Damo Suzuki sample is clever, I just wish it was towards a more listenable song.

Also, ending on this weird, goofy song retains the contrarian, prankster-ish aspects of your personality without negating the sincerity and modesty employed at other moments on the album.

So yeah, you’ve got two weeks to change it, no? Glad I could help.

Love (seriously),
Brandon Soderberg

The Biographical Dictionary of Rap.
I’ve had this idea for awhile, but finally acted on it. Basically, film critic David Thomson has this really great book called ‘The New Biographical Dictionary of Film’. The book is informative but also highly personal and opinionated. It’s a purposefully non-comprehensive encyclopedia. Anyways, I wanted to start one about rap but rather than do it by myself, I’d like to see if any of my fellow bloggers/writers want to contribute. There’s so much goofy blogger beef, etc. (that I admittedly involve myself in as well) that one more thing that could maybe bring people together, seems like a good idea.

I posted an entry on Beanie Sigel a few minutes ago.

The only rule is that it should make some attempt at being about the career of a rapper, producer, person relevant to rap and follow the format of mine (which is just stolen from Thomson). So yeah…The Biographical Dictionary of Rap.

In an unrelated note…I’m using an outdated version of blogger for this blog and recently, it stopped automatically titling my blogs by the first few words of an entry. I should know it but I don’t-what’s the HTML or whatever that I should begin my entries with so that they have a title? Also, does anyone know why my RSS feed no longer shows anything? My guess is it has something to do with the title problems, but who knows…-brandon

Schooly D’s ‘Signifying Rapper’

-Click here to download ‘Signifying Rapper’.

A decade before Puffy got Jimmy Page to recreate his own riff for the ‘Godzilla’ soundtrack, Schooly D got some guitar player named Mike Tyler and some drummer named Andy Kravitz to recreate Jimmy Page’s ‘Kashmir’ riff for ‘Signifying Rapper’. Movie director and friend of Schooly D Abel Ferrara, says here that ‘Signifying Rapper’ is “50 million times better than ‘Kashmir” and I uh, sort of agree (the best Zep song is ‘Fool In the Rain’ but you already know that…).

The replayed riff is as bad-ass as Zep’s proto-Metal but it lacks the pretension and adds some funk that makes it sound like the Bad Brains covering Zeppelin, which fits Schooly’s sound and rage more appropriately than if he were to have sampled the actual song. The repetition overwhelms you in a way that the original, because it breaks out or changes due to its adherence to musicality, cannot. There’s nothing elegant about ‘Signifying Rapper’s “beat” and Schooly D’s not really rapping, he’s just shouting (it’s ordered shouting, which is rapping but you get my point) a tale of a “little rapper” who stands-up to a “bad-ass pimp”.

The sort of catch of the song (and the reason David Foster Wallace named a book after the song) is that it addresss “signifying” which is referred to with frequency in the African-American tradition but also the sort of shit Roland Barthes and other literary types talked about. Real quick because it’s not that interesting and sort of obvious- the rapper who insults the pimp is insulting the pimp through another rapper (who will later actually kick the pimp’s ass). The rapper confronting the pimp is “signifying” what “this big bad, faggot” rapper is going to say to him when he confronts him. There’s also the double-signifying of the signifying rapper using the pimp’s insult of “faggot” to describe the big bad rapper. It’s not interesting that a rapper would know about “signifying” but it is interesting that he would openly refer to it. Rap often shies away from being so overtly intellectual but Schooly pulls it off because the song itself is about the signifying rapper; you don’t need to get what that means or entails to enjoy the song…

But I said that wasn’t that interesting, right? And it’s not because the real thing about this song is that it fucking rules. As I said, the “beat” is heavy like Zeppelin but tougher and scarier due to repetition and the rawness of the recording. It just starts and goes and goes for almost five minutes only letting up for the final line: “I shoulda kicked your ass/My motherfuckin’ self”. Schooly is technically rapping, you can break the lines down and everything- but the storytelling aspect of his delivery takes over. He moves in and out of emotions, performing different voices, and he shifts his cadence to match the tone of the story rather than the beat. It’s just fucking awesome. Drive around to it, you’ll see.

I mentioned this book above and I talked about it here and I do recommend the book even though its intellectualism can be grating and it often feels more bemused by rap than appreciative (the original wigsters?). Nevertheless, it also bursts with enthusiasm, even if it’s the kind of enthusiasm that makes one spout out postmodern theory. Wallace really gets the song and sums up its point well:

“a person, even if small, marginal, and oppressed, can still say pretty much whatever he likes to whomever he wishes, and do it with impunity, so long as he has enough ball to present what’s said as a message…a delivery from the heart and mouth of some Other”(78)

What troubles me about Wallace’s intellectual interest in rap is that it sucks the life out of the song. Can’t you just imagine, even today, a Professor being incredibly “intriqued” (my god, they’re always fucking intriqued) by a rap song that makes the signs and signifiers of rap so explicit as when Schooly says “Remember that law?/When you had to put your shades on to be cool?”. This intellectualism too, permits Schooly to say stuff like “She so low/She suck the dick of a little maggot…”. It is excused because Schooly knows what “signifying” is but also because the signifying even extends to Schooly and sensitive, intellectual types can see Schooly as only the deliverer of these insults (which he is and isn’t and is and isn’t and is again); he’s not gasp- actually saying faggot. Well, fuck that, that’s why the song is good and why rap is better than anything else ever made (pretty much). It can be really “smart” and actually smart and dumb all at the same time! Wrap your head around that Bill O’Reilly…

Last week, I watched Abel Ferrara’s ‘The Bad Lieutenant’ which originally featured ‘Signifying Rapper’ in three different scenes. I say originally because at some point after the theatrical release and home video release, Jimmy Page heard his riff on ‘Signifying Rapper’ and sued. Subsequently, the song was removed. I could explain it but Abel Ferrrara does a much better job in this interview:

“Oh, yeah. I’ll strangle that cocksucker Jimmy Page. As if every fucking lick that guy ever played didn’t come off a Robert Johnson album. “Signifying Rapper” was out for five years, and there wasn’t a problem. Then the film had already been out for two years and they start bitching about it. And these pricks, when their attorneys are on the job, our guys are afraid to come out of their office. You’re not gonna fight their fucking warriors, you know what I mean? Can you imagine, this was down at a federal court in New York, with a 70-year-old judge, and they’re playing Schoolly D and Led Zeppelin to the guy? It cost Schoolly like $50,000. It was a nightmare. And meanwhile, “Signifying Rapper” is 50 million times better than “Kashmir” ever thought of being. And then, this prick [Page] turns around with Puff Daddy and redoes it for the Godzilla soundtrack. Here’s Puff Daddy, where every other song this boy sang was King Of New York this and King Of New York that. And I would never even fucking think of suing these guys. Why sue? You should be happy that somebody is paying homage to your work.”

Lots of good points there. First, there’s the whole aspect of what “sampling” really means? Wasn’t Page “sampling” Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson and others? Yes, Willie Dixon sued his ass at some point, making Page’s suit even more retarded. Schooly D was certainly commenting on this when he decided to base a song around ‘Kashmir’; He’s smart like that, remember? I’m also confused as to how it is illegal to re-play something on a record like that? Isn’t that how sample laws are avoided? Maybe a reader can explain it to me?

Second, it’s messed-up because it seems directly related to Page playing on ‘Come With Me’. To me, it seems as if ‘Signifying Rapper’ was wiped away as not to somehow compete or co-exist with Puffy’s ‘Kashmir’-sampling track. It becomes particularly egregious as if someone really had a grudge against Ferrara because of course, Biggie called himself “Black Frank White” in reference to Ferrara’s hip-hop classic ‘King of New York’.

Third, the absence of ‘Signifying Rapper’ in ‘The Bad Lieutenant’ is felt. I rented the DVD and only reading about the movie later, did I find out about the Schooly D music. I was lucky enough to grab an old VHS copy from a local video store that still has ‘Signifying Rapper’ in the scene. It doesn’t totally change the movie or anything but it certainly shifts the context of certain scenes and broadens some of the movie’s points.

Scene One: “Get Back, Police Activity”
As the Lieutenant runs down the street, the Zep rip-off riffs of ‘Signifying Rapper’ play. A group of young black kids, one of which just handed off drugs to a moving car, run away from the Lieutenant. He chases one into an apartment and at the top of the steps, the chase stops. It was a ruse; the Lieutenant is a customer (and occasional supplier). The scene also shows the movie’s dark humor as the Lieutenant shuts up a complaining neighbor between hits from a crack pipe.

At first, you hear the super-identifiable ‘Kashmir’ riff and it maybe reads like some bad-ass theme for the white cop. Then, Schooly comes in and the song becomes a typical, Hollywood “ghetto” atmosphere-setting song (play rap when white characters go to a black area). Then…once the Lieutenant is shown to be pretty much the same (only way worse of a person) than the dealer, the song sort of becomes the Lieutenant’s theme. This would be missed or ignored for most viewers then because even today, rap music is rarely used in relation to white characters for anything other than irony (exceptions: ‘Boiler Room’ & ‘Office Space’).

Below is the scene without the Schooly D (presumably ripped from a DVD)…

Scene Two: The Rape of the Nun
One of the best thing about the movie is that it is essentially plotless, structured around a couple of days in the life of this self-destructive Lieutenant. Yet, it has some threads that hold it together and one of them is the investigation by the Lieutenant of the rape of a nun.

Ferrara plays the rape out fairly respectfully. Although it is explicit, it is not gratuitous and it has an over-stylized feeling to it. A Virgin Mary falls in slow-motion. The entire scene is bathed in red light. It’s sort of surreal and kind of reminded me of Alex’s biblical sex fantasies from ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Originally, this scene was accompanied by ‘Signifying Rapper’ but in the DVD, it is replaced with classical music. This is a real shame because the super-obvious visuals are moved into pretension by the music. In the original version, ‘Signifying Rapper’ acts as counterpoint to the super-serious religious imagery and was meant to complicate the scene and give it one additional shock (besides a nun being raped!).

Scene Three: End Credits
The DVD version ends with a Dylan-esque song called ‘The Bad Lieutenant’ played by Abel Ferrara which gives a very different feeling than ‘Signifying Rapper’. For me, ‘Signifying Rapper’ just kind of feels like the Lieutenant and I think that ending the movie with the song really does sort of solidify it as the Lieutenant’s theme. Imagine leaving the theater to ‘Signifying Rapper’! It becomes a final reminder of the Lieutenant which makes sense because the movie has, while not exactly sympathetic, a non-judgemental perspective on his actions.

The camera is often hand-held bouncing right behind him, nearly subjective. It also captures his explosions of anger as well as his explosions of guilt and regret, so he isn’t just a horrible, remorseless person.

Harvey Keitel gives a really amazing performance, especially when he kind of grimaces and scream-grunts in frustration (see the clip below) like a little kid. You don’t like the Lieutenant in the movie (okay, I did, but there’s something wrong with me) but you’re so close to him for just about every minute in the movie that you can’t help but feel something for him. Ending on ‘Signifying Rapper’ nearly resurrects him one last time as you’re leaving the theater.
-Costello, Mark and David Foster Wallace. ‘Signifying Rappers’. Ecco Press: New York, 1990.

OhWord Article: Don Dewar Is a Major Tool.

“Even local, piece-of-shit, wannabe, city councilmen are using hip-hop hate to fuel their political ambitions. Maybe you read about it on XXL but if you didn’t, on Friday a Juelz Santana/Lil Wayne concert was scheduled in Baltimore. Hoping to make a name for himself, Democratic candidate for city council Donald J. Dewar III, ran around with the flier above, printed on really nice paper, and hassled the residents of the area where the concert was being held. The entire thing is well, really easy to make fun of, so I’ll leave that for the comments section, but there are some things worth noting…”

Just Some Good Videos

Support Your Local, Prick Independent Music Store Pt. 2: Indie vs. Mom & PopCommenting on yesterday’s rant, Noz rightfully pointed out that I “should draw a distinction between ‘Mom & Pop,’ as in the general interest, privately owned community catering record store, and ‘Indie,’ the cooler than thou underground/specialty spot” adding that it is “the former is what suffers the most from the mega stores.”. I would certainly agree that the indie-ish stores have more of a core audience but I’d also add that I have an equal lack of sympathy for the Mom and Pops. The illusion that something non-corporate or “underground” is automatically better or worth supporting on principle alone, is something I grew out of by the time I got to college. Most Mom and Pops are run with the same degree of ruthlessness and disinterest in music as a Best Buy or Wal-Mart. I was recently at a Mom and Pop I frequent and heard the owner, pushing around the employees before telling them “Put that Taleeb Kwalee display out” and walking out the door.

The Mom and Pop can rip you off or fuck you over because they don’t have to answers to higher-ups. They are corporate stores with a martyr complex (they’re being run into the ground, you know) so they justify their shady tactics. For five years, I worked at a Mom and Pop video store and in that time, never missed a day of work that I didn’t find a replacement for, worked just about every Holiday (because the owner would never schedule herself or her daughter to work on such days), and when I got a real job, which significantly cut-down my hours, they let me go.

On Christmas, the only holiday they closed up for, they would sometimes leave a note on the door claiming that they would be open on Christmas. On December 26th, the manager would tell you to charge the customers for not returning the movie on Christmas day unless they tell you they came up yesterday to find the store closed. I simply didn’t do this because I felt more of a connection to the customers than the store but the fact those tactics, forcing employees to lie and manipulate, remind me of the complaints regularly mentioned about big-name stores.

At first, I was idealistic about working in a Mom and Pop (and used the non-corporate cred. to get girls, just mention some anti-corporate signifiers and the panties drop!) but events like the Great Christmas Hustle of 2004 made me realize this wasn’t any different than working for a corporation. I stuck around because I was too scared to find another job and you could do shit like smoke weed behind the building or play softball in the parking lot but even those fun times, I would’ve traded for a Thanksgiving off and a decent pay raise.

In retrospect, I realize that had I worked at a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, as diligently and for that length of time, I probably would have rose to some kind of managerial position and maybe even gained some kind of health benefits. At this Mom and Pop (and many I’d imagine), the possibility to move-up is non-existent because the owners function as the workers as well and while idealistic types see that as somehow warm or human, it really just means you interact with the person that fucks you in the ass instead of never seeing them because they sit behind a desk hundreds of miles away.

I was at a friend’s house a few weeks ago and flipping through the channels, the friend’s roommate asked to stop on a channel showing some super-obvious documentary against Wal-Mart. Wanting to spare the room an anti-Wal-Mart rant, Monique blurted out “I love Wal-Mart” and I smugly concurred (because a real discussion of Wal-Mart’s good and bad qualities wasn’t going to develop). The smug roommate (No disrespect to you P.K, but you gots to chill) responded in a voice suggesting a more relevant counter-point than the one he had, said “Oh, you’ll eat at Holy Frijoles and shop at Wal-Mart?!” (I’ll explain Holy Frijoles in a moment). He thought he was somehow finding a discrepancy between us happening to eat at some hipster restaurant earlier in the evening and shopping at Wal-Mart. I seriously forgot that anyone around my age still held such simplistic, black and white opinions on independent and corporate entities which, as I said yesterday, are really easy to have when you’re young, well-off, and single and therefore, don’t have to shop at a place like Wal-Mart.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Holy Frijoles. Holy Frijoles is a sort of hipster Mexican restaurant located in one of Maryland’s most popular bastions of both coolness and Balda’more-ness, Hampden, MD. Hampden has the unique population of young, decent-minded hipsters and lower-middle class White trash (“Dude, there’s so many ugly people around here”-JJ), somehow living nearly together, mostly peacefully, primarily due to their united negrophobia. Seriously, black people just don’t live in the surrounding area known as Hampden. My father at the ripe old age of 18, somehow managed numerous Royal Farms Stores in Baltimore (dude’s a go-getta but was raising me along with my 17 year old mom, so he had to be) including one in Hampden and from a very young age, spoke of the hypocrisy of “bohemian” places like Hampden which uses the lower-middle class whites to appear anti-elitist, all the while scoffing at the occasional black customer and/or refusing to hold the door for black truck drivers carting in their cigarettes and donuts (Dad also voted for George Bush; The world is complicated.).

One of the most striking things about Holy Frijoles is the way one can see back into the kitchen, revealing a cramped, dirty room totally out of ‘Das Boot’ full of black people making my 8 dollar burrito! Wonderful! You will never see these guys out of the kitchen and in the restaurant, the closet you’ll get to an ethnicity “on the floor” is those indie guys that look like Fez from ‘That 70s Show’- it’s like God created this specific indie type for the indie chick who won’t date black dudes but needs to rep her liberal arts education open-mindedness and goes for some American Apparel-wearing Beaner…but I’ve digressed now haven’t I? The point is, if the jerkoff who runs Holy fucking Frijoles ran a big business it seems like it’d be a lot like a Wal-Mart.

Support Your Local, Prick Independent Music Store Pt. 1: Best Buy.

I received a few e-mails giving me shit for buying ‘Underground Kingz’ from a Best Buy. Most were half-informed rants that repeat stuff like “corporate entities” but one was, although a bit condescending, earnest in its attempt to inform me of how independent record stores are going out of business, etc. etc. Of course, I know that, I just don’t care. Generally, I respond to just about every e-mail I get, but numerous attempts at concisely explaining my position got really long and not-concise and I figured I’d turn it into a blog entry.

First, I do support plenty of independent music stores, probably at least as much if not more than the douchebags that sent me self-righteous e-mails. I don’t really work much or very hard, so my yearly income is somewhere around $10,000. I would say it is a safe estimate that I literally spend at least $1000 dollars a year on CDs and records and most of that is not at Best Buy. Last night, when I got home from a record store (picked up a used copy of Devin’s ‘Coughee Brothaz’ album that comes out in a few weeks and ‘Green Street’ by Grant Green) to find my latest credit card bill in the mailbox: I owe $1,481! So yeah, I “support” (whatever that means) record stores so much it will probably ruin my credit.

My only Best Buy shopping is with new rap releases because they sell them for mad cheap and Best Buy is like a 10 minute drive from my house while my closest independent record store is at least 30. Also, Best Buy opens at 10am and when I’m so excited about the new UGK that I can’t sleep, I don’t want to drive another 20 minutes and wait until 11 or 12 or whatever time some fat fuck who runs the indie store decides to wake up and open his store.

Second, there’s the very real fact that you can’t depend on an independent record store to have anything. See, independently-owned record stores are essentially fascist and more often than not, cater to what the people who work there or run it listen to. If you’re lucky, that is awesome but it generally means they have a lot of releases from KRANKY and not what I’m looking for. It really is possible that the owner of any indie record store does not know UGK or does not care and would choose not to order it because indie stores are working with a lot less money and have to make decisions to not carry stuff. Oh right, they can “order it” for me but why the fuck would I do that when I can go down the street and get it right now? I’m not the Jesus Christ of music purchasing; I don’t have that kind of constitution.

When ‘†’ by Justice came out, I drove all over Baltimore looking for the CD and you know where I finally found it? Best Buy! The past week or so, I’ve obsessively sought-out ‘The King of Roq’ from Baltimore’s Blaq Starr and the only place that has it is not a record store at all but a shoe store: Downtown Locker Room. In the past however, it is Best Buy and FYE that carry and support local Baltimore artists and if you were a local artist, wouldn’t you want your album in a big store like Best Buy?! You’d reach a much larger and broader audience placing your music in a Best Buy than in an independently-owned store and frankly, the corporate sheep of Best Buy will support the product more; you won’t run into some surly record twat who “hates” Baltimore Club or gives you a rant about how that CD sucks as you’re purchasing it!.

I once myself wallowed in the smug pride and complacency of believing people should shop independent and all that, but the actual differences between corporate and independent is pretty negligible.

In terms of music consumption, a store like Best Buy probably exposes just as many people to new music as the “cool” record store named after a Captain Beefheart song. Before I could drive or had a credit card, my options on where I could purchase shit was pretty much limited to Best Buy. I’d go with my mom to the mall and I’d tell her I was going in some store and I’d find her in an hour and then I’d run across the street to Best Buy and obsessively run-around looking for whatever CDs I wanted. I remember buying ‘Kind of Blue’, ‘It Takes a Nation…’, and Yo La Tengo’s ‘I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One’ in an eighth-grade birthday money spending blow-out. Now, is it better that I heard those even if it meant buying them from a “corporate entity” or should I never have heard them? Best Buy has a decent balance of independent and relatively obscure music with mainstream stuff and if you’re some interesting kid in the middle of nowhere, it serves its purpose especially now that all the “indie” artists have sold-out (but won’t admit it). The selection in many independent stores isn’t that much different from Best Buy. Of course, that too will be blamed on evil corporate takeover tactics and not most indie clerks a) not searching out new, interesting music and b) selling the same stuff because it sells and they too are only concerned with the bottom line.

It is the luxury of the fairly well-off to preach independent shopping. For those with less time and less money, it is harder to justify dropping a few more dollars on something they want just because a bunch of jerkoffs have made where and what one purchases an ethical fucking issue. In a few months, some Mom will be buying the new 50 Cent for their child. Best Buy will have Christmas sales that may bring the album under $10 dollars, while purchasing it somewhere else it’d be closer to $15. To a parent without a lot of money trying to buy what their kid wants, that $5 matters; it means her kid gets one more stocking stuffer. All of the Corporate haters have either never had their options and time extremely limited or have forgotten what that is like.

Kanye West’s ‘Barry Bonds’ featuring Lil Wayne.
Godammit. For the second week in a row, as I’m typing up an entry, my rss feedermajigger shows Tom Breihan beat me to the punch. Here’s his take on ‘Barry Bonds’…

When ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ and ‘Stronger’ dropped as singles, they sounded so much like fully planned-out singles that they felt a bit cloying (even if they are still better than anything else on the radio). In contrast, ‘Barry Bonds’ sounds immediate. Although the nonsense chorus “Here’s another hit, Barry Bonds” is so topical as to feel gimmicky, it also gives the song a tossed-off feeling, like it was recorded last week (and maybe it was). It is refreshing for a song to not sound or present itself as an event but just a good song.

Kanye’s beat contains the expected Kanyeisms of late (Jon Brion piano noodling, those Mountain samples he uses on everything these days), but they interact with taut but expressive drums that don’t knock like DJ Premier’s but bear his influence, giving the song an good mix of nostalgia and 2007 relevance. There are also those gurgling synths that become more apparent as the track progresses; I’m going to assume they are the work DJ Toomp.

*Noz commented, pointing out that this beat was produced not by Kanye but by Nottz which obviously, you know, confounds the points in the above paragraph. But only kind of- I’d still imagine Kanye has something to do with the beat as it features the samples Kanye’s been applying to many of his beats lately. The keyboard tone heard on ‘Late’ is here and some of the ‘Finding Forever’ tracks; you also get that Mountain sample on ‘The People’ and ‘Wouldn’t Get Far’. Still, the beat is Nottz’s, not Kanye’s and yeah, those drums and those synths I credited to Toomp do sound like Nottz.

‘Stronger’ is really just a loop and ‘Can’t Tell Me Nothing’ sounded more like a through the mail beat-share between Toomp and Kanye than an actual collabo but on ‘Barry Bonds’ the techniques gel a lot more. If that isn’t Toomp on the synths, then it’s just a cool approximation by Kanye and I prefer that anyways. As I said before, I’m more excited by the idea of a young, relatively limited in his connections Kanye biting the drums from ‘XXplosive’ than the superstar Kanye calling Dre to get some Dre drums.

Unfortunately, the song is nearly ruined by an incredibly half-assed Lil Wayne verse. Weezy spends more than 10 seconds squealing and yelping in his stupid fucking voice that is redeemable when he kills it, but here he’s coasting along so it’s just painful. The non-bangerness of the beat can’t be blamed either; there’s plenty of nutso Wayne verses where he entirely ignores the beat.

Wouldn’t it make sense to drop a particularly stellar or weird verse on a Kanye West album? Unlike a lot of other rappers, one can assume Kanye would let him do whatever he wants. This is my biggest problem with Wayne: he seems to fold under pressure every time. He’ll destroy his mixtape verses because those verses hardly matter (and it’s on a mixtape, so the turd-verses are conveniently ignored by worshippers) and he’ll step his game up when his competition is like, Rick Ross and a bored-as-fuck T.I, but on anything that matters, he goes half-assed.

The sheer lack of content in Wayne’s verse and to a lesser extent Kanye’s, is pretty disappointing. Whether you like their flow or not, West and Weezy are dependable for saying something you can think about or feel. I don’t doubt that ‘Graduation’ will have plenty of personal moments, the two singles balance shit-talking and brutally-honest dissections of fame, but I guess in his quest to be a well-respected mega star rapper, Kanye’s dropped some of the idiosyncrasies. Of course, Kanye can brag like no other and some of the lines are delivered with enough fervor that you feel them (“Fresh off the plane, Konichiwa bitches”), moving them beyond braggadocio but still, he’s on the verge of pigeon-holing himself as the clever shit-talker in over his head; That used to be only a part of his personality.

But as Masta Killa said “the dumb are mostly intrigued by the drum” (only a rapper as not-on beat and faux-lyrical as the Masta could drop that gem) and I’m dumb and ‘Barry Bonds’ has a great beat. Lyrical nit-picking aside, while Wayne totally drops the ball, Kanye brings enough joy and swagger to compliment the beat and make a fun song.

In Defense of Pimp C
There’s a point on the UGK Bonus DVD where Rick Ross praises UGK, talking about “Bun B’s flow” and then he stumbles for a second before praising Pimp C, finally committing to “Pimp C’s charisma” and the way Pimp well, sounds like a pimp. Ross stumbles because what makes Pimp C great is a lot less tangible than Bun B’s articulate drawl or ridiculous ability to stay on beat.

By any conventional standard, Pimp is a poor rapper and while praising him for his “charisma” is apt, it is the kind of half-bullshit argument guys like me make to defend Young Jeezy and well, Pimp C brings a little more to the table than the Snowman. Pimp is unbridled in his flow and rhyming, which can lead to some cringe-inducing clunkers, but he’s equally unbridled with his content, making him more honest than just about any rapper out there. He sincerely asks, “I wonder if there’s a Heaven up there for real Gs” and also angrily threatens to put “dick up in your daughter”. Pimp can talk more shit and drop more tear-jerking lines; there’s no filter or rather, he gives the illusion that there isn’t a filter so on, ‘Swishas and Doshas’ he rhymes “sparkling” and “chocolate” but he also drops the very-honest line about how he “ain’t got no friends since [he] got out the pen”. That honesty, to me, is more significant than being technically good or even adequate.

I can’t help but think of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who although technically better, has a similarly polarzing way of navigating emotional extremes. In a poetry class I took, the ODB was brought up jokingly by the professor causing a dread-locked, militant, light-skinned (surprise, surprise) girl to roll her eyes and go on a rant about what the ODB “represents”. Of course, he represented everything that is wrong with black people and blah blah blah. The professor calmly replied with an anecdote his mother told him as a child; that “some people’s farts smell worse than others but no one’s smell like roses”. It was profound and scatological, like the ODB; it applies to Pimp C as well.

Why do people crave consistency? Pimp’s flow and attitude is an embrace of chaos that most people like to believe doesn’t exist. Whether they believe in radical politics or some Platonic sense of “good rapping” it’s all complacency employed to keep the real and horrible out. I used to understand critiques of Pimp’s flow and still laugh about it, but after hearing ‘Underground Kingz’ at least 50 times in the past week, all I hear is real. Not some “soul-bearing”-bullshit-need-to-express-himself real, but honesty rooted in experience and an understanding of just how fucked up shit can get. You see it too, on that aforementioned Bonus DVD when Pimp, talks of how the people in prison aren’t all bad but have caught a bad break or made a mistake or can’t hack it once they get in there…and this comes from the guy whose catchphrase as of late is “Fuck how you feel”.