Classic Hip Hop is Like Porn

I know it when I, uh, see it, and Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric have made a strong play for classic status with their new album Czarface.

Actually, the Hip-Hop Classic Committee would probably deny me a vote.  I just haven't kept up with enough stuff over the past few years.  I needed a Google search to tell me that 7L & Esoteric were not some kids but veterans almost 20 years deep in the game.  Given that I lack the necessary credentials to be seated, I hope this amicus brief pleases the court.

Anyway, Czarface rocks the bells.  The emcees reminds me of Black Thought, not in style, but in the sense that you are in the hands of a consummate professional.  Not sure that either Deck or Esoteric deliver a whole lot of memorable verses or even lines, but the skill and craft are evident in every syllable.  Given than beats mean more to me that rhymes, a high level of competency is enough to satisfy.

And those beats?  Son.  SON.  Somebody got high honors on their thesis at the University of Shaolin.  If Ghost had his way and a good ear, he'd have dropped whatever money he needed to buy them all, dropped the Octagonycologist verses, and released the whole thing as Supreme Clientele II.  When I reviewed that Kendrick Lamar joint, I denied it personal classic status because the verses were just a wee bit too digital for my tastes.  Well, that's not a problem with Csarface in the least.  The hiss in the drums is there.  The boom bap is alive.  The martial arts samples and looped weird noises that sounds like martial arts soundtracks are there.  The ill scratches are there.

Son, I fucks wit the beats.  I fucks wit them completely and wit great vigor.

Yeah, so if you ever threw up a W, you need this shit.

The Greatest Song Ever of the Week

The Greatest Song Ever of the Week is Cunninlynguists' “Southernunderground.”  To listen to this song is to confront hip hop in its totality.  Put bluntly (pun intended), this song is a monster, in all senses of the words.

Cunninlynguists is not an act I plan on sharing with my girlfriend anytime soon, let alone my mother.  Hip hop has all different kinds of misogyny it can throw at you, but “Southernunderground” features the type that might be most least favorite: the hate that technically proficient emcees often use to assure the listener that they aren’t bougie.  In the span of two minutes, each of the three emcees manages to write off women as sexual punch lines.

The frustrating thing is that Cunninlynguists clearly don’t need to rely on tired, hateful clichés, because they are obvious master of their forms.  These dudes typify the early 2000s come up of the underground, where rappers could conjure up internal rhyme schemes so complicated it hurts to try to plot them, all without sacrificing any delivery or charisma.  Listening to “Southernunderground,” it’s no longer worth arguing that anything besides hip hop is the highest, most advanced form of oral expression that we’ve ever seen.

Non fans need not apply.  Much of it is completely indefensible.  But it is wildly creative, completely addictive, and never compromises anything.  It’s hip hop.

The Ten Millionth Kendrick Lamar Blog Post

I know I'm late with this post.  I know everyone and their mother has screamed good things about this album.

But if ever cared about hip hop, go get the Kendrick Lamar record.  I'm not sure if it's the instant classic many say it is, mainly because modern production techniques like compression leave me cold.  Good Kid M.A.A.D. City's beats are as hot as beats can get in 2012, but they still sound a little clinical and overly digital for my tastes.  The boom bap is there, but not like it used to be.  You have every right to dismiss such complaints as another old guy whining and waxing nostalgic for an 808 and Primo's technique, but if we're serious about our standards for a classic, these are the heights an album's beats must reach.

Lamar himself deserves every bit of acclaim he's receiving.  He's simply a lyrical monster.  Rod from The Black Guy Who Tips made fun of the developing cottage industry of dudes trying to flow over the album's beats, because there's absolutely no way anyone can exceed the lyrics K. Dot has already spit. I don't need to break down how brilliantly he weaves the extended metaphor throughout the entire album, because someone has already done it.

If I have to pick my favorite thing about Kendrick's rhyming on the record, it's how he manages to presents the joys of youthful nihilism and reflect on their consequences at the same time.  Listen Money Trees or Backseat Freestyle, Kendrick communicates both the excitement I remember from raising hell as a kid and the remorse I feel about most of that stuff now.  I couldn't write an essay on the topic half as elegant, and he's doing it as poetry.  Amazing.

Anyway, if you haven't yet, do whatever you have to do to listen to this record.

The Most Overrated Hip-Hop Track of All Time

I'm about to get crucified, so let me clarify.  It is a GREAT song.  I love it.  But it gets so much love from people of a certain age as the GREATEST hip-hop track ever that it's high time someone stepped in to stop the madness.

"T.R.O.Y." is NOT the greatest hip-hop track ever.

I mean, it's just a guy talking about his family and growing up, which in no way goes with the producer's central conceit, which is about the passing of a loved one.  The beat IS an all-time classic, but the rhymes are not, and, again, they don't match one another.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy it.  A lot.

The Black Swan, Speed Racer, and Why Good is Overrated

Last night, I watched The Black Swan for the first time.

Dawg, HER ARMS TURNED TO WINGS.

It has come to my attention that some fools didn't like this movie.  Specifically, some fools be saying that this movie is melodramatic camp filled with ridiculous imagery.

Fools, STOP BEING FOOLS!!  Of COURSE it's melodramatic camp!  Some among you might recognize that there's nothing fundamentally wrong and a lot right with well-executed melodrama.  But I'd argue that The Black Swan is cool and amazing beyond any camp elements.  I love a well told, well executed plot as much as anyone, but to me, that's not what movies do best.  Movies have the ability to take advantage of image and movement.  Where a movie like Frost/Nixon, which I also love, uses plot as the device to engage the intelligent viewer, The Black Swan uses imagery, psychology, and melodrama.  The Black Swan people spend just as much time thinking about what Natalie Portman should look like as the best traditional playwrites thought about crafting a coherent plot.

Besides, in the postmodern world, do you really care about why a really cool image hits the screen?  Of course you don't.  You care whether the sheer specter of Cthulhu coming out of the water is the most terrifying, nightmarish image you can think of, precisely because it comes from a place that doesn't entirely make sense to you.  Does it hit you on a really primal, pre-rational level?  Does it get into your dreams at night?  Does it mess with your head, stick with you, blow open your mind to new possibilities about things that crawl around in muck hidden from everyday experience?  These are the questions that matter for the most meaningful art of our age.

That might seem to lead to down the road where I'm apologizing for the Michael Bays and James Camerons of the world, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Those lazy hacks are just playing to people's expectations and giving them comfort food.  In of themselves, special effects do not blow people's minds, because special effects have become the expectation for a certain type of film.  The people behind movies like The Black Swan, Speed Racer, and other such movies are working as hard as they can to expand our horizons.  In true postmodern/hip-hop style, The Black Swan blends genres to create the effect.  I can't imagine how the jerk marketing executives at Fox Searchlight felt when they started watching what they probably thought was going to be a beautiful little dance movie with Queen Amidala that they could sell to families at Christmas only to realize that it became a psychological piece about 30 minutes in and a complete psychedelic mindfck for the last half hour.

Look, man, I don't know how many ways to say it: the organizing principle of TWEDP is that human perception is limited, and that anything that gets us out of our rational mindset to consider what we have previously excluded is a great thing.  I could never, ever, ever have imagined that a movie like The Black Swan, or the images within it, could be imagined by people.  That makes it a win.

The Joys of Turntable

Homes, have you heard the Good News?  Old people can be cool again, all thanks to a little web site called Turntable.  

I know, I know.  Turntable is not exactly breaking news to a lot of you, and you've probably heard me sing its praises sometimes since I joined 7 months ago.  This message is not for you, however.

Old folks like myself tend to miss when new music technologies break.  I got in on Pandora about two years late (as Joni Klopp will be happy to remind you), and stuff like last.fm and Kaaza are still mysteries to me.  As a consequence, the new music I found was limited to whatever I could scrounge up from my friends' blogs and radio shows.  It is a very distressing part of getting older when you start to be not that good at the things that used to matter a lot.  There's only so many times a thirtysomething can talk about the new album by that band they loved in college before s/he feels lame.

But there is hope, and it's Turntable.  Turntable is nice in part because it's so approachable.  Instead of a soulless interface, you get cute little avatars like the ones pictured above.  When you DJ, if people like your song, they hit the "awesome" button, and you get a point.  As you get more points, you can get cooler avatars.  It's a brilliant idea, because it creates an incredibly positive atmosphere.  Everyone wants points, so everyone pretty much awesomes every song.  All that happens if someone doesn't like your songs is that they head over to another room with a different theme.  

So old heads, we can get on and play our My Bloody Valentines and our Gang Starrs, and we'll get head nods, and we'll feel good because we haven't lost it THAT much.  And because we're feeling good and listening to music theme that we like, we're hearing new stuff from the type of people who seek out and awesome MBV and the Foundation.  Combine that with Spotify or Google, and all of a sudden you're up on the new sh!t once again.  Once again, you will impress the cooler friends at your very adult cocktail parties.

Afterword: Right now I'm spinning hip hop in the Shaolin Temple, and the crew wants a shout out.  If y'all want to hear some real hip hop, come on in.  I'll awesome whatever you play.

January in Review

Analytics?  Analytics.  This will be a recurring feature in which I hold myself accountable and review how I did the month before, all in an effort to do better in the future

Days Blogged: 31 of 31, for a 100 percent blog rate

Days Missed, January: 0

Days Missed, 2012: 0

Southern Rap Classic Earned?  Oh, indeed.

Most Viewed Post: Her and Me, January 1st

My Favorite Post: How To Change The World, January 28th

Post I Wish I Had To Do Over: The Ice Cube/Yoga post from yesterday.  I'm in the middle of finishing an article submission of my scholarly work, and I was way too fried to take on something that ambitious.

Three Things I Learned

1. Writing about magic does not go over with my initial audience.
2. TWEDP can be a way to highlight the wonderful things that my friends are doing, and those stories seem to connect with readers.
3. Writing every day is something I can manage.

Three Goals for February

1. Clean up one of my yoga pieces and submit to Elephant Journal.
2. Write about the work to which I am contributing for the Alliance for Student Activities.
3. Write every day.

Reader Ratings: Super.  Thanks for your time and your support.

Is Ice Cube Appropriate in Yoga Class?

Here at TWEDP, we strive to educate our readers. In that spirit, we present the following comment that regular reader and yoga teacher extrordinare Andrea M. left on our FB wall:

“Seriously considered it as an option for rock your asana but then retracted last minute for fear of offending the tribe, who might not appreciate its eloquence.”

The “it” in question?

Now, I don’t know what kind of world Andrea lives in, but a world in which one cannot play Ice Cube freely in every situation is one in which the Taliban has already won.

But in MY world, the Taliban has not won!

In this world, Barack Obama jumped out a helicopter from 1,000 feet with no parachute, killed 17 Taliban nutjob guards using the ancient art of shadowboxing, and ripped Osama Bin Laden’s heart from his chest with his bare hands.

Barack Obama did not defend our freedom just to see us give us the very freedom that drove his vengeance.

So, for my country, I give you

A Spirited Argument To Play Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day” in Yoga Class

Lyrics are in italics. Passionate ranting in regular font.  From the start, I should make it clear that I will concentrate on only those lyrics relevant to the practice of yoga.  Lots of rappers say lots of stuff.

Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God

I should be able to stop after this one line. Ice Cube's entire purpose in writing this song was to express gratitude. Here, he expresses gratitude for the new born day with a terse eloquence that the Dali Lama himself can appreciate, if not match. Gratitude may not be one of the four brahmavihāras towards which Master Patanjali points us, but gratitude is an extremely important virtue in yoga. If I'm not mistaken, the current sign in the front of the world's greatest yoga studio ever is one word, and it isn't "Shelly" (yet).

That sign says gratitude.

No barking from the dog, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog

So what is Ice Cube grateful for? First, he is grateful for a clean environment. We yogis like the environment. You may have seen us driving our hybrids to yoga and eating expensive but pesticide-free organic food. We also like non violence, not just to fellow people but to animals as well. The masters are pretty clear that one fully devoted to yoga will give up meat entirely. Surely the masters would approve of Osage Jackson's refusal to touch that swine.

I got my grub on, but didn't pig out

Moderation. Ice Cube understands that gluttony disrupts equanimity, so he eats only what he needs to sustain himself.

Called up the homies and I'm askin y'all
Which park, are y'all playin basketball?

Physical activity is one of the eight limbs of yoga. Cube understands that a sharp body leads to a sharp mind, which is necessary for the meditation needed to achieve the highest states.

Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A.
Today was a good day

First and foremost, Cube is grateful for life. Every day that you and your peoples all wake up is a good day. It's like Tibetan Buddhism in a Raiders hat and black Wranglers.

The Lakers beat the Supersonics

So a natural body of water defeated a sound only produced by a gas-guzzling, man-made artifice? Again, yogis love nature.

In conclusion, Ice Cube is a Zen prophet for the new era. TWEDP strongly endorses the playing of "Today Was a Good Day," "Black Korea," and other Cube classics in any and all yoga classes.