So, hey, I like hip-hop. What?
I managed to get my grabby little hands on the first and second seasons of "Chapelle's Show" over the last couple of days, and I've been watching them obsessively. However, over the last couple of nights, I noticed something very strange.
I suddenly found myself grooving to the music performances. And I don't just mean nodding my head; I mean full-on, "Fuck yeah!", dancing in my living room kinda stuff. Anyone who knows me will wonder what the hell happened. To be honest, I don't know. And I should preface this by saying that I'm including a lot of different type of R&B and soul in with "hip-hop", simply for lack of a better catch-all name. ("Black music" doesn't really cut it, does it?)
I'll say this: it doesn't hurt when the musical performances start off with Mos Def. He's someone I've always admired, and not surprisingly, I do like intelligent, political commentary which is what a lot of his music is. I liked the performance by Wyclef Jean for much the same reason. But it was when I started really grooving to DMX that I knew I'd... uh... lost my mind, I suppose.
But really, what has me entranced is the way that the music is filled with so much passion. Like the Erykah Badu performance, singing "Back in the Day" - it's a brilliant lament for an easier time, when we were young enough to believe the world wasn't filled with problems and our personal lives were so much easier to manage. It's both a message that has relevance to everyone, as all our lives tend to get increasingly complicated as we get older, but also a specially relevant message from people stuck in oppressive circumstances, which just wear on you as you get older, like living live pressed against sandpaper. Since I mentioned DMX, I heard the same thing in his music, except instead of a sad passion, it's an anger and frustration, the kind that boils over in things like the race riots of the 60s and 70s, or the LA riots after the first Rodney King verdict. And seeing him perform live, to see how much the lyrics mean to him, to realize that this is a cathartic thing and an expression of repressed rage for millions of young men and women who only know the crushing emptiness of urban life, added a whole new dimension to the music. He has worked his ass off to be spot-on with what he does, because it clearly means something to him, and that only truly comes out when you see him doing it, in the moment. MTV and over-worked studio recordings don't capture the life of hip-hop, I suppose. From underground jazz clubs, to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, hip-hop is rooted in a tradition of music for and by common people, and the corporatization just seems to suck the life out of that.
I mean, when you think of it, if you're a young black man in the lower east side of New York City, what are your options in life? If you want out of that life, you can work your ass off in school... and get rejected by every American university or college under the sun because of the "reputation" of your high school (meaning it's in the ghetto, and good things don't come out of the ghetto). You can work your ass off and try to get out on sports scholarship, but that's like winning the lottery. You can turn to crime, which is one of the reason that crime is so prominent in places like that: so many other doors are closed, that it becomes a very viable option by comparisson. Or you can try to do something creative and get noticed for that. Every urban centre is filled with dozens or hundreds of aspiring MCs, soul singers, DJs, and now crump dancers and so on, and the vast majority are driven by a passion for expressing themselves in a way that will actually be LISTENED TO for once, and the knowledge that to fail means a hard, short life on some pretty mean streets. Both the reason for the vast popularity of hip-hop - its accessability, its relevance, and the way that many people find it expressing things they otherwise keep locked away - and the importance of it in a social and political sense became clear to me as I watched these performances.
I won't say I like ALL hip-hop. I still have trouble picturing myself listening to much 50 Cent, or Biggie, or the bullshit, artificial, gangsta-loving, ho-slapping, bullshit that record labels are so in love with right now. I don't think I can find the time for people who don't think deeply about their craft and expression the kind of passion that has me hooked. But then again, I'm no different when I listen to rock music. There's a reason I don't listen to Creed or Yellowcard or other groups like them: they flat-out fucking suck (how's that for technical analysis). But hip-hop that speaks to the soul, hip-hop that people like Dick Cheyney will never understand, hip-hop that includes the tradition of Malcom X, Ali, Miles Davis, and so many others... that I think I can get into. So my exploration of hip-hop begins. I'll be starting with some of the people I've watched perform recently - Mos Def, Erykah Badu, the Fugees, Kanye West - as well as some that I've had recommended to me - Jay-Z, Dead Prez, The Coup, and even going back to Public Enemy. I also need to do some more searching into the more soulful side of the music, though simply because of the relative lack of media attention, I'm finding that a harder place to get to. But nonetheless, hip-hop has officially won me over.
I suddenly found myself grooving to the music performances. And I don't just mean nodding my head; I mean full-on, "Fuck yeah!", dancing in my living room kinda stuff. Anyone who knows me will wonder what the hell happened. To be honest, I don't know. And I should preface this by saying that I'm including a lot of different type of R&B and soul in with "hip-hop", simply for lack of a better catch-all name. ("Black music" doesn't really cut it, does it?)
I'll say this: it doesn't hurt when the musical performances start off with Mos Def. He's someone I've always admired, and not surprisingly, I do like intelligent, political commentary which is what a lot of his music is. I liked the performance by Wyclef Jean for much the same reason. But it was when I started really grooving to DMX that I knew I'd... uh... lost my mind, I suppose.
But really, what has me entranced is the way that the music is filled with so much passion. Like the Erykah Badu performance, singing "Back in the Day" - it's a brilliant lament for an easier time, when we were young enough to believe the world wasn't filled with problems and our personal lives were so much easier to manage. It's both a message that has relevance to everyone, as all our lives tend to get increasingly complicated as we get older, but also a specially relevant message from people stuck in oppressive circumstances, which just wear on you as you get older, like living live pressed against sandpaper. Since I mentioned DMX, I heard the same thing in his music, except instead of a sad passion, it's an anger and frustration, the kind that boils over in things like the race riots of the 60s and 70s, or the LA riots after the first Rodney King verdict. And seeing him perform live, to see how much the lyrics mean to him, to realize that this is a cathartic thing and an expression of repressed rage for millions of young men and women who only know the crushing emptiness of urban life, added a whole new dimension to the music. He has worked his ass off to be spot-on with what he does, because it clearly means something to him, and that only truly comes out when you see him doing it, in the moment. MTV and over-worked studio recordings don't capture the life of hip-hop, I suppose. From underground jazz clubs, to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, hip-hop is rooted in a tradition of music for and by common people, and the corporatization just seems to suck the life out of that.
I mean, when you think of it, if you're a young black man in the lower east side of New York City, what are your options in life? If you want out of that life, you can work your ass off in school... and get rejected by every American university or college under the sun because of the "reputation" of your high school (meaning it's in the ghetto, and good things don't come out of the ghetto). You can work your ass off and try to get out on sports scholarship, but that's like winning the lottery. You can turn to crime, which is one of the reason that crime is so prominent in places like that: so many other doors are closed, that it becomes a very viable option by comparisson. Or you can try to do something creative and get noticed for that. Every urban centre is filled with dozens or hundreds of aspiring MCs, soul singers, DJs, and now crump dancers and so on, and the vast majority are driven by a passion for expressing themselves in a way that will actually be LISTENED TO for once, and the knowledge that to fail means a hard, short life on some pretty mean streets. Both the reason for the vast popularity of hip-hop - its accessability, its relevance, and the way that many people find it expressing things they otherwise keep locked away - and the importance of it in a social and political sense became clear to me as I watched these performances.
I won't say I like ALL hip-hop. I still have trouble picturing myself listening to much 50 Cent, or Biggie, or the bullshit, artificial, gangsta-loving, ho-slapping, bullshit that record labels are so in love with right now. I don't think I can find the time for people who don't think deeply about their craft and expression the kind of passion that has me hooked. But then again, I'm no different when I listen to rock music. There's a reason I don't listen to Creed or Yellowcard or other groups like them: they flat-out fucking suck (how's that for technical analysis). But hip-hop that speaks to the soul, hip-hop that people like Dick Cheyney will never understand, hip-hop that includes the tradition of Malcom X, Ali, Miles Davis, and so many others... that I think I can get into. So my exploration of hip-hop begins. I'll be starting with some of the people I've watched perform recently - Mos Def, Erykah Badu, the Fugees, Kanye West - as well as some that I've had recommended to me - Jay-Z, Dead Prez, The Coup, and even going back to Public Enemy. I also need to do some more searching into the more soulful side of the music, though simply because of the relative lack of media attention, I'm finding that a harder place to get to. But nonetheless, hip-hop has officially won me over.