My best times discovering all the adventures associated with maturing and reaching puberty were accompanied by a hip-hop score. I can chronologically account for each thought, movement, and location in my childhood according to select rap cuts.
This is what and how hip-hop from the five-sided coin perspective impacted my upbringing.
Rapper Nas, when he wants to be, is dangerous if he’s on his game. Dangerous on both sides. Illmatic is “heads”. Choosing to title his latest album “Nigger” in some attempt to “devalue” the derogatory epithet/term of endearment (depending on the party) would be hella "tails”.
The final outcome of the album’s tag was left politically correct as “Untitled” and in my opinion is the best hip-hop release of 2008.
Before “Nigger” was thrown in the “Is This N%$# crazy?” category for the year , “Hip Hop Is Dead” was a project Nas recorded in 2007 that had people buzzing specifically from the shock value of its title.
Prophetically, Nastradamus was and is literally on point with the “Dead” statement.
We are now viewing hip-hop as a rigor-mortis corpse and “the foulest stench is in the air, the funk of 40,000 years….. and grisly [ hip-hop] ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal [our] doom…..” like Vincent Price spoke of on Thriller a quarter century ago (don’t you feel old?).
Remember Michael Jackson?
I asked because Michael Jackson is one of the most unsung pioneers of rap music.
Cutmaster Cool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, Fab 5 Freddy and The Sugarhill Gang would be considered by most as the forefathers of hip-hop.
Nile Rodgers, Deborah Harry and Michael Jackson probably wouldn't garner honorable mention.
This piece isn't about the birth of hip-hop however. It's about the death of it.
While we are speaking on the birth, travel back 25 years and recall watching this........
That wicked bassline, the clothes, the moves, the perm, it was all a microcosm of a variety of styles and influences yet pure and definitive hip-hop from start to finish.
To this day, I have not a clearcut answer to what the song Billie Jean was about but we all can attest that T.V. moment was integral in the direction of how urban expression would be cultivated into the spectacle that spawned "Da Kulcha".
I do swear by the one verse in the bridge of Billie Jean “Be careful what you do, because a lie becomes the truth……” (how many rappers are the antithesis of that credo?)
That’s real talk.
He was singlehandedly responsible for making cable channel MTV relevant almost 30 years ago by making the music video become an event equivalent to attending a movie premiere. My family scheduled parties around the debut of his videos which would be broadcast with the magnitude of a Presidential address.
I believe Michael’s transcendental magnetism persuaded the suits at MTV into having a broader vision on the profiteering and marketing of a new youth-generated genre silhouetted in the cloak of a rhinestone-gloved moonwalking superstar.
After you recall the brilliance of each "King Of Pop" video being a graphic or technological breakthrough in special effects, think again how hip-hop was heavy in each 808 kick, the pop-locking in the choreography along with thick backbeats and gritty bass licks reminiscent of someone who was bred in the factories of both Harlem and Hitsville, U.S.A.
Showing “Thriller” to my children was like revealing a cultural heirloom in how Michael’s priceless ancestral chain of soul has the same captivating effect on any aged eyes and ears today rendering his legacy timeless and boundless.
This is also what listening to the UMC's, Three Times Dope, Poor Righteous Teachers or Diamond D and The Psychotic Neurotics provided to the typical music loving eye and ear.
Michael Jackson is every bit a part of this as Jay-Z, Andre 3000, or Nas.
He alone opened the viewing audience floodgates that welcomed the program Yo! MTV Raps into America’s living rooms and those floodgates broke hell.
Record label Def Jam was a major beneficiary which made MTV’s “programming gamble” appear to show a winning hand. The Def Jam stable of Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys were followed by other acts Whodini, UTFO, Fat Boys and the darlings of MTV, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince.
Night Of The Living Baseheads told a story that shook up the world and P.E. packed a phantom punch to the jaws of suburban 'Sonny Listons' across the nation. Those young white children also mobbed the music stores to empty the hip-hop bins after these videos told the stories of the Black experience.
The videos were short films that put movement on the picture painted from urban mouthpieces and illustrated a mural of social commentary that Chuck D referred to as "The Black CNN". Once Run DMC collaborated with rock band Aerosmith and Public Enemy with metal outfit Anthrax, not only did it "John Travoltalize" Aerosmith but hip-hop established a monumental presence afterward.
Michael Jackson being the only Black artist shown on steady rotation during the early stages at MTV also utilizing the music video as a cinematic companion to the artist image put a ceiling on the bar for the strides and achievements accomplished in rap’s golden era.
Believe that.
How many times have you heard people (ages 25-40) say “Man, hip-hop ain’t what it used to be”.
No, the question that should be posed is “Who the f$#% calls this shit hip-hop?”
A clear example of what is for me is Nice and Smooth’s “Funky For You” where Greg Nice raps “Dizzy Gillespie played the sax” (when in fact he played the trumpet) but to follow that with:
Me, myself, I love to max
Redbone booties I'm out to wax
Stick up kids is out to tax
Spring again, and I'm feelin fine
Pass me an ice-cold glass of wine
So I can get mellow
Lay back, and let my girl play the cello
Hello
I hate Jell-O
Let me be me, relax in my teepee
Watch a hardy boy mystery
(Please watch the video if for only to see the woman in a one-piece playing a cello. Classic)
So what we gather here is Greg manages to discuss his affinity for light-skinned apple bottomed honeys, the crime rate increases during the change of seasons, how he feels good enough to recline and watch his cellist girlfriend play some classical composition and whether we were interested or not, admits that Jell-O is not in his kitchen cabinet.
The most important line in that verse that makes it all cool is "let me be me".
Righteous.
That’s hip-hop, man.
Ice-T’s player flavor was there to balance the Polka Dot age of Kwame and admittedly Kwame’s flow, style, presentation was all DOPE despite Notorious B.I.G. calling him out in a verse on “Unbelievable”!
The intellectual flows of Young MC, Intelligent Hoodlum and Kool Moe Dee balanced the party vibe of Tone Loc and Digital Underground.
The precise lyricism of the architects Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and KRS-1 layed down the blueprint of what it meant to be a progenitor of pattern, pitch, measurement and the matrimony between vehicle and instrument.
We had tribes (Boo-Ya, Quest) , nations, squads (Bum, Def, Hit), clicks (Boot Camp, Cash Money), clans (X, Wu-Tang), all based on the commonality of unity and brotherhood, key elements associated with the Blaxploitation era and even more prominent with the movements of Marcus Garvey, The Black Panthers, P-Stone Nation including the initial fundamental purpose of the Bloods and Crips.
In the hip-hop arena, rappers gave us venomous MC battles, memorable collaborations, double albums, volumes, chapters, (Daisy) ages, and we were eager to exert our loyalty and attention to those artists.
Oakland on its own brought you the fiery "panther power" of Paris with militant Black nationalist sentiment and then there was Digital Underground, Hammer, Too Short and E-40 who gave you alternative subjects chronicling the life of drug use, sexuality, partying and dancing, and all the product placement your ears could bear.
Even still, E-40 developed a custom slanguage within the cadre of his rhythmic spit that was clever in and of itself and his delivery and cadence still can’t be touched as E(arl) Stevens reaches the age of 42.
Shock G from Digital Underground creating the alter-ego Humpty was a nice addition to the diversity of the broad spectrum and if it weren’t for Underground's anthem “(All Around The World) The Same Song”, we wouldn’t have heard that fresh 16 from a dude dressed like an African king in the video named Tupac Shakur.
Too Short installed the window to the world of pimps and strippers and made the term “Beeyotch” a household word.
And MC Hammer?
I'll speak on him in another installment. He was a culmination of all the great entertainment acts prior only to receive the horrendous ridicule that follows a number of award-winning careers who reach the apex of worldwide status.
Public Enemy obviously had the clown prince William “Flavor Flav” Drayton there to soften the concrete of P.E.’s message with a minstrel image to bludgeon us to death while Chuck D.’s revolutionary perspectives resuscitated us back into understanding Flav’s presence.
The themes and design concepts back then were so creative and distinct.
NWA donned the Raider caps and Starter Jackets, corduroys and white tees.
Slick Rick wore gold chains rivaling that around Mr. T’s neck but Rick was as skinny as Snoop looking like Chris Rock with an eye patch.
Wu-Tang Clan all had gold “fronts”, hoodies, Timberland boots, and some thick ass snow jacket in the summer sun.
One NY/NJ conglomerate was known as Native Tongues (“got rhymes galore”) consisting of De La Soul, Jungle Brothers and Tribe Called Quest. The other crew was known as the Flava Unit; multimedia icon Queen Latifah, Monie Love and Naughty By Nature (Treach carried his signature chain, padlock and baseball bat).
The legion of young artists out there currently probably don’t deserve much of the chastisement and criticisms we “old schoolers” give out. They’re doing what they are told by those who write and cut the checks. These are also the artists that aren’t “checked” but ultimately get “cut”.
There are a handful of rappers that do respectfully channel our joys of the late 80’s and early 90’s such as Lupe Fiasco, Saigon, Kanye West and Cory Gunz but the state of the divided union that is hip-hop couldn’t be summed up any better than comedian Maronzio Vance’s take on Sean Comb’s Bad Boy music empire.
Note to any future record labels: In all seriousness, be mindful of the permanence when naming your record label or “crew”. It’s as significant as naming a child. Back then you had the brands Def Jam, Priority, Delicious Vinyl, and No Limit.
Namely Bad Boy and Death Row equally carry so much of a confrontational, heartless, unruly and detrimental connotation that the title was a precursor to the tragedies and turmoil of each including two of the most talented superstars the business ever heard in Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace. Bad name, bad image, bad ethics, bad business, and the output has been bad ever since.
Not Michael Jackson "and-the-whole-world-has-to-answer-right-now-just-to-tell-you-once again-who's" bad..............
Yeah……….. Hip-Hop is dead.
Wone
