Origins: Rap/ Hip-Hop

If you have been looking through these posts or paying attention to my thoughts on music, you'll know that I am a musical omnivore.  Bring it on.  I probably enjoy rock more than anything else, but rap, pop, country, folk, metal, bluegrass, and EDM will generally also have a home in my playlist as well.  This is why I think Girl Talk is genius - mixing Smashing Pumpkins with Salt n Pepa with Neil Diamond with Ice T?  Come on.  In thinking about other things to write about here, I thought it would be fun to dissect and recount exactly how it is that I swerved into each of the genres I enjoy.

So, rap.  If you are old enough to recall the genesis of rap, you'll probably know that it was not normal for a white kid from Austin to be singing along with N.W.A.  But by the time I hit junior high or so, one seminal event occurred that opened the door for me, you, and everyone who finds joy and pleasure in a good groove to get you in the right mood.  On November 15, 1986, the Beastie Boys released Licensed to Ill, which became the best selling rap album of the 1980s and went platinum more than nine times.  But for me, it took rap and merged it with rock to create a new style built on punk guitar, relatively simple beats, and terrifically silly lyrics. I was intimidated by, and could not relate to the darker side of hip hop that existed before then. Instead of Eazy E spraying people with bullets, you had these three goofy-looking white kids talking about their right to party and good times.  Speaking of which, here is (You've Gotta) Fight for your Right (to Party).

Classic video.  Great song (especially when you are all of 12 years old and have no clue what a sweet house party would even be about, although I fear I'd be the guy getting wedgies and beer spit in his face in this scenario).

I was first exposed to Licensed to Ill by my older sister, Sharon, who brought home a cassette tape from Sound Warehouse and invited me into her room to check it out with her.  That was awesome.  I recall that she was working on some sweet cheerleader moves to the beats, while I was honing my beat-boxing skillz.  Brass Monkey was a major jam (even when I had no clue what it was about and had never once drank alcohol), Slow and Low, No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn, Girls, the whole album is full of classics you have heard of unless you are weird or old or both. 

But the best song on the whole album is Paul Revere.

That beat - simple little shakers, blips, a little trumpet blast, and that backwards looped bass whump - is so deceptively simple, but instantly recognizable, groovy as hell, and just menacing enough to make their story of thieving bad asses meeting while on the run from the law seem legit.

The Beasties went on to make Paul's Boutique (the best collection and use of samples I think I've ever enjoyed), Check Your Head (a top all time album for me that still sounds amazingly fresh now), Ill Communication (another strong classic with Root Down, one of my favs), Hello Nasty, and then a few progressively weaker albums until Adam Yauch died a few years ago.  Which was sad and meant that they cancelled their ACL appearance a few years back when I was super psyched to finally get to see them play live.  Sorry to see him go.

So, Licensed to Ill is the first genesis of my rap love.  The second event was my friend Aaron Smithers' Bronco 2 getting stolen.  (BTW, how lame was the Bronco 2?  Come on, Ford, you couldn't come up with another name?  This hurt the fantastic Bronco brand almost as much as OJ).  By now I was in high school, and the only rap I listened to was the Beasties or what was played on the radio (back then, we're talking about MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Tone Loc, etc.  Not the finest hour for mainstream hip hop).  I mainly listened to alternative rock - heavy on Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Primus, Fugazi, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, The Pixies, and the like.

Anyway, Aaron's Bronco 2 was stolen and recovered not too terribly long afterwards.  However, the thievers took Aaron's little case logic box of alt-rock tapes (or tossed them out the window) and left behind three gangsta rap tapes in their stead.  We treated those three tapes like a joke for about a week, jamming them (loud) while we drove around, acting like we were hard gangstas who dug hard-core rap while winking to each other and clowning the music.  But after a little while, I realized how much I actually liked what I was hearing.

First, The Geto Boys' 'Til Death Do Us Part.  Dude.  Welcome to the harder side of hip hop in 1993.  For the most part, they take everything to the absolute next level on shock value.  When Eminem did not yet exist, it was the Geto Boys who were breaking down some terrifying tales of rape, murder, and general scariness.  They are made up of Scarface, Big Mike, and Bushwick Bill (a little person who was on the cover of an earlier album with a bloody eye from an attempted suicide, I mean, you can't make that up).  I was going to quote some of their lyrics, but they are just unpleasant and not appropriate for the most part.  However, here is one (sampling Easy (Like Sunday Morning)!) that is more of a public service announcement about how gangstas should stop capping each other and stuff.

Second, NWA's EFIL4ZAGGIN.  This one was less terrifying, but still way harder than my normal musical choices and full of the type of stuff that I had never heard in my life.  One track is called "To Kill a Hooker," another is called "She Swallowed It."  I mean, this is stuff I had never heard in my life.  Words I'd never heard.  Sexual act descriptions I'd never even imagined could happen.  Wildly inappropriate for a 15 year old boy, but set over a great collection of old school samples and beats.  You've still got Dr. Dre and Eazy E in the group at this point, but Ice Cube had already bailed by now.  This was not NWA's most popular album by any means - none of their big hits were on here, but I think Appetite for Destruction is probably my favorite off of here because of the beat (uh, video is weird NSFW for the first minute or so).

Finally, one of my favorite rap albums of all time, Ice Cube's Death Certificate.  This disc is chock full of inventive, fun, interesting samples crafted from old school funk and soul music.  James Brown, Funkadelic, Parliament, George Clinton, Zapp - just a ton of well-picked bits and pieces woven together to create new and original music that absolutely jams.  On top of the music, Cube crafts excellent story-telling raps that leave today's boring brag-fest rap in the dust. For example, My Summer Vacation, a song about moving his drug dealing enterprise from L.A. to St. Louis to escape the heat; A Bird in the Hand, about his failure to find a good job coming out of school and deciding to deal drugs instead; or Man's Best Friend, about the reasons how a gun is better protection than a dog.  Not many videos from this album, but Steady Mobbin' is a good one.

Another top example - Alive on Arrival is a great story-telling rap about a dealer who gets shot on the corner and gets taken up to the hospital, but gets hassled by the cops the whole time instead of getting help.  This is a great example of why I have become a crotchety old man when it comes to modern rap.

You can really see what is happening in your mind's eye - they run to the bushes to get away from the drive-by, and then he's running down the block and realizes the bottom of his sweatshirt is bloody.  Just before passing out, he yells to his friends to help him.  It is cinematic-level story-telling, while also providing a real commentary about the treatment of poor people at the County Hospital E.R.  Classic storytellers like Cube or Notorious B.I.G. are sadly gone, who give you a great tune/beat that piques your interest and gets you moving, while they spin a yarn about something with such great detail that you can see it.  

Meanwhile, listen to a current top rap song (Iggy Azelea's Fancy is the top rap song on Spotify right now), and you get synthesizers (no samples), generic flourishes (hey! hey! hey! hey!), with nonsensical boasts about money or cars or general fanciness.  "First things first, I'm the realest," "I'm still in tha murder business," something about haters and staying on her grind, and spelling her name repeatedly, and wishing you could touch her hotness, and a hook about being fancy and how you should remember her name.  Don't get me entirely wrong, that song is a serious earworm that makes me need to shake the booty, but its an idiotic song.  No one will remember Fancy at all by next summer.  Get offa my lawn!!!

So there you have it.  A cheerleader sister and car thieves are the genesis.  From there I found Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep, LL Cool J, Notorious BIG, Public Enemy, Ice T, Dr. Dre, Guru (those Jazzmatazz albums!), Eminem, Kanye West, Outkast, Jay Z, 2Pac, Nas, A$AP Rocky, Kendrick Lamar, and on into the future.  I still love the storytellers (Kendrick Lamar) more than the braggers (A$AP) but both are free to invade my head and get me grooving.