Songs I'll Never Get Tired Of v.III

Broken Social Scene - Almost Crimes

The indie rock supergroup from Canada seems to be unclassifiable. They don't fit neatly into any particular genre because like the band itself, they are always experimenting. "Almost Crimes" is my personal favorite track from the album "You Forgot it in People" because it just beats the crap out of you from the beginning to the end. It starts with some cluttered piano scales and static and goes right into a drummer that sounds like he discovered cymbals for the first time ever.  The way the song is arranged is a three way  conversation between Kevin Drew, Leslie Feist (from iPod Nano fame), and a saxophone. The song ends with every instrument going crazy and Drew and Feist just screaming out "I think it's almost crimes" until the entire band fizzles out together. Legen...wait for it.... DARY!

For your consideration:

Almost Crimes - Broken Social Scene

Songs I'll Never Get Tired Of v.II

Dilated Peoples - Worst Comes to Worst

I'll say right off the bat that I don't think Dilated is that great. I've listened to "The Platform" and "Expansion Team" and aside from a few songs here and there, they are boring as hell to listen to. Evidence and Rakaa can spit decent but I feel like Babu lays down some pretty monotone tracks for the most part.  

I guess it's no coincidence that this track is produced by The Alchemist.  This is one of my favorite all-time beats. Babu does his contribution by cutting in the Mobb Deep "Survival of the Fittest" sample in between verses and playing with the fader as if he's touching turntables for the first time. Rakaa and Evidence also do a decent, but not stellar, job on the track (with the scale tipping in Rakaa's favor). GURU is featured on this track too, but he lays down an absolute piece of crap on the beat. Awful. It's like he can't rhyme properly without Primo.  In spite of GURU's misstep, the beat takes care of everything here, with William Bell samples ushering in the end of the track.

I've listened to this song 1000 times, and I'll listened to it 1000+ more.

Note: Can you spot Lamar Odom in the video?

Songs I Will Never Get Tired Of v.I

Shadowboxin' - GZA ft. Method Man

It's only right that I start off this series of posts with a Wu banger. This is my favorite cut off of GZA's "Liquid Swords" hands down. Everything about this track is perfection. Silly Kung Fu movie samples, grimy RZA-style beats with a little bit of tasteful scratching thrown in here and there, GZA coming correct as always, and Meth killing the track like he has never killed a track before. I seriously think the verses Meth lays down in this song are his best ever. Perfectly on beat,  swagger x million + another million, even his bantering over the samples during the "chorus" oozes swagger. 

I think Meth sends out the perfect message to every rapper right before GZA's verse:

"Because your naps ain't nappy enough

And your reefs ain't rugged enough

Bitch"

There it is, no one will ever match the Wu's grimy, rugged, straight NY gutter style. EVER.

For your consideration:

K(rack)-Pop

The cookie-cutter is hard at work.

It's really amazing to me how K-Pop maintains it's popularity year in year out. It's a given that pop(ular) music will always dominate the charts in it's respective country but K-Pop is a truly special case.  Here are a few of the more salient features that led to this post:

1. It is consistently redundant

K-Pop has not evolved AT ALL in the last 10 decades. DBSK are just as fruity and homo as H.O.T. (in the "Outside Castle" phase) was, People Crew suck as much at rapping as Jinusean did, and Wonder Girls are just as corny as S.E.S. was. The only reason people think K-Pop evolves is because the ky00te little boys and girls of the SM and JYP super groups grow older. K-Pop = nonstop trip down memory lane.

Also, the themes are consistent as well. You either have (a) falling in love or (b) falling out of love. K-Pop does a good job of dichotomizing the entire spectrum of human emotions into being happy + in love or being sad + in love. And this is always love in the teenager who just finished watching "A Walk to Remember" sense. It will be the day when I hear a Korean version of "Ain't No Fun" or "Let's Get High". 

2. It is consistently unoriginal

There is absolutely NO ORIGINALITY when it comes to K-Pop. It is just a trickle down effect of the table scraps from American chart toppers. Every time I hear the new "it" song of the month, I always hear remnants of whatever was on the Billboard top 100 last year. It is just a repackaging of whatever worked in the American markets with a "^_^" face. 

I would say K-Pop is one of the premier showcases of capitalism. You have these big super mega record labels that pick out pretty Korean people or ones with a decent voice and butt heads with each other over who can market their team better. They thrust these pop icons into every talk show and quirky game show out there to give them maximum visibility. It's just a huge puppet show where studio execs have preset tracklists and cute little dances and they are just looking for a face to slap onto them.

Of course, K-Pop is incredibly catchy. That is why it is pop(ular). But I find it hard to be into K-Pop for more than a ~3 month stint. When there's that little substance, the same damn topic gets old really fast.

And NO, this has nothing to do with "hating my identity". If you think Korean culture is defined by the hot steaming cesspool that spews out "Nobody but You", then you probably spend the bulk of your day reading DBSK fanfics and are in line hoping to get tickets for their next sub-par, lip-synced live performance.

On an unrelated note, here is my song of the week.

The Saltwater Room - Owl City

Posers Can't Stop It

True geek rap fashion with thick frames, big digital watches, and supras/nike SB high tops. 

That handshake is sick nasty, anyone want to partake in it with me?  

???????

Seriously, wtf is the big deal about this guy. I can't believe Tha Carter III is drawing comparisons to Illmatic and Ready to Die. Most talented rapper alive? HOW?

"Do you fools listen to music or do you just skim through it?"
-J-A-Y hyphen, controllin, manipulatin

The Case Against Tupac

Tupac Shakur is probably the most recognizable face in hip hop. Quotes from "Me Against the World" can be found in high school freshmen profiles everywhere and many are quick to say that Pac was the greatest rapper period. However, I see a lot of problems with this claim and I hope to give everyone a few reasons as to why I think Pac can never touch Rakim, KRS, and even Biggie in terms of greatness. So in the words of Slick Rick...hereeee we goooooo!

It seems to me that Asian kids always have had a strange affinity for Pac. From my perspective, it seems odd for kids who grew up in safe, homogenous, subruban communities to be able to relate to lines like "my stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch". So what is the correlation between Pac and us? It was said that Tupac was introduced to violence at an early age while growing up in Mahattan. But the closest we have seen to what Tupac might have seen would be Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. What seems to be the selling point of Tupac is that he is the image of the black man that exists in our fantasy worlds. What Tupac sells us is an image of a 40 drinking, bandana wearing, buddah exhaling, middle finger pointing, tatted, irate, "fuck-the-world" mentality, rep LA til I die black man. It is the thug appeal that makes Tupac so influential and so marketable. I think it is a safe guess to say that Tupac didn't give a shit about the slew of Asian kids who live in Rowland, Diamond Bar, Cerritos, or even places like Alhambra and Glendale. But these same kids are drawn to Tupac because he is the image of "the hood". However, I think Murs says it best; "Any white boy who thinks he knows my struggle because he listens to Pac and his adrenaline doubles".

But can we really say that he is one of the greatest rappers because he was and continues to be such an influential image? Tupac was not one of the greatest lyricists to ever live. Nas' Illmatic runs circles around every album Tupac has released in terms of flow, wordplay, and composition. There is no intricate rhyme structure and no killer punchlines in Pac's rhymes. "Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture" is not a GOAT verse and neither is Pac repeatedly dropping F-bombs to his rivals on the east coast. It can be said very easily that KRS-One, Rakim, and even Eminem are true lyricists but there seems to be very little we can work with in stating Tupac's ability to rip the mic apart. He was never much of a storyteller either (at least nowhere near the genre that Slick Rick perfected).

It can't be said that he created the gangsta rap genre since NWA was saying "fuck the police comin straight from the underground" two years before 2pacalypse Now was even released (2Pacalypse Now would be a moot point anyways since it wasn't even at this point where he started making waves in the music scene). Cali love was well in place before Pac ever signed to Death Row.

He wasn't the first to make beef tracks either. LL Cool J's mama alraedy told him to knock you out before he was asking Mobb Deep if they had "sickle cell or sumfin". Maybe it wasn't as heated as Tupac made it but can that really be a positive point for him? Nowadays, everybody's starting beef with everyone and releasing all these downright AWFUL "battle tracks" featuring weak punchlines from wack crews. (It's times like these I wish Big L was still here to rip some of these guys to shreds).

So all in all, it can be said that Tupac never really contributed anything brand new. What he did contribute is the outspoken antagonist, fighting a revolution for a cause that didn't exist. Tupac is not Chuck D, and he is not Ice Cube. It seems silly to say that Pac was a martyr because what was the cause he died for? He wasn't throwing his fist in the air and demanding change in politics and society. What resulted from Pac was a further stratification of the black man. Pac was the black man that we conjure up images of when we hear the 10 o' clock news gone 9x platinum. He was the quintessential "n****r".

I am not saying that Tupac was a bad artist. I still love to hear I Ain't Mad Atcha (whether or not COC had that beat first) and California Love. But he is absolutlely not someone I would consider one of the greatest rappers of all time. Like John Lennon, he is one of the biggest icons in music without a doubt. However, John Lennon was a part of the goddamn Beatles, who changed the face of not just rock, but music forever. Just because Pac was murdered doesn't martyr him for the same reasons as why Cobain isn't a martyr either. So the next time Tupac comes up in your iTunes (full of Tupac songs that you probably downloaded illegaly), think about what Pac and his lyrics are to you. Because like Q-Tip said, "hip hop can never be a way of life / it doesn't tell you how to raise a child or treat a wife". To look at Tupac in the most objective manner is to look at him in respect to the genre of hip hop. Sure he went platinum multiple times. But MIMS is about to also...