808s & Line / Breaks

revoltintheranks:

Here are some photos (taken with my phone, so I apologize for the quality) from last night’s Watch the Throne stop in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Prior to the show, I was mostly concerned about how much money I was spending on this because I’m bad at “treating myself”. In addition to that, I was having a particularly bad Monday and last couple of weeks, but I stayed excited. I counted down the hours in my head. I reminded myself that this was what I had to look forward to by telling friends and Tumblr and whatever else I could use. I had been waiting a long time for this and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.

We—a close friend of mine and a close friend of his—got to the arena about an hour before the show was set to begin and it looked a little empty, but by the time 9 o’clock rolled around, the place was filled with people. From my seat, I could see the floor and the entire opposite side of the stage, something I didn’t think was so important until later in the night.

The lights went down a little after 9 and we could see Jay-Z and Kanye taking their places on separate stages, just a few yards apart from each other. As soon as the first few notes of “H.A.M.” dropped, the energy in the place was totally palpable. It was positive enough and strong enough to seriously make me forget so much of what had been bothering me.

Over the course of two and a half hours, they kept us out of our seats even when they were sitting on the stage to do “New Day” and “Hard Knock Life”. At one point, during “Monster”, I took a look down at the crowd on the floor and the crowd across from me and I saw a sea of people waving their arms up and down in unison and I was amazed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that amount of people doing the same thing at once. It was mind-blowing, there wasn’t a single hand down for the whole song and for many others.

In the middle of the show, Jay-Z and Kanye both stopped to talked to us for a little while. Jay-Z said, “It took me 26 years to find my purpose, and here we are living out our dreams right in front of you all. We’re proof that dreams do come true if you want it bad enough. You gotta work for it.” I know, I get it…that is cheesy as hell. Well, it seems cheesy at first glance, anyways. I realize sometimes those last statements are completely bogus, but I also know they’re not entirely untrue, either. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I know I needed to hear that and I’m willing to bet there were a few other twenty-somethings in that crowd that needed to hear it, too.

From the very beginning, it was clear that this would probably be more than a concert and by the end, that was one hundred percent certain. I can’t think of a single disappointing moment during the entire thing. I listen to all kinds of music and I’ve been to all kinds of shows, but I’ve never been to a stadium show as thoughtful, well-planned, personal and creative as this one.

Here are the highlights besides the ones I’ve already mentioned: “N*ggas in Paris” (three times, actually. Shit was cray.), “99 Problems”, “Runaway”, “Through the Wire”, “Jigga What Jigga Who”, “Big Pimpin’”, “Public Service Announcement”, and “Made in America”.

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Some final thoughts on the matter because I overheard some people talking a lot of ignorant shit today:

Say what you want about him or hip hop, there’s no doubt that Jay-Z is one of the most interesting and inspirational figures of our time. I guess it’s kind of risky to say that. It’ll probably always be “risky” to call a rapper “inspirational”, but if you know anything about him, you know it’s true. That’s the thing about hip hop, though. A lot of rappers used to be criminals but it’s hard for people to see passed that. Rappers spend the majority of their lives and careers paying for and explaining the sins of the past and it doesn’t make any sense.

Everyone makes mistakes. For even the most apologetic rappers, the fact that they sold drugs or ran in a gang is never overlooked and always discussed. The argument I most often get for this is that rappers often “glorify” the lives they used to live and seem “proud” of the fact that they used to be criminals. I usually respond by explaining how that is a sweeping generalization of hip hop as a whole and how it shows people are not really listening to the music. I used to think it was simply and only a race thing, but people like Eminem came along and I realized it was an understanding thing, as well. I think this passage from Decoded describes exactly what I mean:

Hip-hop has always been controversial, and for good reason. When you watch a children’s show and they’ve got a muppet rapping about the alphabet, it’s cool, but it’s not really hip-hop. The music is meant to be provocative - which doesn’t mean it’s necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it’s dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don’t necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head. You can enjoy a song that knocks in the club or has witty punch lines the first time you hear it. But great rap retains mystery. It leaves shit rattling around in your head that won’t make sense till the fifth or sixth time through. It challenges you.

Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don’t bother trying to get it. The problem isn’t in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don’t even know how to listen to the music.

Today, I heard an older man describe Jay-Z as a “thug” and I have to admit, I was a bit taken back by the comment. I wasn’t part of the conversation, so I didn’t respond, but I thought about that. I thought about how this dude from the projects began his working life as a drug dealer and is now this rich, multi-platinum recording artist who gives back to his community and communities around the country and still, this dude is just another thug because he used deal drugs. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

There was a time in my life when I thought people couldn’t be reformed and couldn’t change. Things have happened in my life to prove that theory wrong. I’m not saying that everybody deserves our forgiveness. To me, there is a huge difference between someone as insufferable and unapologetic as Chris Brown and people as philanthropic and repentant as Ludacris, Kanye West, and Jay-Z. The big difference here being that the last three have come out publicly to explain that the things they did weren’t right and do things to prevent other kids from making similar mistakes and the first has given the public a series of explanations for his actions. Yet, because their lyrics reflect the reality of the situations they were born into and the reality hip hop was born from and because people keep missing what’s important in those lyrics they use to criticize, these guys will always just be a couple of “thugs”.

16 November

revoltintheranks-deactivated201

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Kanye West: All Falls Down

I first heard Kanye West when I was up late one night watching MTV and they played his video for “Through the Wire”. It was new and it was fresh. The magnitude of his talent was instantly palpable. But, I first heard Kanye West on “All Falls Down”. That is to say, I heard his message, what he was really saying and why it was so important.

Today, when I hear Kanye West, particularly that younger version, I always pick up on something new that still needs to be said, but most importantly, needs ears to hear. Ears free of biases and preconceived notions about the man—the vessel—and to simply listen to a message that reflects our world today, honestly and bluntly, better than anyone else in the game.

In the first verse Kanye paints his lyrical picture of the misconstrued idea of college that so many in our society have. College has become the “safe bet” and nothing more. Fast-forward to 2011, a recession later, and it’s not even so safe anymore, but it’s better than no college, right?. Wrong. Just like those piano lessons you took as a kid were a waste of time because all you wanted to be doing was running outside playing hide-and-go-seek, what point is college if you don’t want to be there? It’s a mask for the insecurity you are unwilling to confront. You don’t know what you want to do, or far worse, you’re afraid to pursue what you really want to do. So, you hide behind the walls of the University and amongst the Business and Biology majors, who lead the herd of ambitious cattle climbing the ladder to the top of the money pile. College should be a time to not only delve into the deep waters of your heart’s true desires, but to seek out what lies inside the cave that is your mind, your heart, and your self.

In the second verse, Kanye does something that I have rarely seen any other hip-hop artist do. Off the top of my head, I really can’t think of anyone. He takes his entire argument and turns it on himself. He makes himself the evidence—the argument that proves the thesis. It’s as if he says, “society is messed up, we are insecure, scared, and shallow, and here’s how I know it…me.” And no lines delve deeper into the psychology of the stereotypical black rapper than these:

We shine because they hate us
floss ‘cause they degrade us
we trying to buy back our forty acres
and for that paper look how low we’ll stoop
even if you in a Benz you still a nigga in a coop.

Is he right? Is this true? Is it fact? I’m not sure, but, in my opinion, it’s a highly intelligent, educated, and qualified hypothesis. The problem with capitalism in our society—whether you are white, black, brown, yellow, or pink—is that no matter how rich you get and how honestly you’re doing it, you are making someone else richer who has allowed you to advance by exploiting you. I believe what Kanye is alluding to is the idea that we pick our poison, and there’s just no getting around that. If you become rich, it’s because someone is allowing you to become rich because they are going to get something out of it:

We buy our way out of jail but we can’t buy freedom
we’ll buy a lot of clothes but we don’t really need ‘em
things we buy to cover up what’s inside
cause they made us hate ourself and love they wealth
[…] drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
and the white man get paid off of all of that

Honestly, whoever says that Kanye is racist and hates white people is missing the point. In this case, we do it intentionally, to turn our naive attention away from the man behind the curtain. Without his antics, which take away from his message, his truths would be so revealing that they could be considered dangerous and “un-American”. After all, this is what Kanye is doing: attacking the American way of life, which he is a part of, and which none of us want altered or disturbed.

Unfortunately, it is being altered and disturbed from every angle—from within us and from outside. Eventually, as we are seeing, the warnings we should have adhered to become threats we must confront. Jobs are lost, gas goes through the roof, and the “middle class” disappears. Yet, we still consider Kanye an egomaniac, megalomaniac, racist, while he admits, “I ain’t even gon’a act holier than thou” and goes on to list his short-comings, which he has accepted and is unapologetic about, “We all self-conscious / I’m just the first to admit it.”

Since “The College Dropout”, Kanye has gone on to become, without question, the most talented hybrid of lyricist/producer/intellectual that hip-hop has ever seen. It’s just a shame that people see him more for the things he does in the limelight and less for the truths he delivers unfiltered. Truths, which in our state—whether anyone would be brave enough to admit it or not—might set us free. Call him what you will. I call him “genius”.

—Juan Gallo

26 April

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There is no doubt that Scarface is one of the most talented lyricists in the industry. A true poet, Scarface’s lyrics are subtle and simple and he often avoids using end rhyme, which has become the most recognizable poetic device used in hip-hop. On top of that, you don’t even feel as if you’re missing anything because of his flow and when he does use end rhymes, he makes you feel how important that those lines are.

One of the greatest examples of this is his 1994 single, “I Seen A Man Die”—a song that tells the all-to-familiar story of a young, black man, who after being released from prison, tries to change but falls back into a life of crime that eventually leads to his death.

Scarface uses several poetic devices to tell the story, including slant rhymes, alliteration, and internal rhymes. The final and, arguably, most important verse features rhymes at the end of each line—an emphatic poetic device used by greats such as Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Most importantly, though, the story that unfolds through Scarface’s lyrics is a universal, even if most people have never been to prison or have never had to watch as a family member was taken away to jail. Most people know what it’s like to steer themselves in the wrong direction, try to correct the behavior, and wind up making similar mistakes again. This is an unavoidable part of humanity, a succession of circumstances in which we learn through trial and error.

This is part of what makes much of Scarface’s music so successful, on multiple levels. His lyrics prove that the language of hip-hop has dexterity and complexities that a lot of listeners seem to ignore. He doesn’t offer overtly-optimistic fantasies, either, and he doesn’t try to cover up the struggles that people, in general, are faced with every single day.

—Stefani Rubino

3 February

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“The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, from people who have not been recognized.”
—Russel Simmons

26 January

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Jay-Z: 99 Problems

Well, it’s Tuesday, not exactly the beginning of the week, but after yesterday, it definitely feels like it should be Friday already. Any Jay-Z song has the ability to get you ready to battle the rest of the work or school week, but “99 Problems” will always be my beginning of the week battle anthem. “99 Problems” is also one of Jay-Z’s most misunderstood songs.

Most people think, “Oh, it’s about a girl. I mean, look, it says he has all these problems but not a girl. That’s what it’s about, not having women on your dick.” This is kind of a dramatization, but when this song came out and even still, a lot of people didn’t and don’t realize that “girl problems” is just a metaphor. Since the beginning of his career, Jay-Z has always been great at making people believe he means one thing when he really means something completely unrelated. “99 Problems” is the ultimate example of this.

If you dig a little deeper into the lyrics—and by digging a little deeper, I mean looking at everything except the chorus—it’s easy to see that this song isn’t about women. In fact, that’s the one thing he doesn’t mention in any of the verses. “Girl problems” has nothing to with women; it has everything to do with haters. And that’s what this song is about. It’s about having people from all sides coming to get you in any way they can, just because of the most arbitrary reasons. He’s not just talking about the cops and the entire legal system, but fellow rappers, critics, people from his old neighborhood and the media.

Of course, “99 Problems” isn’t the first rap song to tackle this topic. This is a recurring theme in hip-hop, mostly because no matter what artists say or do, they will always be viewed mostly as thugs and criminals just because their songs contain lyrics about their pasts and the things they’ve done. Part of what makes hip-hop mythology so interesting and so upsetting is the idea that artists can never redeem themselves, just because of their lyrics or because of the lives they’ve lived.

Jay-Z can give as much money as he does to underprivileged children and neighborhoods, but in the eyes of most of society, he will never be more than a criminal-turned-rapper, which is the most common story in hip-hop, one of the most amazing success stories in American music, and practically unavoidable at this point. “99 Problems” is one of Jay-Z’s most successful responses to the negative parts of this mythology and will probably always be one of my favorite songs to address the subject.

—Stefani Rubino

25 January

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The Player and the Poet Make Weird Work

OutKast’s Stankonia

by Stefani Rubino

I grew up in South Florida, so I grew up knowing artists like 2 Live Crew and Luther Campbell. When I was young, they were the most famous hip-hop acts to come out of Miami. Besides The Geto Boys, they were probably the most famous acts to come from south of the Mason-Dixon in general. By the time I was a pre-teen, though, Southern rap was blowing up big time. I remember winning an eighth grade spelling bee specifically because my final opponent misspelled the word “ludicrous” because of Ludacris.

About a year before that, OutKast’s Stankonia became the second album to truly blow my mind (the first was David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars). I obviously knew what rap was and what it sounded like, but, until that day, I never thought it could sound like that. Stankonia is an album with only four samples on the entire thing. From the start, you’re thrown into the sounds of electric guitars and organic percussion. I wasn’t used to hearing that. I wasn’t used to the presence of “real” instruments on track after track after track. But it wasn’t just that, though, it was the flawless integration of horns, drums, and melodic vocals with electronic beats and drum machines that really got me hooked.

Aquemini is often named as OutKast’s best album, but I think people just say that because Aquemini popularized a lot of things that were unpopular in hip-hop at the time: organic beats, the use of horns and other big band instruments, and psychedelic melodies. But, besides the obvious reasons, Stankonia is special simply because of the range of influences Big Boi and Andre 3000 channel in their songs. The album begins in a swirl of hard rock-influenced electric guitars and travels through almost every genre—including funk, afrobeat, drum and bass, psychedelic rock, and soul—by the time the album ends.

Big Boi and Andre 3000 have often labeled themselves as “a player and a poet”, which has certainly become more than apparent over the years. Most of Big Boi’s contributions focus on women, violence, and money, while Andre 3000’s focus on love, loss, and everything in between. They’re both equally important, though, and their different priorities give their songs a dynamic you seldom see anywhere else. In a lot of ways, Big Boi and Andre 3000 represent two sides of one man, which is why this album works so well. When I want something abrasive and aggressive, I generally listen to G-funk and when I want something a little softer on the edges, I’ll go for something from the Native Tongues Posse. On Stankonia, you get the perfect middle-ground of these two completely different kinds of hip-hop and that is part of what makes OutKast appealing.

Stankonia features songs like “Ms. Jackson”—a song written by Andre 3000 as an apology and declaration to the mother of his real-life ex-girlfriend and mother to his son, Erykah Badu—followed by “Snappin’ & Trappin’”—a song about battling other rappers, fucking women, and making money. While that seems completely schizophrenic (it kind of is, actually), OutKast manages to transition from one to the next without the transition even being somewhat noticeable.

Most, if not all, of the lyrics on Stankonia are smooth and simple without sounding cliché. “Spaghetti Junction”—an ode to Atlanta named for the nickname used to describe Atlanta’s confusing series of interstates and highways—incorporates the kind of metaphors you’d only expect to see in some of the best and most beloved poems. Then, there’s “I’ll Call Before I Come”, a fairly straight forward song about setting up “booty calls” and one of my favorites on this album, that compares being a good lover to having fresh, new shoes and kicking a drug addiction. Those are some interesting and out-there analogies, even for two accomplished MCs.

On top of all of that, Stankonia is a true piece of art. It delicately balances different genres, production techniques, instruments, and some of the greatest lyrics I’ve ever heard to create an almost flawless album that’s entertaining and thought-provoking. Big Boi and Andre 3000 aren’t just MCs with a few stories to tell. They’re true musicians with an ear for great compositions and the wit for great rhymes.

20 January

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Killer Mike: That’s Life

There are few songs that seem as appropriate for today as Killer Mike’s “That’s Life” does. “That’s Life” is, all at once, a hard-hitting criticism of some of the biggest and most revered names in the African-American community and a message about the way we “treat” and discuss poverty in this country.

A lot of hip-hop songs serve as revenge or dis tracks from one MC to another, but “That’s Life” serves as Killer Mike’s dis track aimed at an entire society that really hasn’t come as far as they believe they have. And on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, “That’s Life” is a good reflection on what is really going in this country and how, regardless of the progress we’ve made, we still have far to go.

Killer Mike’s message is intensely critical and even names names at some points but does this in order to point out topics and situations that people are too afraid to mention, let alone release a single just to put it out in the open. Though it can be argued that Killer Mike does go a little far and uses far too much profanity for this track to ever receive any mainstream fame, it’s hard to act like the message he is trying to convey isn’t important. Because it is, on this day and on any other day, which is exactly his point.

While the progress we’ve made is incredible and it’s amazing that this country has entire days and months dedicated to memories of African-Americans, such as King, let’s strive not to get trapped in the kind of net Killer Mike is describing. Like the song says, we still have a lot of work to do in this country, and we should never be afraid to talk about it.

—Stefani Rubino

17 January

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“I’m just basically spilling out my emotions to the world. Because rap is about emotion. And I want you to feel what I’m feeling, because that’s what it’s all about.”
—Ludacris

14 January

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Common: I Used to Love H.E.R.

Around the summer of 2004, a good friend of mine introduced me to Common. The first song I listened to was “I Used to Love H.E.R.” and I must have listened to that song for a whole week straight. I was just surprised by it. I didn’t realize songs could be put together so well.

There are very few songs, in general, that work on as many levels as “I Used to Love H.E.R. (Hearing Every Rhyme)” does. Released in 1994, during a turbulent and transformative period for hip-hop, “I Used to Love H.E.R.” offers a brief history of the genre and its importance to Common by using the metaphor of a beautiful woman.

Common’s lyrics follow his experiences with this “woman” as she changes from “old-school” and “underground” to “Afro-centric” to a “gangster who hangs with gangster bitches.”

He tells the story of how he came to be involved with hip-hop and how its transitions were important for the evolution of the genre. Common tells the story of how, over the years, hip-hop kind of lost itself, how so many people believed they could “do her” but really couldn’t, and how he wants to reclaim and renew “her”.

More than that, though, Common tells a fairly rare story in hip-hop: the story of an MC who arose out of just his love for music, the story of an MC who didn’t necessarily need to rap, but “did her” because it meant so much to him and he had faith in “her”.

It’s hard to mention this song without mentioning the fact that it sparked a feud between him, Ice Cube, and other members of Ice Cube’s group, Westside Connection. They believed that Common was mocking West Coast rap and claiming that—because of the negativity in his verse when he is talking about the sub-genre—he believed his music and the music of East Coast rappers was more important (even though Common is actually from Chicago).

Eventually, the feud was settled, but this song’s importance—in both hip-hop and poetry—has yet to be matched. It’s doubtful that Common meant to start a feud or even seem overly critical of any kind of hip-hop, because this song that hip-hop needs to be appreciated for everything that it is and for everything that it means, to both listeners and rappers.

—Stefani Rubino

14 January

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A couple of years ago, I heard an amazing story about Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, pictured here in the hat and glasses with the rest of Run-DMC. McDaniels, who had believed his entire life that the people who raised him were also biologically linked to him, found out that he was actually adopted. With this new information, he set out to find his birth mother and, of course, it was turned into a VH-1 special. The amazing thing about this story doesn’t really have anything to do with the fact that he went on that journey. The amazing thing was how it ended.

Upon meeting his biological mother for the first time, McDaniels didn’t once ask why she gave him up. Instead, he thanked her. He thanked her because, chances are, if she didn’t give him up for adoption, Run-DMC wouldn’t have existed. He would’ve been raised in Harlem, instead of Hollis, Queens, and he would’ve never met Joseph Simmons or Jason Mizell. And, really, where would hip-hop be if Run-DMC wasn’t around?

Over the last few years, people have seen Run-DMC as more of a gimmick and have ignored their actual impact on hip-hop and rap. Before Run-DMC, hip-hop belonged to DJs like Afrika Bambaataa, DJs who rarely rapped over their beats and wore outfits that were sometimes even too flamboyant for the eighties. What Run-DMC did was take hip-hop from these DJs and give it back to the streets where it belonged. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five began this phenomenon with their hit “The Message,” but Run-DMC is what made it spread all over the country, and even the world.

Their dress, attitude, and even the aggressiveness of their beats and lyrics reflected what was actually happening on the streets of big cities everywhere. They looked like b-boys and bombers, not like the Village People or George Clinton. Their lyrics portrayed the actual situations, experiences, and dreams of the young men and women who were growing up in places like Queens, the South Bronx, Harlem, and Bed-Stuy. They put hip-hop back in the hands of these people and invited everyone else, even those who had never experienced life in the projects, to come along for the ride and enjoy it with them.

—Stefani Rubino

11 January

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