hip hop

Wednesday seems like a good day to post an old school hip hop track. Too many people forget hip hop’s roots and it’s time to educate them. Good music, useful information, what can you lose? This may even become a weekly feature, we shall see. I know I plan on doing at least a few more.

The first Way Back Wednesday is dedicated to the song “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. This song was released in 1982 and is one of the first hip hop songs to deal with the social ills of the urban poor. When you listen, a picture is drawn before you of the projects in New York city under Reagan Era policies that made the poor get poorer. You listen and realize what life is like in a poverty-stricken, hopeless community.

Rolling Stone ranked “The Message” #51 in its List of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (the highest ranking hip-hop song on the list). It was also voted #3 on the 100 Greatest Rap Songs, after I Used to Love H.E.R. and Rapper’s Delight. In 2002, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry, the first Hip Hop recording ever to receive this honor. The beat has been used in many songs since it’s released and the lyrics have been referenced in many other hip hop songs. It is nothing short of a classic.

I don’t listen to rap. I used to. In the ’90’s I listened to Tupac, Snoop, Tha Dogg Pound, etc. That time has come and gone. I still will listen to rap from the 1990’s. It was a good era, in my opinion. Today’s rap sucks. It’s the commercialized bubble-gum, carbon-copy crap on every station. I am an elitist. I’m not afraid to admit it. Yes, I think everything I listen to is better than what you listen to. If you listen to something I do, then I’m still more hip than you because I listened to it sooner. Yeah, I know. I just can’t help myself. I love to recommend good music and show off my superior musical taste.

In conversations when asked what I listen to I always answer, “Underground hip hop.” I have to make sure to set myself apart from the heard of crappy rap listeners. I don’t listen to underground just to be different. Not at all. I’ll be the first to say I think an underground artist sucks (sorry Immortal Technique). If the artist doesn’t have good lyrics, flow, and production, then I’m not going to be a fan. Just because you’re underground doesn’t mean I’ll automatically like you. These people are just the same as people who follow the mainstream rappers blindly. Then I came across this post in the QN5 forums that sums up these thoughts perfectly. It was written by Kno of CunninLynguists:

Stereotypical “Underground heads” generally don’t take to QN5 well.

Many of them listen to “underground rap” simply because its the antithesis of whats on the radio and they have some friends that are into it so they aren’t completely alone.

So…whats the opposite of super clean, crisp beats with rappers with little to no substance but great flow and charisma rapping about rims?

Super muddy, overly-wordy, poorly delivered raps about science over crusty boom-bap…so thats what they go for, regardless if its dope or not. Many “underground heads” are just as much sheep as your average pop radio listener, truth be told…and your average underground rapper is just as much of a gimmick as their mainstream counterparts. If you’re biggest selling point is “you ain’t like that mainstream shit” you need to stop rapping immediately.

QN5 is crusty BUT clean, substance-filled BUT not TOO over-your-head, charismatic but not ALL swagger. Complicated lyrics but…pop-worthy hooks? It makes your average “followers” head explode, honestly.

QN5 appeals to people with their own personal tastes who simply like good rap music, period. Not many of those left.

This is the music I’m gravitating to more and more. QN5 is a high quality label that puts out amazing music, and to be honest, they’ve turned me on, directly or indirectly, to other music, most not even hip hop. Other underground artists were/are like that too: Jurassic 5, Binary Star, etc.

I’m not totally turned-off by mainstream rap. Kanye has some really good songs that convey the same things as my underground favs. The thing is, I’ve noticed that some of my past underground favs I’m no longer enjoying. I guess my musical taste is changing with age. I used to be a huge fan of Tech N9ne. I still think he can make good music and will still buy his music, but I don’t feel the excitement I used to feel with his music. I don’t know. Why can’t the world be more like QN5 and their passionate artists?

I’m a rapper. Ok, not really. But I should be. It seems everyone is a rapper these days. I was watching a video of CunninLynguists that aired on television in Sweden. They are on tour in Europe right now and the interviewers asked what the difference between fans in Sweden and fans in the United States. Kno responded that the fans in Sweden are just that, fans. In the US everyone is a rapper. This is so true. Everyone is trying to make it big as a rapper these days, and who could blame them? With the music industry the way it is, they’ll accept anything and put it on the radio as long as it has a good beat. Lyrical content doesn’t mean anything. How else do you explain Solja Boy and Lil John. At least with other forms of music, there has to be some additional talent involved, usually involving singing or bands. With rap, you just need to find some beats or some samples and start rapping crappy rhymes. I found a site tonight that had some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. (Link Removed) Just because you have equipment to record your “music” doesn’t mean you should. People need to stop thinking that they have talent and they are going to be the next big thing and start being fans again. Maybe that’s what will save the music industry. Start focusing on talent and stop mass producing crap and raise the bar for future artists. Of course, this will never happen. They are always looking for a quick buck so they will waste money on a one-hit wonder just to get their royalties, meanwhile, great artists, like CunninLynguists, suffer because the industry is settled on a standard of mediocrity.

My favorite channel on XM is The Rhyme: Hip Hop from Day One. It’s an old school hip hop station. After listening to it almost exclusively since I got XM, I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m getting old. Real old. It used to be that old school was applied to the ranks of Kool G Rap, Eric B and Rakim, Kurtis Blow, Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, and other artists from that forgotten era. Every once in a while you’d see some late 80’s and early 90’s artists in the mix, like Tone Loc, NWA, and others. What made me realize I’m old is I was listening to the station one night and Tupac’s “Me Against the World” came on. Tupac is now old school?!?! I grew up on Tupac! How can he be old school unless… I’m old! More and more I notice that the songs I grew up on are hitting the old school stations and mixes. When did Leaders of the New School become old school? When did Snoop and Dre and Bone become old school? I’m going to be 25 in April. A quarter of a century old. Wow. I might as well retire now and go around yelling at little kids about how their music today sucks (it does) and how everything was so much better in my day (it was).