This isn’t hip-hop, per se, although Prefuse 73 produced it. However, I’ve been playing this song for months. The video is okay, but it doesn’t really do the track justice.
Directed by Cuauhtzin Gutierrez. Taken from the Origins EP, which is in stores now.
From the press release:
“The video for El-P’s “Time Won’t Tell” is inspired by a childhood memory of director Shan Nicholson, who grew up in the “Old New York” during a time when necessity often bred creativity. This video depicts a young boy innocently finding a way to embrace his imagination amid an urban wasteland. El-P’s all instrumental album Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 is out now.”
Here’s one from New York group Mazzi and S.O.U.L. Purpose, with Maya Azucena on the chorus. From the forthcoming mixtape The Inspection.
Here’s a clip for the new collaboration between Invincible and Waajeed. The song is not only a celebration of the community organization Detroit Summer, but a sequel to “Detroit Winter” from Platinum Pied Pipers’ Triple P. The duo just released a 7-inch single; the full-length drops in 2011. You can buy the record (limited to 1000 pieces) from Invincible’s website.
Directed by El-Iqaa.
Tejano psychedelia, courtesy of Duey FM. Directed by Brian Torres Korlofsky. Taken from Me Gusto, which is in stores now.
Video time. First up: a clip featuring Thundercat, a lady in green foliage, and 8-bit gaming graphics.
Directed by Special Problems. Taken from Cosmogramma, which is in stores now.
When I posted my article on the so-called “Blog Rap’s Second Wave” yesterday, I realized I haven’t posted other entries from my Rap Is Not Pop column for Rhapsody.
Actually, I didn’t re-post this one because I wasn’t happy with it. I initially planned to make a grand statement about the hyped “rap’s new generation,” but realized that concept seems a bit outdated now, even if its leading artists have only begun to release major albums instead of just mixtapes. (I freely admit to contributing to said hype.) So I tried to reposition the essay as a commentary on where this first wave of Internet age MCs is heading since emerging in 2006-2007.
This essay was posted April 28 on Rhapsody’s Music Stuff Place blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.
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We’ve waited years for the much-blogged-about new school to emerge. It appears that moment has finally arrived. The music charts are teeming with hits by Drake, from 2009′s inescapable “Best I Ever Had” to the new “Over.” Kid Cudi continues to show up in the strangest places, whether it’s on dance-club tracks with Dan Black (“Symphonies”) and Sharam from Deep Dish (“She Came Along”) or on Vitamin Water’s new “Pursuit of Happiness” ad campaign. Asher Roth is courting MTV attention with Asleep in the Bread Aisle while maneuvering between frat-rap expectations and online haterade. And B.o.B is currently sitting at the summit of the pop charts with “Nothin’ on You,” his shaggy-dog ballad with Bruno Mars of the Smeezingtons; his soon-to-be hit debut, The Adventures of Bobby Ray, is now landing at online and brick-and-mortar vendors.
Meanwhile, Cool Kids, Pac Div, Blu, Chiddy Bang, Jay Electronica, Theophilus London and others wait in the wings. For those of us who suffered through nearly 20 years of gangster-ism and thug-ism as all-conquering ideologies, it feels like the clouds have lifted. No one is going to start wearing black medallions and claiming “word to the Mother” again — those days are over. And urban streets remain hip-hop’s cultural nexus, now and (hopefully) forever. But more goes on there than just drug dealing, pimping hoes, random acts of violence and being confronted by law-enforcement overseers. The new generation of rap nerds hanging out, spitting rhymes, chasing girls, playing with genre and dreaming of stardom isn’t brushing over society’s ills in favor of a suburban wonderland. It’s expanding the narratives.
MED and Madlib go the boogie route. My only problem is that MED lays his head to sleep on a stack of records near the end. A true record lover would never do that.
This essay on the latest crop of street rappers was posted August 10 on Rhapsody.com’s Music Stuff Place blog. I wrote it for my Rap Is Not Pop column.
I freely admit that I don’t specialize in breaking new artists. I analyze finished products. So I don’t have any personal stake in claiming that I was the first to write about Lil B or any other MC that the Internet-arati currently gags over. It’s an honorable and necessary vocation, but it’s just not my lane. I’m the tortoise, not the hare.
But as a potential counterpoint to the recent “new rap generation” represented by Drake, B.o.B., et cetera, whom I have written about quite a bit; this new wave of hipster thugs presents benefits and challenges. No matter how you excuse it away, or switch focus to an appreciation of formal technique (hence music critics’ over-reliance on the greatness of “internal rhyme schemes” and vocal “casualness”), this group relies too much on tropes. Each one loudly professes his ability to hustle and sell drugs, even though it’s farcical to think that any of them (with few exceptions) sold enough cocaine to attract serious scrutiny by law enforcement.
Unfortunately, street themes have become a crutch for rappers. They don’t know how to rap about anything else that affirms their masculinity, and being a Man capable of dishing out physical punishment is crucial to gain acceptance from hip-hop fans. It’s been that way for nearly twenty years. Concurrently, listeners no longer listen to hip-hop for rich content, because they’ve grown inured to these repetitive topics. Hence, the focus on form over substance, or “internal rhyme schemes” over what a rapper actually has to say. We seem to concede that rappers nowadays are saying nothing, even if this flies in the face of what hip-hop is supposed to be about.
However, that doesn’t mean these new rappers are full of shit. In fact, their music is really interesting. I’ve obsessively listened to Lil B’s “B.O.R. (Birth of Rap)” during the past several days as well as Wiz Khalifa’s recent Deal Or No Deal. And Curren$y’s Pilot Talk is one of my favorite albums this year. They have compelling stories to tell about being young, indulging in female flesh and weed smoke, and striving to overcome obstacles and establish a permanent legacy in this world.
I truly believe that the current wave — which, perhaps for promotional purposes, I pronounced was “blog rap’s second wave” — is a necessary counterbalance. As much as I like Drake’s work, and appreciate what B.o.B tried to do with The Adventures of Bobby Ray, I’m wary of their commercial bent and gleeful abuse of pop conventions. (Exhibit number one: B.o.B.’s effective but treacly “Airplanes.”) At least the current wave’s arsenal of familiar topical riffs are thoroughly rap-identified stereotypes.
I sympathize with alternative heads like Mychal Smith, who recently drew a rebuke from Talib Kweli for criticizing his Gucci Mane collaboration as “the demise of conscious rap,” arguing that “it has become more important to adopt the look of rebellion without appropriating the accompanying mentality.”
I’ve long hoped that the indie and conscious scenes that flourished in the late 90s would renew themselves. It hasn’t happened. I’ve been working on an essay that presents some reasons as to why it didn’t. Hopefully I can present it here in the next few days (or weeks).
But for now, let’s just say that the heroes of the “independent as fuck” era have reached their 30s, and no longer bring the same level of avant-garde innovation to their work as they did ten years ago. And post-millennial acts like Little Brother and Tanya Morgan don’t want to, as Anti-Pop Consortium once put it, disturb the equilibrium; they just want to create an indie network that supports their variations on established styles. Few current rap artists, young or old, have any interest in sustaining a radical anti-corporate, anti-commercial philosophy. (Shabazz Palaces, whom I mentioned in this piece, is a notable exception.)
That’s fine. It’s okay to be an entertainer and nothing else. However, please don’t confuse my thoughts with faint praise. If I didn’t find Lil B, Freddie Gibbs et al interesting from a musical and intellectual standpoint, then I wouldn’t have re-posted this article.
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Blog rap’s second wave epitomizes hip-hop’s scales of artistic justice. Just as complaints over the new rap generation’s increasingly pop output have reached a fever pitch, a new crop rises that embraces the familiar codes of street life. What makes them different from the usual parade of thugs is their youth — descriptions of a hipster thug lifestyle abound — openness to new sounds and varied collaborators, and linguistic dexterity, an unexpected benefit of Lil Wayne’s memorable 2007 mixtape run and its underlying theme that any fledging rapper, no matter how lame, can transform himself into a great emcee with hard work.
This isn’t a definitive list, but just a small sample of a few artists burning the Internet. All of them have material on Rhapsody; other promising voices such as Atlanta rapper Pill (1140: The Overdose) and DaVinci (The Day the Turf Stood Still) were left out because they don’t. Interestingly, nearly all of them are survivors of the major-label system, having signed development deals a few years ago and then summarily been dropped, only to attract renewed interest after converting Internet hustle into industry buzz. Only Shabazz Palaces doesn’t fit among this group, but their excellent recordings were impossible to omit.
Street Sweeper Social Club, The Ghetto Blaster EP
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Tom Morello writes some of the best intros in modern hard rock, and Boots Riley from the Coup is an ace satirist. And when both click on The Ghetto Blaster EP, they yield powerful tracks like “Scars,” which picks apart America’s hidden bootleg economies; and “Paper Planes,” which breathes new life into M.I.A.’s overplayed hit. Even when the two resort to easy leftist sloganeering like “The New F*ck You,” they provide energy blasts that, thanks to the EP’s short running time, don’t wear you out.
