Not too long ago I was choppin it up with a fellow hip hop head who I have a lot of respect for. This man is in the game in a serious way and has a breadth of hip hop knowledge that would put you to shame. We were talking about some show I had gone to the night before when he hit me with this; he hardly ever goes to shows and can’t really remember what the last one was. I was blown away and I have to say it broke my heart a little. Now let me admit off top that I’ve been known to take this a little too far. If I have to choose between buying my ticket to Rakim, and paying utilities that month, best believe I’ll be burning candles and showering at my girl’s house until I get that next check. Ask me the last show I went to and I’ll be able to tell you immediately who and where it was, and I can almost guarantee you it’ll have been less than a month ago. If it’s longer than that you won’t even have to ask me, you’ll know. I’ll be rocking back and forth in the corner somewhere having cold sweats, hallucinating, and itching my skin off…Ok, what?! I can feel you judging me right now and you need to quit. I already admitted that I’m a hip hop show junkie. Now allow me tell you why you should be too.
I promise not to turn this into a history lesson but it has to be pointed out that “live” is the way hip hop started. MC Shan told us in ’88 that They Used To Do It Out In The Park. Ever since then, countless artists (Saigon, Joel Ortiz, Nas, Luda, and Jay Z to name a few) have been trying to keep that sentiment alive as they each remind us in turn, that “hip hop started out in the park.” It wasn’t just an audible experience, it assaulted all your senses and you felt that shit from the inside out. So why does it seem like we’ve forgotten how important the element of a live performance is? Back when the movement was blossoming, if you wanted to hear some new hip hop you went and bought a mix tape out of someone’s trunk (or maybe, if you grew up country like me, from a friend’s cousin’s boyfriend’s homeboy who lived right outside NYC). Now however, we live in an age of non-stop music videos, interviews, album leaks, downloads, and free videos online courtesy of anyone with a video phone. If you have access to a computer you have access to what seems like anything. Feel like seeing your favorite artist onstage? Youtube said artist, add “live” and you got it. Now clearly I’ve done this before (err, do it every day) but if you’re letting this substitute for the real thing…send me your number so I can personally call you up and tell you you’re worthless.
What needs to be understood here is anyone can hide behind a recording. All you have to do is visit RapRebirth, find a ghostwriter, drop enough paper for a producer with some credits and…you’re the next Snoop Dogg. Real emceeing is a different thing. For starters there’s breath control, voice inflection, enunciation, and stage presence. Can your favorite rapper survive without punch-ins and voice synthesizing? Do they know how to connect with their fans or create fans out of non-listeners? If you want to get to know your favorite rappers, don’t watch them on 106 and Park or stalk- sorry, “follow”- them online; go to their shows. They reveal themselves in these live performances. Everything you’ve ever thought about them is either confirmed or denied. Want to know if Nas is as powerful as you think he might be? Go watch him just murk an hour long set with no hype man and I’ll dare you to say he’s not God-like. Curious if WuTang still has it? Go watch Ghostface sit on a monitor and get drunk, Meth not show, and the rest of them just promote the merch in the lobby. Then get back to me. Ever question whether or not KRS is really about all the social ideology he spouts? Witness him drop knowledge about Oscar Grant, throw his head back and scream “JUSTIIICE” with sweat pouring and veins bulging, before he launches into Sound of Da Police. Question answered. Be there when the music winds down and Jay Z turns the lights on the crowd, and for about 30 minutes just shouts out the people wearing a shirt with his name on it, or those he saw screaming every word to every verse back at him during the show. Then try to tell me he hasn’t, against all odds, retained some of that grateful kid from the Marcy projects. And who low key would’ve given anything to be there when Akon let his thug show as he tossed that kid off stage? Yeah, you can’t see me right now but I’m raising my hand.
What I’m trying to illustrate was probably best said by KRS-ONE in 9 Elements. “Hip Hop is something you live, rap is something you do.” Rap is the cd in your hand. Hip Hop is everything that led up to the making of it, and everything that will come from it afterwards. If you call yourself a true head, don’t hesitate to keep that movement alive by participating in this fundamental element. Some shows will blow your mind open and reinforce your love for one rapper or another, while some will disappoint you and change your opinion of artists you’ve loved for ages. Sometimes the opening group will steal the show and all of a sudden you have a new favorite, probably local, crew. That, all of that, is so true to the roots of the movement. Not to mention you’ll be monetarily supporting artists whose music you’ve probably been pirating for years anyway (no judgement, we all do it). You can take it back to when this music was for all 5 senses; Hear some new rhymes or the ones you’ve loved for years. Smell that smoke as it rises up in puffs all through the venue. Sip on a couple drinks back at the bar during set breaks. Look into the face of the man or woman who you may have only seen on cd jackets until now. And feel that bass hit so hard that it shakes all the best places on a female. Above all, understand one thing. If you’re only listening to the music coming out of our speakers, you’re just hearing some rap. If you make it to the shows though, you might get to glimpse that Real. Hip. Hop.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
21st Century Hip Hop Fan; How Close Is Too Close?
“I aint got a single fan I got brothers and sisters.” Brother Ali, the street preacher, proclaims this on his track Operation Push…and damn don’t that make you feel good. Hip hop may just be the most personal art form available to the masses today, and historically the listener has been elevated (as Ali does here) to become akin to the emcee as an active participant in the music. We play an imperative and irreplaceable role in its dissection. Hip Hop is different from other genres in that way. It BEGS to be engaged in, analyzed, argued over, criticized, and praised. It doesn’t exist without the fan, whether that’s the b-boy born and raised in the Bronx steady blastin KRS-ONE, or the Iowa frat boy who keeps making the new Drake album the soundtrack to every kegger (sorry, Drake, didn’t make that up). The emcee and the fan are inextricably linked; one does not exist without the other.
But what happens when the fans, as a whole, stumble laptop first into an era in which these artists are accessible in a way we never imagined? We don’t know them in some lyrical, figurative way anymore. A lot of our favorite rappers have willingly given us access to a seemingly constant stream of consciousness via facebook, twitter, podcasts, blogs, etc. So now, we’ve become active participants, not in just the music, but in the lives of the emcees themselves. We expect to hear from them multiple times a day. How many friends do you even have that you expect to hear from multiple times a day? I’m sayin, Evidence deleted all of his tweets a couple weeks ago and posted something pretty vague and cryptic about things turning ugly. I became, no lie, genuinely concerned for dude. Now, I’ve been listening to and loving Ev for years but I don’t know this man. All of a sudden I’m invested in his personal life on a daily basis? These days one click gains you access to the perpetual personal musings of these artists; So the gap between fan and rapper is again closed, except now it’s not because we’re elevated; It’s because the artist is making the move to our level.
The question begged then, is what is this doing to the music? Speaking from a fan’s perspective, it’s undeniably exciting at first. Like, word?! Normally I have to spend $11.99 to get inside Talib’s head. Now I can do it for free, all day? But what happens then, when the man fails to live up to the emcee? I’ve seen it countless times, on twitter especially, and Talib is a perfect example. He makes a comment about respecting Soulja Boy’s hustle and starts catching it from all angles. “Fans” turn on him, they tell him he lost their respect, that they used to love him and now they’ll never buy another cd. Now just wait a second, folks. Think about this. He lost your respect not because lyrically he’s falling off, or because he’s taking his sound in a different direction, but because of a 140 character thought that he had when he was bored at 2pm last Thursday. How many times have you made a comment that you wouldn’t necessarily back the next day, or made a statement that you would back, but doesn’t define you in any real way? My point is this; these rappers are being held accountable for all of the thoughts they have now, not just the ones they write on a pad or say over a beat. Is that fair? Is that even Hip Hop?
Now complicate that with the fact that the fan can feel legitimately rejected by their favorite rappers in these public forums. Before these technological advances, your favorite rapper would feed you love over a couple tracks at least, and you ate that shit up. But now, you catch yourself thinking “What the hell, Snoop, you said last week you’d follow me back man?” Or, “Really, Jean? I’ve typed you the same question about your release date 5 times during this Ustream video, but you wanna answer dude who asks you about sexting?” You might even take it all the way there and let them know you’re pissed off and why, and then they snap back at you, and it escalates…is this striking anyone else as bizarre? If you’re a hip hop head who stays up on the cyber lives of these rappers, any given day they can make you feel like you’re back in that one shity relationship. You feel like maybe they don’t appreciate you as much as they said in your favorite song, and so you start to feel dejected and unloved. I mean, you buy their cd’s, you go to their shows, maybe cop some merch…what are you doing wrong? What do they want from you? What changed?! Then they retweet something you mentioned them on, add “LOL!” and all of a sudden you’re head over heels in love again.
Ok, ok so maybe it’s not that drastic. But one thing is for certain. If you're truly invested in Hip Hop, this 21st century pop culture phenomenon affects the music. Maybe it enhances it all for you, or maybe it has become more than you ever wanted it to be. Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s undeniable that in this age, we engage in a personal (if one-sided) relationship with the artist, rather than solely with his/her art. It’s not just straight up hip hop anymore, and personally you can miss me with all that. I want my hip hop like I want my drink tonight; straight up, with a twist.
But what happens when the fans, as a whole, stumble laptop first into an era in which these artists are accessible in a way we never imagined? We don’t know them in some lyrical, figurative way anymore. A lot of our favorite rappers have willingly given us access to a seemingly constant stream of consciousness via facebook, twitter, podcasts, blogs, etc. So now, we’ve become active participants, not in just the music, but in the lives of the emcees themselves. We expect to hear from them multiple times a day. How many friends do you even have that you expect to hear from multiple times a day? I’m sayin, Evidence deleted all of his tweets a couple weeks ago and posted something pretty vague and cryptic about things turning ugly. I became, no lie, genuinely concerned for dude. Now, I’ve been listening to and loving Ev for years but I don’t know this man. All of a sudden I’m invested in his personal life on a daily basis? These days one click gains you access to the perpetual personal musings of these artists; So the gap between fan and rapper is again closed, except now it’s not because we’re elevated; It’s because the artist is making the move to our level.
The question begged then, is what is this doing to the music? Speaking from a fan’s perspective, it’s undeniably exciting at first. Like, word?! Normally I have to spend $11.99 to get inside Talib’s head. Now I can do it for free, all day? But what happens then, when the man fails to live up to the emcee? I’ve seen it countless times, on twitter especially, and Talib is a perfect example. He makes a comment about respecting Soulja Boy’s hustle and starts catching it from all angles. “Fans” turn on him, they tell him he lost their respect, that they used to love him and now they’ll never buy another cd. Now just wait a second, folks. Think about this. He lost your respect not because lyrically he’s falling off, or because he’s taking his sound in a different direction, but because of a 140 character thought that he had when he was bored at 2pm last Thursday. How many times have you made a comment that you wouldn’t necessarily back the next day, or made a statement that you would back, but doesn’t define you in any real way? My point is this; these rappers are being held accountable for all of the thoughts they have now, not just the ones they write on a pad or say over a beat. Is that fair? Is that even Hip Hop?
Now complicate that with the fact that the fan can feel legitimately rejected by their favorite rappers in these public forums. Before these technological advances, your favorite rapper would feed you love over a couple tracks at least, and you ate that shit up. But now, you catch yourself thinking “What the hell, Snoop, you said last week you’d follow me back man?” Or, “Really, Jean? I’ve typed you the same question about your release date 5 times during this Ustream video, but you wanna answer dude who asks you about sexting?” You might even take it all the way there and let them know you’re pissed off and why, and then they snap back at you, and it escalates…is this striking anyone else as bizarre? If you’re a hip hop head who stays up on the cyber lives of these rappers, any given day they can make you feel like you’re back in that one shity relationship. You feel like maybe they don’t appreciate you as much as they said in your favorite song, and so you start to feel dejected and unloved. I mean, you buy their cd’s, you go to their shows, maybe cop some merch…what are you doing wrong? What do they want from you? What changed?! Then they retweet something you mentioned them on, add “LOL!” and all of a sudden you’re head over heels in love again.
Ok, ok so maybe it’s not that drastic. But one thing is for certain. If you're truly invested in Hip Hop, this 21st century pop culture phenomenon affects the music. Maybe it enhances it all for you, or maybe it has become more than you ever wanted it to be. Regardless of how you feel about it, it’s undeniable that in this age, we engage in a personal (if one-sided) relationship with the artist, rather than solely with his/her art. It’s not just straight up hip hop anymore, and personally you can miss me with all that. I want my hip hop like I want my drink tonight; straight up, with a twist.
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