Thing I Love #5

Let's start the countdown.  Watch for a "Thing I Love" everyday this week.

Thing I Freakin' Love #5: Good Hip-Hop

First thing's first: so so much "hip-hop" or "rap" today sucks.  So so bad.  Actually, it has been that way for a while.  I am not sure where this started, but I think it was somewhere around the time all the feminists and the NAACP got together and said: "you know what...?  We've been working hard for decades.  It's time to let the media/recording conglomerates take a perfectly good style of music, and turn it into something that will almost single-handedly destroy everything we have been working on all this time, and for a profit!"

Then all the parents of America got together, I presume, and said: "goddamn! Our kids sure have been getting incrementally better educated for generations.  And you know what?  That's pissing us off!  Let's see if MTV and Clear Channel Radio can help us steal away our kids' brains and futures in a nightmarishly diabolical way!  Hopefully they will turn record profits while doing it."

Then, of course, Big Brother, or the "Federal Government" as all the cool kids are calling it, said "hey, democrat or republican, we sure win when we have a brain dead constituency.  Let's subsidize the largest recording companies by over-regulating radio and television with the "FCC", making it nearly impossible for hip-hop artists with IQ's over 70, or respect for women, to get heard through the monopolized air waves.  That will keep everyone docile and stupid."

Here's their ultimate plan for the future:

Because let's be frank here.  This is our culture now:

He's young.  He's "jeezy" (whatever the hell that means).  And he's the perfect role model for today's youth.  His pants fit exactly as much as he respects women or understands that the plight of urban America is actually exacerbated, not improved, by substance abuse and crime. 

I don't have to make fun of him.  I don't have to point out to you that he is a piece of human refuse.  I just have to show you the picture and tell you that his name is "T-Pain".  What an ass clown.

That said, I am here to offer you hope in the form of some of the best music in the entire world.  I grew up on The Doors, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd and the like.  I grew up listening to music that had balls and meant something.  And I demand that out of most of the music I listen to today.  Despite what some people may believe based on the two jackasses pictured above, there is a LOT of good hip-hop out there today.  All you have to do is turn off your TV and your radio and visit your local campus record store, order it off of Amazon, or listen to it on Pandora.  Thank GOD for the internet and for college-know-it-all-hippies.  They may suck at hygiene and social skills, but they know good hip-hop. 

For a long while, I listened to hip-hop almost exclusively.  "Underground" or "Indie" hip-hop.  I started with "Atmosphere", and I think it's a damn good place to start.  Most of Atmosphere's albums are tremendous, but my favorite one I think is "Headshots Se7en" (pictured right).  The lyrical landscape is deep and rich, and the story-telling ability of Sean Daily, the MC, is top-drawer.  The beats, constructed by "Ant" are out of this world.  This is music to live by.  It truly is poetic.  And the entire album isn't a fucking endorsement for marijuana use and "bitch slappin".  Learn more about Atmosphere here.  Please, if you haven't been totally turned off of hip-hop by BET yet, check out any of Atmosphere's stuff.  (This album is THE album to make love by.)

Next, there is Hieroglyphics.  Hiero, for short.  These African American gentlemen, simply put, have a flow that is unstoppable, and a cohesive sound across the breadth of their work that really leaves me with a lasting feeling of comfort with their music.  I don't know how well educated any of them are, but their vocabulary and ability to push words together in rapid succession so that you have to hear it a few times to capture the full depth of their meaning make them SEEM very educated.  They do endorse the smoking of "weed mixed with hash mixed with keef", but since they are from the Bay Area, I think we kind of have to give them that.  And the fact that they have their own record label and have remained independently successful for years is a testament to the fact that, although not appealing to the masses, intelligent and well constructed rap music does appeal to those of us who haven't undergone the "MTV brain drilling procedure".  Check out "Full Circle" (pictured left).  A bonus with Hieroglyphics: Del Tha Funky Homosapien, one of my very favorite artists around, is part of the group.

Another one to try out would be Buck 65.  Richard Terfry is his real name, and he is a Canadian hip-hopper that, frankly, opens doors to concepts that will one day define new genres of urban music all together.  A fantastic way to get into Buck is the album "This Right Here is Buck 65" (pictured right).  Buck is the kind of guy who quotes Ginsberg in one song, takes us on a hill-billy fishing adventure in the next, and then wraps it up with a song about how he is "built like a horse from the waist down".  It's the perfect mix of hipster, beatnik and urban culture.  Some of his music borders on being outside of the realm of hip-hop, and the beats and music production are almost always eccentric, trippy, surreal or some combination of the three.  This man is a vocalist, but first and foremost, he is a poet.  Top-notch listening.

I know it's hard for some people to hear this kind of stuff.  I know that "Young Jizzy" (is it jizzy, or jeezy? jizzy would make sense, since he is a Hollywood culture whore, and probably finds himself extremely "jizzy" after meeting with the rich, white record executives whose lusts know no bounds...) is probably "so cool".  I am certain that we all wish we could live like "Eminem" and "50 Cent", shooting people left and right and slappin' bitches so frequently that we have to have a separate Blackberry dedicated solely to our "bitch slappin' schedule".  And I am certain that this is how American parents want their kids to grow up.  Because we all know that mainstream music doesn't totally dehumanize women and young African Americans.  Right?  

Or maybe someone has once again sold the hugest bill of goods to all of us.  Maybe kids today don't know what REAL hip-hop is... that real hip-hop indeed has nuts, brains, culture and insight.

If you are one of the many who listen to MTV's version of music exclusively, please stop before it's too late.  Don't look now, but there is a huge drill aimed at the back of your dome.  Save your brain, and find some indie-hip-hop.

If you are one of those that never got into any hip-hop at all because the only stuff you were ever exposed to looked like this pile of garbage...

... please trust me and give real hip-hip a chance.

'Cause I love great hip-hop music.  And even though the mainstream can sound so seductive with it's overproduced-everything, I prefer to stick mainly to that music resting squarely outside of the mainstream.  

Anyone with me on this?