Adventures In Rap #11: Criminal Minded

I've been trying to reconcile the notion of KRS-One as the "Teacha" and the so-called "positive rapper" with a story I once heard about how he had assaulted P.M. Dawn's Prince Be onstage at a concert because he didn't think Prince Be was "hardcore" enough, or for that matter, with this article I read in Rolling Stone a few years back:

KRS-One has ignited controversy with his comments as a panelist at The New Yorker Festival on October 2nd, claiming that he and other African-Americans "cheered when 9/11 happened...I say that proudly."

As reported in the New York Daily News and confirmed by a New Yorker spokeswoman, the rapper explained his views by saying that prior to the attack World Trade Center security guards prevented black people from entering "because of the way we talk and dress. So when the planes hit the building, we were like, 'Mmmm -- justice.' [9/11] doesn't affect us. 9/11 happened to them, not us. The rich . . . those who are oppressing us. RCA or BMG, Universal, the radio stations."

KRS-One also criticized recent voter registration campaigns by members of the hip-hop community. "Voting in a corrupt society adds more corruption," he said. "America has to commit suicide if the world is to be a better place."

OK, maybe he was just having a bad day. Apparently the website for "Temple of Hip-Hop, the self-proclaimed hip-hop preservation society founded by KRS-One, includes a 'declaration of peace' that seeks to 'establish a foundation of health, love, awareness, wealth, peace and prosperity for ourselves, our children and their children's children, forever.' " So the guy's a bit complicated. Also, somebody tell him that 1) the terrorists were not trying to attack BMG, RCA, and Universal, and 2) the president is now Barack Obama.

At any rate, if you're looking for some kind of ideological clarity, rap is not your genre. And so it is that the "Teacha" and the "Philosopher" is responsible for arguably the first gangsta rap album. Behold the album cover - allegedly the first to depict the performers brandishing weapons. Or the track "9mm," likely one of the earliest rap songs to nonchalantly describe a murder:

Me knew a crack dealer by the name of Peter
Had to buck him down with my 9 millimeter
He said I had his girl, I said "Now what are you? Stupid?"
But he tried to play me out and KRS-One knew it
He reached for his pistol but it was just a waste
Cause my 9 millimeter was up against his face
He pulled his pistol anyway and I filled him full of lead
But just before he fell to the ground this is what I said...

Wa da da dang
Wa da da da dang (Ay!)
Listen to my 9 millimeter go bang

Sounds pretty "positive" to me. My personal favorite track has to be "P Is Free," which chronicles a situation I've often faced in my life, where a prostitute has offered me her services free of charge, if only I could just provide her with some crack. Hence the memorable chorus "The girlies are free/'cause the crack costs money/oh yeah!":

Ridin' one day on my freestyle fix
Jammin' to a tape Scott LaRock had mixed
I said to myself "This tape sound funky"
Ridin' past the 116th Street junkie
Thought I saw Denise but I was only assumin'
Took another look and that butt was boomin'
Did a little trick on my freestyle fix
And I was right beside the girl, she was all on the tip
She said "Hi, DJ KRS"
She kissed me on my neck so I gave her a peck
She said "I'm really in a hurry so I cannot wait
If you give me a lift while we ride to the bait"
She jumped on my bike, I said "Huh, what's your stop?"
She said "Right around the corner to the crack spot
If you buy me a crack I'll know how to act
But if you don't, you might as well step back"
I said "Now how the hell we jump off to this?
I'm doin' you a favor, I'm givin you a lift"
She said "KRS, you know it goes"
I said "Yeah, you little.....it seems that you're a hoe"

Not sure how he was hoping to establish "a foundation of health, love, awareness, wealth, peace," with lyrics such as these but to be fair, at this early stage in his career KRS-One was not making any claims about promoting non-violence or positivity or anything in particular. In fact, Criminal Minded may have been rap's edgiest album yet.

KRS-One only began moving toward "consciousness" rap after his Boogie Down productions partner DJ Scott LaRock was suddenly murdered in a club after the album's release. Unfortunately, since BDP could not have anticipated the tragedy, this means that Scott LaRock's last testament to the world has ended up being a track called "Super Hoe," featuring the chorus "Scott LaRock had 'em all/he is the Superhoe":

Now many people have their ways of expressin'
What they do best, for Scott it's undressin'
Yes, either a girl or some date for the night
He doesn't want to hear that you're too tight
So do not think that Scott LaRock is mean
It's not his fault, he'll give you Vaseline
The Super Hoe is loose in your area
Makin' life for girls a little scarier
So if you got a radio tryin' to tape this
Do not keep in mind that he is a rapist
For the Super Hoe to be chillin'
Another female out there has to be willin'
So all you tramps and hoes raise your hand
Cause Super Hoe Scott LaRock understands
If you're a guy we'll talk about hangin'
And if you're a girl he'll talk about bangin'
If your moms call up, well, I don't know
But uh... (He is the Super Hoe)

Perhaps not the most fitting final statement. But rather, let us say that Criminal Minded as a whole can serve as his final musical epitaph. Indeed, for a 1987 rap album aiming more for street cred than a Run-D.M.C.-style crossover, the beats are actually very catchy, mellow, and pleasant. Scott LaRock also brings a welcome reggae flavor to several of the cuts. If Criminal Minded still sounds a bit dated, it sounds less dated than the other rap of that time. In short, we're getting closer to the good stuff.

As for KRS-One himself, he comes off as a congenial, honest sort of guy, although his persona seems a tad underdeveloped. He keeps boasting about how he's "teaching" and "educating" but mostly he just switches sentences around as if that somehow makes his rapping more complicated. It's like when you have to write a 10-page essay in college but you don't actually have an opinion on the topic, so you just spend ten pages trying to see how many different ways you can essentially say the same thing. From "Poetry": "Cause KRS-One means simply one KRS/That's it, that's all, solo, single, no more, no less." From "Word From Our Sponsor": "Many people know me, yet I'm known by few/My name is KRS-One, son, not two/Or three or four or five or six/The mix is on Scott LaRock and Scott LaRock is on the mix." So he seems to be claiming a linguistic brilliance that I don't think he necessarily demonstrates. Yeah, it was only 1987, and he was probably better than anyone else at that time. But not much better. I mean, in only a year or so we'd be hit with Slick Rick, Chuck D, Ice Cube, EPMD, and so on and so on, and personally, just as pure rappers, I think they'd all wipe the floor with KRS-One. But KRS-One's contribution is almost more of a cultural contribution than an artistic one. He is the guy who first stood back and started thinking about the direction of rap. Maybe. Sorta kinda.

Adventures In Rap #10: "Boyz-N-The- Hood"

You may be sitting there in your jacuzzi, snorting coke off a woman's well-tanned stomach, listening to The Chronic or AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted or Eazy-Duz-It and wondering where it all began. Well wonder no longer. You might be forgiven for not immediately sensing the significance of "Boyz-n-the-Hood" upon one quick listen, but this, for those who remain unaware, is nothing less than the birth of the most notorious rap group to ever grace a suburban white kid's stereo speaker. Dr. Dre producing. Eazy-E rapping. Ice Cube writing. I mean here it is folks.

According to scholars, "Boyz-n-the-Hood" is not the first gangsta rap song. But it is close. Many point to Ice-T's "Six in the Morning," but the Original Gangster himself credits Philadelphia rapper Schoolly D and his single "P.S.K. What Does It Mean":

The first record that came out along those lines was Schoolly D's "P.S.K." Then the syncopation of that rap was used by me when I made "Six In The Morning". The vocal delivery was the same: '...P.S.K. is makin' that green', '...six in the morning, police at my door'. When I heard that record I was like "Oh shit!" and call it a bite or what you will but I dug that record. My record didn't sound like "P.S.K.", but I liked the way he was flowing with it. "P.S.K." was talking about Park Side Killers but it was very vague. That was the only difference, when Schoolly did it, it was '...one by one, I'm knockin' em out'. All he did was represent a gang on his record. I took that and wrote a record about guns, beating people down, and all that with "Six In The Morning".

And thank goodness he did! All right, so maybe it's quite possible to imagine a world without gangsta rap but for better or worse that is not the world that we live in today. More than twenty years later, what can we say about a musical genre that not only refuses to explicitly condemn violence, but in many ways actively endorses it? If your initial reaction is to dub all gangsta rap immoral, as mine was, you'd be wise to recognize the links between the debate over the merits of gangsta rap and the debate over the merits of violence in cinema. Chew on that for a while. But I'm getting ahead of myself here; "Boyz-n-the-Hood" is hardly a work of major controversy.

Its musical merits are negligible, and yet its awkward lurch possesses a certain sleazy charm. Dr. Dre's usage of sampling at this stage is laughably rudimentary. Instead of building the background beat out of a bedrock of samples, he simply uses a drum machine and throws in a barely-altered sample (Jean Knight's "Mr. Big Stuff," the Staple Sister's "I'll Take You There," etc.) in between each verse. Needs some work, dude. (Note to aspiring rap producers: Never sample a song that is catchier than your own - otherwise the listener will be thinking "All right, 'Mr. Big Stuff'! Oh, wait, damn, I'm actually listening to 'Boyz-n-the-Hood.'")

Eazy-E sounds notably mellow and restrained; those who were present say he accepted rapping duties reluctantly and felt nervous and uneasy. This sense of caution would not last.

The real meat of the song, however, is Ice Cube's engagingly rambling lyrics. He makes no attempt to dilute his South Central slang for easy consumption:

Cruising down the street in my 6-4
Jockin' the freaks, clocking the dough
Went to the park to get the scoop
Knuckleheads out there cold shooting some hoops
A car pulls up who can it be
A fresh El Camino rollin', Kilo G
He rolls down his window and he started to say
It's all about making that GTA

GTA? Can Somebody help me out here? "Good Time Ass"? "Gold Trans Am"? I really don't have a clue. Then comes the vaguely threatening chorus:

Cuz the boyz n tha hood are always hard
You come talking that trash we'll pull your card
Knowing nothing in life but to be legit

And now here, I believe, is the first clue as to just how seriously you should really be taking these lyrics:

Don't quote me boy, cuz I ain't said shit

So there you have it, straight from the source: "Whatever we say, we're basically just fucking around." It goes on:

Donald B's in the place to give me the pace
He said my man JB is on freebase
The boy JB was a friend of mine
Till I caught him in my car trying to steal my Alpine
Chased him up the street to call a truce
The silly cluck head pulled out a deuce-deuce
Little did he know I had a loaded 12 gauge
One sucker dead, LA Times front page

Here we have the first hints of violent action as gratifying fantasy. N.W.A would quickly expand on this approach and take it all the way to the bank. Next comes the misogyny:

Bored as hell and I wanna get ill
So I went to a place where my homeboys chill
The fellows out there, making that dollar
I pulled up in my 6-4 Impala
They greet me with a 40 and I started drinking
And from the 8-ball my breath start stinking
Love to get my girl, to rock that body
Before I left I hit the Bacardi
Went to her house to get her out of the pad
Dumb hoe says something stupid that made me mad
She said somethin' that I couldn't believe
So I grabbed the stupid bitch by her nappy ass weave
She started talkin' shit, wouldn't you know?
Reached back like a pimp and slapped the hoe
Her father jumped out and he started to shout
So I threw a right-cross cold knocked him out

Ooh, milestones in almost every line! We get domestic abuse as acceptable expression of anger, casual dispensal of prostitution terminology, and I'm sure there's more but I've got other fish to fry:

I'm rollin' hard now I'm under control
Then wrapped my 6-4 round the telephone poll
I looked at my car and I said, "Oh brother"
I throw it in the gutter and go buy another
Walkin' home I see the G ride
Now Kat is drivin Kilo on the side
As they busted a U, they got pulled over
An undercover cop in a dark green Nova
Kat got beaten for resistin' arrest
He socked the pig in the head for rippin' his Guess
Now G is caught for doin' the crime
Fourth offence on the boy, he'll do some time

N.W.A's great "breakthrough," if one can call it that, was to completely toss aside any notion of personal responsibility. In N.W.A Land, a person can crash his or her car, and yet simply "throw it in the gutter and go buy another." Wow! It's like Grand Theft Auto! Yet Ice Cube's narrative does not suffer for its tenuous grip on reality, but rather gains strength by existing on its own surreal wavelength, as evinced by the improbable conclusion:

I went to get them out but there was no bail
The fellaz start to riot in the county jail
Two days later in municiple court
Kilo G on trial cold cut a fart
Disruption of a court, said the judge
On a six-year sentence my man didn't budge
Bailiff came over to turn him in
Kilo G looked up and gave a grin
He yelled out "FIRE!" then came Suzy
The bitch came in with a sub-machine Uzi
Police shot the girl but didn't hurt her
Both up state for attempted murder

So see? Women aren't so bad after all! Sometimes they bust into courtrooms and start mowing people down Terminator-style. Oh that Ice Cube, what a romantic.

Adventures In Rap #9: Eric B. & Rakim

Alright, who wants to join me in a game? Here's the game: name your top five favorite Eric B. & Rakim songs. "Eric B. and who" you say? You're not alone. And yet, apparently Eric B. and Rakim's standing in the rap world is high. Just listen to Steve Huey's introduction from the All Music Guide:

During rap's so-called golden age in the late '80s, Eric B. & Rakim were almost universally recognized as the premier DJ/MC team in all of hip-hop...Eric B. was a hugely influential DJ and beatmaker whose taste for hard-hitting James Brown samples touched off a stampede through the Godfather of Soul's back catalog that continues up to the present day. Rakim, meanwhile, still tops fan polls as the greatest MC of all time.

Well, how great could they be if nobody's ever heard of them? The answer: good enough to justify their reputation as hip-hop innovators, but not good enough to actually satisfy a listener in 2008. In other words, I'm glad they played their part, but personally I find Eric B. & Rakim more valuable as history than as music.

But let us give credit where credit is due. Now, if it were 1987 and I had just placed the needle onto the wax of Eric B. & Rakim's debut album Paid In Full, I would have probably said "damn that is good." Eric B. & Rakim's music would have struck me as more mellow and danceable than the dominant Run-D.M.C./LL Cool J rap/rock hybrid sound of the time. But given that it is actually 2008 and not 1987, and I have grown up in the post gansta funk era, I have to say that Paid In Full sounds like a great remix album - except it actually is the album. Hooks? Choruses? You won't find any of them here. Innovation alone does not make an album stand the test of time. There also has to be songcraft.

Take Rakim's much-vaunted rhyming skills, for example. Yes, his rhymes are smoother and more intricate than the rhymes of his predecessors. It's too bad Rakim only tackles one topic: his rhyming skills. A lot of casual observers like to criticize rap by saying that "All (insert random rapper here) ever does is talk about how cool he is." Often this is just an easy way for a lazy listener to disengage with the music. But in the case of Rakim, it is essentially true. Take this rapid-fire verse from 1988's "Follow The Leader" for instance:

A furified freestyle, lyrics of fury
My third eye makes me shine like jewelry
You're just a rent-a-rapper, your rhymes are minute-maid
I'll be here when it fade to watch you flip like a renegade
I can't wait to break and eliminate
On every traitor or snake - so stay awake
And follow and follow, because the tempo's a trail
The stage is a cage, the mic is a third rail
I'm Rakim, the fiend of a microphone
I'm not him, so leave my mic alone
Soon as the beat is felt, I'm ready to go
So fasten your seatbelt, cause I'm about to flow
No need to speed slow down to let the leader lead
Word to daddy, indeed!
The R's a rollin' stone, so I'm rollin'
Directions is told, then the rhymes are stolen
Stop buggin', a brother said, dig em, I never dug 'em
He couldn't follow the leader long enough so I drug 'em
Into danger zone, he should arrange his own
Face it, it's basic, erase it, change ya tone
There's one R in the alphabet
It's a one-letter word and it's about to get
More complex from one rhyme to the next
Eric B be easy on the flex
I've been from state to state, followers tailgate
Keep comin' but you came too late, but I'll wait
So back up, regroup, get a grip, come equipped
You're the next contestant - clap ya hands, you won a trip!
The price is right - don't make a deal too soon
How many notes could you name this tune?
Follow the leader is the title, theme, task
Now ya know, you don't have to ask
Rap is rhythm and poetry, cuts create sound effects
You might catch up if you follow the records E. wrecks
Until then keep eatin' and swallowin'
You better take a deep breath and keep followin'
The leader

This is the kind of verse that would have had aspiring rappers shaking their heads in unison in 1988, confessing to each other, "Now how the hell are we supposed to top that?" And yet...the song is about nothing! Just imagine if Rakim had actually applied his nimble linguistic talent to genuine subject matter. Sure, maybe if I were a DJ or a rapper, Eric. B. and Rakim would be my idols. But seeing as that I am neither of those things, I can't really enjoy Eric B. & Rakim as anything more than a (very impressive) historical curiosity.

Adventures In Rap #8: Licensed To Ill

Growing up as I did in the proverbial cave, the first Beastie Boys album I ever heard (and probably, by extension, the first rap album I ever heard) was their second one, Paul's Boutique. But for the vast majority of listeners, Licensed to Ill is the album through which the public first became acquainted with the charms of MCA, Ad Rock and Mike D. Many members of my generation can sing along to every word of "Girls," "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and "Brass Monkey" while proudly hoisting their red Dixie cups in the air. But not me. I am a Paul's Boutique kind of guy. So once I finally listened to Licensed To Ill, I thought, "This is the Beastie Boys album that everybody knows by heart?"

Knowing what I know about rap now, I can see why Licensed To Ill became such a big hit at the time. In 1987, rap was barely capable of putting out memorable singles, let alone memorable albums. In that respect, Licensed To Ill must have been the strongest rap album released up to that point, aside from possibly Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell. Each song, I think, has something interesting going for it; there isn't exactly any filler. But in 2008, it's apparent that Ill is saddled with cheap '80s production and embryonic sampling techniques in a way that later rap albums (and later Beastie Boys albums) are not.

Don't get me wrong, Licensed To Ill definitely upped the sampling ante considerably. While early rap was certainly no stranger to borrowing, for the most part the borrowed hooks and licks in songs like "Rapper's Delight" and "Planet Rock" were performed on new instruments in a new way (a practice that later became known as "interpolation" rather than sampling). But on Licensed To Ill the Beasties sampled directly from the source. In fact, when I first heard this album, I jokingly told a friend that the artist credit might have been more accurate if it had read "Led Zeppelin - as remixed by the Beastie Boys." Copyright laws are also gleefully flaunted in the case of The Clash, Black Sabbath, CCR, War, Billy Preston, and Mr. Ed. Yet compared to the sampling onslaught on Paul's Boutique, the technique as used here is tame.

So for me, Ill is more interesting as history than as music; I can appreciate the album's innovations without really wanting to listen to it all that much. Ill is also quite significant for a reason not explicitly connected to its music. It's been said before, but it's such a useful comparison that I might as well regurgitate it: The Beastie Boys were to rap what Elvis was to rock 'n' roll. They made it OK for white suburban kids to like hip-hop. By sampling Zeppelin and Sabbath instead of James Brown and Sly Stone, by rapping about Colonel Sanders and Abe Vigoda instead of homelessness and crack, and most of all, by being white, they probably quadrupled the size of rap's audience. Many at the time accused the Beasties of cultural piracy, but not too many in the rap community itself. As Darryl "DMC" McDaniels says in Rolling Stone:

The first time we toured with the Beastie Boys was the Raising Hell tour in 1986: Run-DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. We were playing the Deep South -- Crunkville, before there was crunk -- and it was just black people at those shows. The first night was somewhere in Georgia, and we were thinking, "I hope people don't leave when they see them." But the crowd loved them, because they weren't trying to be black rappers. They rapped about shit they knew about: skateboarding, going to White Castle, angel dust and mushrooms. Real recognizes real.

Indeed, because they were white, I don't think the Beasties had quite as many legitimate political grievances as their black peers did, so they naturally took a more absurd and abstract approach to the genre. I doubt anybody had heard rap lyrics like these before:

I got rhymes galime, I got rhymes galilla
And I got more rhymes than Phillis Diller

Spent some bank, I got a high powered jumbo
Rolled up a wooly and I watched Colombo

However, delightfully random pop culture references such as the ones above are more the exception on Ill than the rule, as they would be on Paul's Boutique. Licensed To Ill is like the A Hard Day's Night to Paul's Boutique's Sgt. Pepper: sure, it's better than what passed for a good album in its day, but it pales in comparison to what eventually followed. Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes that "Licensed To Ill reigns tall among the greatest records of its time." Yeah, but what's it competing with? The Joshua Tree? Bad? Give me an album that reigns tall among the greatest records of any time. Like Paul's Boutique.

Adventures In Rap #7: "The Show"/"La-Di-Da-Di"

So in my effort to tackle the history of rap as thoroughly as possible, to make sure that I'd heard every last droplet of worthwhile early rap ever released, I gave a listen to Street Jams: Hip-Hop From The Top, Vol. 1-4. While I'd already heard many of the tracks elsewhere (Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., etc.), there were several I had not. And several I may never need to hear again. I probably could have lived without Full Force's "Alice, I Want You Just For Me," The Fat Boys' "All You Can Eat," Fresh Gordon's "Gordy's Groove," Spyder-D's "Buckwheat's Beat" (yes, that Buckwheat), and Word Of Mouth's "King Kut (Featuring D.J. Cheese)," most of which are about on the level of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash." While from a historical perspective these songs are fascinating, from a musical and lyrical perspective they leave a little to be desired.

At some point rappers must have realized that you can have the greatest lyrics in the world but if your beat stinks it doesn't matter, and that, by the same token, you can have the slightest lyrics on the face of the earth but if your beat rocks, then no one cares. At this stage the discussion probably went about as far as "Hey, let's just put Drum Machine Pattern #16 and some synth riffs on there and let's go to Chuck E. Cheese."

But Street Jams was not a total wash, thanks to the inclusion of what is possibly the most quoted single in the history of hip-hop: Doug E. Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew's "The Show"/"La-Di-Da-Di." Amid the plethora of Saturday morning cartoon rejects, "The Show" and "La-Di-Da-Di"stood out like a sore thumb.

First of all, the music isn't total crap. "The Show" has a slinky, jazzy, spacious beat that grooves along with a rich layer of non-dated echo (as well as a comical keyboard riff which occasionally slips into the Inspector Gadget theme tune!). What really sets Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick apart from their 1985 brethren is the level of playfulness, irony, theatricality, and whimsy that they employ. They know how to be silly and yet not give the impression that they're constantly winking at you. They manage to be goofy without sounding like sell-outs. They're simply just...better.

First of all, you've got Doug E. Fresh, "The Human Beatbox," whose beatboxing isn't just amusing as a novelty but is actually filled with ingenious little details and split-second gags. Still, I don't know just how much human beatboxing I could take by itself. That's where Slick Rick comes in.

Slick Rick is possibly the greatest rapper of all time. Maybe in one sense at least. Not as a profound voice of human expression, perhaps, but just as a pure rapper. Whereas most rappers, before and since, have tried to come off as aggressive, Slick Rick is mellow. Every "mellow" rapper who's followed, from Snoop Dogg to Andre 3000 to Shock G to Das EFX, probably owes a little debt to Slick Rick. Some of the mellowness is probably unintentional: Since he spent a good portion of his childhood in England, he has a slight British accent that makes his phrasing even more distinctive than it already is. He elongates, he exaggerates, he plays around with words to create a surreal effect. He is the shit.

Together, Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick have a rapport that is unstoppable. Doug E. Fresh raps a line while Slick Rick makes a little throwaway joke in the background. Their absurdity is well-structured and logical. It's like the two class clowns, whom everybody knows are way funnier than the rest of the kids, getting up in front of the chalkboard and just goofing around for minutes and nobody minding. Like on the opening of "The Show":

Slick Rick:
Excuse me Doug E. Fresh...

Doug E. Fresh:
Yes!

Slick Rick:
Have you ever seen a show with fellows on the mic
With one million rhymes that don’t come out right?

Doug E. Fresh:
They bite

Slick Rick:
They’re never right

Doug E. Fresh:
That’s not polite

Slick Rick:
Am I lying?

Doug E. Fresh:
No, you’re quite right

And so on. I also love Slick Rick's only full verse in "The Show":

Slick Rick:
Well, here’s a little something that needs to be heard
Doug, I was walking downtown

Doug E. Fresh:
Word Rick

Slick Rick:
Word
All along, no one to be with
Step on the D-train, 205th
I saw a pretty girl

Doug E. Fresh:
So

Slick Rick:
So I sat beside her
Then she went rrrr, like she was Tony the Tiger
I said, oh darn, there's been a mistake
Honey, my name’s Slick Rick, not frosty flakes!

Now, although "The Show" was the A-side and the official hit (it peaked at #4 R&B), "La-Di-Da-Di," the B-side, is in some ways even better, and has been even more influential. Here is only a partial list of songs that have sampled "La-Di-Da-Di," just off the top of my head: The Beastie Boys' "Hold It Now, Hit It," Snoop Dogg's "Lodi Dodi," The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize," Das EFX's "Jussumen," De La Soul's "My Brother's A Basehead"...and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Gone are the cheesy keyboard riffs of "The Show." This time around, Doug E. Fresh is the music! Slick Rick takes center stage for a charmingly raunchy tale including the usage of Oil Of Olay, Johnson's Baby Powder, and Polo Cologne for God's sakes. The interplay between Slick Rick as the storyteller and Doug E. Fresh as the sort of Greek Chorus is delightful, like something out of a puppet show or a campfire skit.

At one point an exchange goes like this:

Slick Rick:
Then I dilly

Doug E. Fresh:
dally

Slick Rick:
I ran through a

Doug E. Fresh:
alley

Slick Rick:
I bumped into this homegirl named

Doug E. Fresh:
Sally

Slick Rick:
from the

Doug E. Fresh:
valley

I also love:

Slick Rick:
I woke up around ten o’clock in the morning
I gave myself a stretch up, a morning yawn and
Went to the bathroom to wash up
Put some soap on my face and my hand upon a cup, said
Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the top choice of them all
There was a rumble dumble, five minutes it lasted
The mirror said

Doug E. Fresh:
“You are you conceited bastard!”

And finally, lest anyone mistake this for some sort of crossover rap, the song goes out with an R-rated bang:

Slick Rick:
And on and on and on she kept on
The bitch been around before my mother’s born
I said, “cheer up!” I gave her a kiss
I said, “you can’t have me I’m too young for you miss”
She said, “No you’re not,” then she starts crying
I says, “I’m nineteen”, she says

Doug E. Fresh:
“Stop lying!”

Slick Rick:
I says, “I am — go ask my mother
And with your wrinkled pussy, I can’t be your luverrrrrr!”

The words of a true artist.

Adventures In Rap #6: "Friends"

Years ago, back when I wasn't sure how much I really wanted to get into rap, I remember reading AMG's review of Whodini's Greatest Hits, in which Alex Henderson wrote:

When funksters and soulsters who reached adulthood in the 1960s and '70s criticize rap, their number one complaint is usually that too much of it isn't melodic enough. But they seldom make that complaint about Whodini, which in the mid-'80s enjoyed a lot more support from R&B fans than the more forceful and abrasive sounds of Run-D.M.C. or LL Cool J.

Hmm, I thought. Maybe this would be closer to my kind of rap. Even though I was actually 19 years old, in a way I was one of those "funksters and soulsters" who enjoyed Baby Boomer music much more than the rap I'd occasionally heard in passing. So I thought, "Well, I better listen to some Whodini then."

Years later, I have finally listened to some Whodini, and to be honest, I don't think they sound any different from early Run-D.M.C. or LL Cool J. Maybe their choruses are slightly more melodic, but to say they have any sort of serious R&B twist is absurd. Sure, maybe compared with Run-D.M.C., but hell, Public Enemy had more genuine R&B in their music than Whodini. How long did it take before rappers realized their songs could basically be normal pop songs with hooks and choruses and all that fancy business, except they could just rap instead of sing? And how long did it take before rappers realized that their lyrics better be really amazing, or else they'd just sound silly? And that they'd better rap really fast? Not even the Sugarhill Gang took as much time between words as Whodini did.

So I've realized that, when it comes to old school rap, AMG doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. But there is one Whodini song I really like: "Friends." While no "U Can't Touch This" in the hook department, "Friends" sports a beguilingly eerie keyboard line, some tasteful synthesizer embellishment, and a drum machine borrowed straight from Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance."

As for the lyrics, initially they appear to be the usual Fresh Prince-style "PG ode" to buddies:

Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Ones we can depend on
Friends
How many of us have them?
Friends
Before we go any further, let's be
Friends

Sounds pretty lame, right? But as the song goes on, the group's attitude toward "friends" becomes noticeably ambivalent:

"Friends" is a word we use everyday
Most the time we use it in the wrong way
Now you can look the word up, again and again
But the dictionary doesn't know the meaning of friends

And if you ask me, you know, I couldn't be much help
Because a friend is somebody you judge for yourself
Some are OK, and they treat you real cool
But some mistake kindness for being a fool

We like to be with some, because they're funny
Others come around when they need some money
Some you grew up with, around the way
And you're still real close to this very day

Homeboys through the summer, winter, spring and fall
And then there's some we wish we never knew at all
And this list goes on, again and again
But these are the people that we call friends

So the rhymes aren't terribly dextrous (funny/money; cool/fool) but this depiction of friendship is getting kind of complicated for a supposedly frivolous song. The second verse takes a surprising turn into romantic territory:

When we first went out together, we barely knew each other
We had no intentions on becoming lovers
But in no time at all, you became my girl
Me and you, one on one, against the world
Talkin' on the telephone for hours at a time
Or else I was at your house, or you was at mine
And then came the arguments and all kinds of problems
Besides making love, we had nothing in common
It could've lasted longer because it started out strong
But I guess we went about the whole thing wrong
Cause out of nowhere it just came to an end
Because we became lovers before we were friends

How many rap songs suggest that lovers ought to be friends as well? I'm guessing not too many. Finally, the third verse descends into a paranoia more in line with early '70s soul songs such as The Undisputed Truth's "Smiling Faces Sometimes" and the O'Jay's "Backstabbers" than with DJ Jazzy Jeff:

You say you and your girlfriend were so tight
You took her out with you and your guy one night
She even had a set of keys to your home
And you shared mostly everything you owned

But as she shook your hand, she stole your man
And it was done so sweet, it had to be a plan
Couldn't trust her with cheese, let alone your keys
With friends like that you don't need enemies

You wonder how long it was all going on
And you're still not sure if you're glad he's gone
You say, well if she took him he was never mine
But deep inside you know that's just another lie

And now you're kinda cold toward people you meet
Cause of something that was done to you by some creep
But nevertheless, I'll say it again
That these are the people that we call friends

Damn. Friends can be pretty crappy, now that you think about it. They'll destroy your entire faith in humanity, if you really want to get down to it. You can't even trust 'em with cheese, for God's sake. Anyway, that's Whodini.

Adventures In Rap #5: Run-D.M.C.

According to AMG's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Run-D.M.C. are "hip-hop's Beatles." I don't think that comparison works at all. He writes, "Run-D.M.C. were the Beatles of rap because they signaled a cultural and musical change for the music, ushering it into its accepted form; neither group originated the music, but they gave it the shape known today." That may be true, but listening to Run-D.M.C. in 2008, I can't say that their music strikes me as being all that...good. Maybe they are more like "hip-hop's early silent films": historically groundbreaking and tremendously influential in their time, sure, but...I tend to prefer my movies with sound these days.

Rap's detractors like to say that hip-hop is just noise and not music. The thing is, with Run-D.M.C., I don't know if that dismissive statement is too far off the mark. Most of their songs really don't have hooks or melodies or anything of that nature. I mean, their crossover collaboration with Aerosmith (a revamped cover of "Walk This Way") ends up being one of their best songs simply by default, given that it is an actual song with an actual melody. Otherwise, there aren't too many Run-D.M.C. songs I'd be inclined to listen to twice. Rap scholars also make much of the group's hybrid rap-rock sound, but it seems to me that the rap that followed owes little to this almost random stylistic direction. What do heavy metal guitars have to do with the young black urban experience?

I mean, I feel like I have to squint my eyes and tilt my head to see exactly what made Run-D.M.C. so much more grittier and more credible than the other acts of their era. Erlewine writes that "Run-D.M.C. helped move rap from a singles-oriented genre to an album-oriented one -- they were the first hip-hop artists to construct full-fledged albums, not just collections with two singles and a bunch of filler." As far as I can tell, he is correct. But if Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash albums resemble those early Motown collections with names like The Supremes Today and The Four Tops Sing For You, Run-D.M.C. albums don't exactly strike me as What's Going Ons or Talking Books, you know what I mean?

And their lyrical approach is sort of stuck halfway between the engaging cheesiness of Sugar Hill era rap and the nasty, in-your-face harrowism of the more political late '80s rap. I mean, Kurtis Blow may be cheesy, but nobody calls Kurtis Blow a lyrical genius. In other words, Run.D.M.C.'s lyrics are not bad enough to be entertainingly bad, but probably not good enough to actually be good. An example from "King of Rock":

They call us ill, we're gettin' iller
There's no one chiller
It's not Michael Jackson
And this is not Thriller
As one def rapper, I know I can hang
I'm Run from Run-D.M.C., like Kool from Kool and the Gang
Roll to the rock, rock to the roll
D.M.C. stands for devastating mic control
You can't touch me with a ten foot pole
And I even made the devil sell me his soul

This is not terrible, but it is not Chuck D. Now, you will hear Chuck D go on and on about how Run-D.M.C. completely blew him away in 1984, but influence cannot be the only measure of a band's quality. The Beatles are not just the best group in rock because they were the most influential, but also because they remain the most musically rewarding. I mean, maybe if you combined Public Enemy, N.W.A., De La Soul and the Beastie Boys into one big group, then you might have something that you could possibly call "the Beatles of rap." As is it, I'm certainly glad Run-D.M.C. moved the genre along, but after reading Erlewine's comments in the All Music Guide, I have to say I expected...more.

Adventures In Rap #4: "The Message"

Wank-a-wank-a-wank-a-wanka-wanka
Bwank-a-wank-a-wank-a-wanka-wanka

You know how it goes.

But what you may not know, or may not realize, is just how much of a pure quantum leap Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" must have been compared to most of the laughable contemporary rap of that time. I mean, here we have a genre that suddenly went from "These here breaks will rock your shoes" to "Broken glass everywhere, people pissin' on the stairs you know they just don't care" in the blink of an eye. One might have assumed that the first serious "social commentary" rap song would have been a little more hesitant or cautious, but no. Perhaps it was so inevitable that rap would eventually delve into explicit portrayals of ghetto life that everyone was simply sitting around waiting for someone to have the guts to do it, and then they knew that once someone did, it would be a free-for-all. Or maybe no one genuinely anticipated that rap would go the way of '70s soul and funk and tackle social concerns - although given the inherently linguistic focus of rap, it would seem to be (and indeed is) a natural fit. Still, I think at the time, "The Message" was probably seen as a freak oddity in a sea of silliness, and not the cornerstone of an entirely new mode of urban expression.

Compared to the other Grandmaster Flash singles, the song's genesis itself was a freak occurence. According to Wikipedia, "The song was written by Sugar Hill session musician Ed 'Duke Bootee' Fletcher and Furious Five MC Melle Mel. Flash and the other members of The Furious Five, although credited on the record, were uninterested in recording the song and are not found on the finished record." Such was the case with many a classic single, from "Yesterday" to "Kung Fu Fighting." Perhaps the others thought "The Message" was too controversial, or too uncommercial, or both. And, going by the standards of the day, they would have been absolutely right. But sometimes the masses, as idiotic as they tend to be, display impressive taste, and by golly the song was a hit.

Often with early rap, one has to charitable. "That's a pretty impressive song...for its time," I'll find myself saying. Not with "The Message." Although released in 1982, I think "The Message" would have been a hit in 1992, and it would have been a hit in 2002. The song simply has that indefinable "whatever-it-is." You know what I'm talking about. It's spare. It's cool. And unlike 99% of the rap from 1982, it is not...cheesy.

After having been exposed to later rap, I'll listen to the early stuff and think to myself, "Why aren't they rapping faster? Why aren't they rhyming better?" But on "The Message," Melle Mel sounds like he's giving it everything he's got. As with the best of later rap, the phrases and images fly by so fast here it's overwhelming. And that's only fitting, since the subject of the song is about how overwhelming ghetto life can be. At times he almost sounds like he's out of breath: "Midrange, migrained, cancered membrane/Sometimes I think I'm going insane, I swear I might hijack a plane!" It's not that the rhymes are so amazingly complicated or clever. It's just that nary a word is misplaced, and nary an observation rings false or feels forced. Melle Mel sounds like he intimately knows of what he speaks. Rather than tell a compact story, he simply spews for seven minutes, as if he thought this were the only chance he would ever have to say what he really felt (hell, it's called "The Message," for God's sake, as if rap couldn't have more than one "message" song?). Never does he suggest any possible solutions to these various ills, and never does he hint that life will even be better. But what's affirming is that although he may be "close to the edge," he has not gone over. And that alone is more real, and more inspiring, than any half-baked message about peace and justice Michael Jackson ever threw our way.

Also, it has that cool "wanka-wanka" synthesizer riff.

Adventures In Rap #3: "The Breaks"

A few years back a friend gave me a mix containing "The Breaks," and it was upon hearing "The Breaks" that I first began to wonder if a journey through the history of rap might be more worthwhile than I had otherwise assumed. "The Breaks" surprised me in two ways: 1) it sounded like disco, and 2) it was really, really corny.

I had heard of Kurtis Blow, and I believe I had heard of "The Breaks," and I believe I possessed a vague understanding of Kurtis Blow as a groundbreaking rap artist, and, based on a cursory impression of rap, I had assumed that even early rap was screamingly tough. So imagine my surprise when I encountered edgy, threatening lyrics such as these: "Brakes on a bus, brakes on a car/Breaks to make you a superstar/Breaks to win and breaks to lose/But these here breaks will rock your shoes." "Rock your shoes"? Not even New Kids On The Block had ever stooped that low. Or how about "If your woman steps out with another man/And she runs off with him to Japan/And the IRS says they want to chat/And you can't explain why you claimed your cat"? What was this, a breakfast cereal commercial? I mean, "Rapper's Delight" is pretty tame by modern standards, but "The Breaks" makes "Rapper's Delight" seem like "Straight Outta Compton." Ladies and Gentlemen, Kurtis Blow: the Godfather of PG Rap.

And yet, the endless barrage of hardships Blow catalogues over the course of the song somehow manages, in a way, to undercut the silly party-anthem vibe of the performance. It's like Roberto Benigni clowning and mugging his way through the Holocaust. On the surface "The Breaks" may appear to be one groovy dance tune, but dig a little deeper and it's a raging bummer. When Blow couples a rather outlandish misfortune with a rather mundane misfortune ("And you borrowed money from the mob/And yesterday you lost your job"), the effect is almost touching. Borrowing money from the mob? Oh, man, that's hysterical. Losing your job? All too realistic, and not funny at all. But, as the Buddha might say, life is suffering.

In some sense the "smile through the pain" attitude of "The Breaks" may have anticipated the darker turn rap would swiftly take. Perhaps this is the first crumbling rock in the avalanche of anger, resentment, and hostility that rap would arguably unleash. Or maybe Blow just wanted to rhyme "man" with "Japan."

P.S. It's worth noting that "breaks" in the song refers to both "tough luck" and actual musical breaks. Indeed, the song is quite truthful with its advertising, as there are several breaks of a danceable nature throughout. Sadly, breaks would not find a permanent place in the genre but that, of course, is the breaks.

Adventures In Rap #2: The Sugar Hill Records Story

To truly gain a comprehensive picture of rap's early days, I decided to give the 5-disc Sugar Hill Records Story a listen. And oh, the oddities I found.

The Sugar Hill Records box set takes a scholarly approach towards music that was never in one hundred million years intended to be viewed in a scholarly light. Think of it as the first set of The Complete Motown Singles series...without the following nine. Here we find rap as some sort of mutant bastard child of disco. Indeed, it is not clear from the music gathered here that rap would have been headed toward any sort of meaningful artistic future.

With the surprise success of "Rapper's Delight," Sugar Hill Records, one can assume, decided to milk that fluke for all it was worth. And so we have the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Reprise (JAM-JAM)" (chorus: "Jam jam a jibbie a jam jibbie jibbie jam jam jam on"), Wayne & Charlie (The Rapping Dummy)'s "Check It Out," and The Moments' "Baby Let's Rap Now (Dance A Little Later)," which is actually a straight-up soul ballad containing nary a whiff of rapping. Sadly the world would never hear from Super-Wolf again, although his introductory anthem "Super-Wolf Can Do It" suggests otherwise:

I'm the people's choice in this Rolls Royce
The ladies freak when they hear my voice
Every rich girls' dream and every poor girl's supreme
Often known as a sex machine
I'm the ladies' pimp and the men's threat
If you're looking for better they ain't made it yet
I know I'm tough, I've got the soul
When they made the Wolf, they broke the mold
I'm the Super-Wolf from Cherry Hill
I never work and I never will
My daddy was a player, my grandpa too
I don't know nothing else to do
So when you hear this beat and you hear my howl
You know the Wolf is on the prowl

And let's not forget West Street Mob's "Ooh Baby," in which a sexy chorus of disembodied disco divas chant "We - want - you...to have a funky par-tay/But - make - sure...that you don't hurt nobody," to which a male vocoder voice replies "Ooooooh baby, I want to see you dance/Ooooooh lady, I want to touch your pants." Or Kevie Kev (Waterbed Kev)'s "All Night Long (Waterbed), which begins with the exhortation "Kev touch himself to prove that he's a freak!" The track that takes the cake in the strangeness department, however, has to be Chilly Kids' "At The Ice Arcade," which I am convinced appeared on Sugar Hill due to a mix up at the plant involving a shipment of Disney records, because otherwise I have no reasonable explanation for how it ended up here:

My homework's gotta wait, you know I'll do it later
But we rocked the Ice Arcade playing - Space Invaders!
I flunked my test, the teacher's annoyed
But we rocked the Ice Arcade playing- Asteroids!

But mostly the tracks are just standard generic disco/funk with the occasional curveball thrown in. It's interesting to note that at this stage in the game, the backing still consisted of live performance from Sugar Hill's house band rather than from sampling or DJ production, which is a major reason why Sugar Hill rap does not sound particularly far removed from that polyester-bespangled genre. The lone exception is Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," which cuts between samples of "Good Times," Blondie's "Rapture" and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," and which, so I'm told, can lay claim to featuring the first recorded appearance of scratching.

Another aspect of early rap that feels like spillover from the disco era is the rather extended song length. Very quickly, rap songs became a good deal shorter, eventually nearing an average of roughly four to five minutes per song. Why do you suppose that is? Is it because rappers began taking the emphasis off dancing in order to stress emotional urgency?

It couldn't have been a bad move, because at this embryonic stage, it seems as though rappers didn't really know what to rap about. Take "Freedom," the debut single from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, for example:

Melle Mel is right on time
And Taurus the bull is my zodiac sign
And I'm Mr. Ness and I'm ready to go
And I go by the sign of Scorpio
My name is Raheem, I don't like to fuss
My Zodiac sign is Aquarius
Kid Creole is the name of mine
And Pisces is my Zodiac sign
I'm Cowboy and I'm running this show
My zodiac sign is a-Virgo
And Grandmaster Flash cuts so odd
His zodiac sign is Capricorn

Apparently rap needed a little more time before it realized that suitable topics extended beyond a) sexual prowess, b) video games, and c) astrological signs.

What I want to know is: who was the target audience for this music? What did early rap offer that standard disco did not? Was it really worth one's hard-earned money to hear second-rate Barry White wannabes rhyme about waterbeds? Then again, only a select few of these tracks were genuine "hits," so perhaps we have our answer right there.

Fortunately, rap would quickly find its own voice with the 1982 release of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five's "The Message."

Adventures In Rap #1: "Rapper's Delight"

Rarely is the first song in a genre so easily labeled as such, and rarely is said first song so great, as it is in the case of rap and the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight." Well, OK, if you're a stickler for such technical distinctions, apparently the absolute first rap record was "King Tim III (Personality Jock)" by the funk band Fatback, recorded a few months prior. But come on. The reason why "Rapper's Delight" is so obviously the first rap song, even if it isn't, is because it defines the pleasures of the style so well and suggests within its fifteen minutes so many of the possible directions rap both has and hasn't taken.

As with many watershed artistic moments, the charm of "Rapper's Delight" is in our awareness, while listening to the song from a vantage point of almost thirty years, that the Sugarhill Gang, while recording it, did not know they were inventing rap. Imagine: you and a couple of colorful characters from your neighborhood are farting around in a studio one night, making up a slew of ridiculous rhymes over a disco hit (and even stealing some from local MCs), and then someone comes up to you and tells you you've just created the first record in a genre that will one day produce a million records. Get your ass back in that phone booth, Rufus, and stay the hell out of San Dimas, right?

Well, what's spooky about "Rapper's Delight" is that it almost plays like "The First Rap Record." As if they really did know. Listen to these introductory rhymes:

Now what you hear is not a test--I'm rappin' to the beat
And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet
See I am Wonder Mike and I'd like to say hello
To the black, to the white, the red, and the brown, the purple and yellow

These first few rhymes almost function as a clarion call, whether intentional or not, as if to say, "No, this is not a joke; this is the new sound." At the time, "Rapper's Delight" was considered a terrific novelty record, a catchy fluke, a one-off. To those who don't like rap at all, perhaps it still is. I won't be cocky and say that if I had been a rock critic at that time, I would have known that "Rapper's Delight" represented the first salvo in an exciting new genre and not, as many were claiming, an artistic dead-end. Because I would have said the exact same thing. "Who would want to hear more of that?," I imagine my burnt-out, late '70s alter-ego muttering.

But in retrospect the power of the style is obvious. It also helped that the Sugarhill Gang's rhymes sounded as though they were just about being made up on the spot, particularly Master Gee's:

Well it's on and on and on on and on
The beat dont stop until the break of dawn
I said M-A-S, T-E-R, a G with a double E
I said I go by the unforgettable name
Of the man they call the master gee
Well, my name is known all over the world
By all the foxy ladies and the pretty girls
I'm goin' down in history
As the baddest rapper there could ever be
Now I'm feelin the highs and ya feelin' the lows
The beat starts gettin' into your toes
Ya start poppin' ya fingers and stompin' your feet
And movin' your body while youre sittin' in your seat
And then damn ya start doin' the freak
I said damn, right outta your seat
Then ya throw your hands high in the air
Ya rockin' to the rhythm, shake your derriere
Ya rockin' to the beat without a care
With the sureshot M.C.s for the affair
Now, I'm not as tall as the rest of the gang
But I rap to the beat just the same
I got a little face and a pair of brown eyes
All I'm here to do ladies is hypnotize
Singin' on and on on on and on
The beat don't stop until the break of dawn
Singin' on and on on and on on and on
Like a hot buttered a pop da pop da pop dibbie dibbie
Pop da pop pop ya don't dare stop
Come alive y'all gimme what ya got
I guess by now you can take a hunch
And find that I am the baby of the bunch
But that's okay I still keep in stride
Cause all I'm here to do is just wiggle your behind
Singin on and and on and on and on
The beat don't stop until the break of dawn
Singin' on and and on and on on and on
Rock rock y'all throw it on the floor
I'm gonna freak ya here I'm gonna freak ya there
I'm gonna move you outta this atmosphere
Cause I'm one of a kind and I'll shock your mind
I'll put t-t-tickets in your behind
I said 1-2-3-4
Come on girls get on the floor
A-come alive, y'all a-gimme what ya got
Cause I'm guaranteed to make you rock
I said 1-2-3-4
Tell me Wonder Mike what are you waitin' for?

Now, raise your hands please, if you're reading those lyrics and you're not thinking to yourself, "Damn, I could do better than that." Because you know you could. "On/Dawn"? "World/Girls"? "History/Could ever be"? "Eyes/Hypnotize"? I mean you can actually hear Master Gee stretch his sentences out with filler words so that his raps still fit the beat. A million kids must have immediately realized, "Hey, that could be me." Those rhymes are no better than the rhymes you come up with in your living room late at night while goofing around with your friends. The song was like a challenge. "Rapper's Delight" was like the Ramones of Rap, except with a little something extra. As the Ramones did with punk, "Rapper's Delight" outlined the skeleton of a musical form that could be (and possibly should be) performed by anyone. Unlike the Ramones, who gleefully paraded their lack of obvious talent as though it were a virtue, however, "Rapper's Delight" most likely made people want to grab a mic and outdo these guys.

But just because the rhymes are shaky doesn't mean the song is bad. Quite the opposite, because the energy of the improvisation is infectious. It's like watching your parents try to make up a bedtime story as they go along. When are they going to screw up? Nothing beats this bizarre (and gleefully un-PC) verse from Big Bank Hank:

Well I was comin' home late one dark afternoon
A reporter stopped me for a interview
She said she's heard stories and she's heard fables
That I'm vicious on the mike and the turntables
This young reporter I did adore
So I rocked a vicious rhyme like I never did before
She said damn fly guy I'm in love with you
The casanova legend must have been true
I said by the way baby what's your name
Said I go by the name of Lois Lane
And you could be my boyfiend you surely can
Just let me quit my boyfriend called Superman
I said he's a fairy I do suppose
Flyin' through the air in pantyhose
He may be very sexy or even cute
But he looks like a sucker in a blue and red suit
I said you need a man who's got finesse
And his whole name across his chest
He may be able to fly all through the night
But can he rock a party 'til the early light
He can't satisfy you with his little worm
But I can bust you out with my super sperm

When was the last time you heard a rapper drop a verse like that?

Anyway, let's admit it, the rapping alone could not have carried the day here. At least half of the appeal of the song, as with so many more rap songs to come, simply lies in the smart choice of sample - in this case, the deathless groove of Chic's disco anthem "Good Times." Indeed, I don't think the Sugarhill Gang realized just how fitting a choice "Good Times" was, for while "Good Times" smacks of hazy coke-infused Studio 54 hangover and stands as a perfect coda for its era, "Rapper's Delight" conjures up images of a graffiti-laced street corner in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Sampling a weary disco smash as the basis of the first rap record was like the perfect passing of the torch.

In the end, perhaps the most curious aspect about "Rapper's Delight," at least from a historical perspective, is that even though it's a relic from the early days of a young genre, it doesn't sound too far removed from the sound of the genre as we know it today. Listen to Elvis' "That's All Right," for example. You couldn't call it straight country, and you couldn't call it straight blues, but after hearing even Elvis' recordings from just a few years on down the road, you have to admit that the song doesn't really sound like "rock and roll." But "Rapper's Delight" sounds like...rap. In fact, when I first heard the song a few years back, I thought I was listening to an updated remix, not the original recording. Shows what I knew. Well now I can go put that in my bang bang boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogity beat.

Little Earl's Adventures In Rap

After having just about satiated my presumedly bottomless desire for '60s and '70s rock, pop, and soul through two-and-a-half years of fervent downloading, a month ago I decided to fill a large gap in my musical knowledge and undertake a systematic exploration of the history of rap. It has irked me when every time I've looked at a "greatest albums of all time" list I see several rap albums and I simply have no informed opinion on their supposed merits or lack thereof. I realized that I could improve my value as a music critic, and as a human being, if I exposed myself to the best of rap, and withheld judgment until I felt that I had engaged with the music on its own terms, because then I would truly be able to say "I like this and here's why" or "I don't like this and here's why not" and not simply speak from ignorance as I used to do. In short, it was time for Little Earl's Adventures in Rap.

There are probably many reasons why Little Earl did not take an adventure in rap sooner. First of all, there is so much quality music from the '60s and '70s that I've enjoyed and I wouldn't have been interested in other genres until I became quite sick of that era or simply found myself in a different mood. Such is now the case. Second, rap, as many of you know, is primarily urban music and primarily black music. I am a white Jewish guy who grew up in rural San Mateo County. It was not previously clear to me exactly what, to paraphrase Morrissey, rap had to say about my life. Having lived in a large city now for a few years, however, suddenly the rhythms and subject matter of rap don't seem quite so foreign or inapplicable to me. Or in another sense, what was previously a detriment (that rap is nothing like my life) is now a virtue (rap is nothing like my life...and that's interesting!). Also, champion as I am of art that comes from the perspective of the outsider and the marginalized, I have to admit that rap definitely falls into such a category. You know how I'm always complaining about the lack of passion in art? Well if there's one quality rap has in spades, it is passion.

Nevertheless, I knew I had to take a focused, scholarly approach to the issue. I decided to start at the beginning and work my way up to the present - or at least up to 1996 (Tupac and Biggie) and then continue on from there if I so chose, because I felt that at least that way I would have hit the basics. I wanted to leap off from a genre I knew quite well (funk/disco) and follow its mutation into rap so that I could better understand how rap related to music I already liked, rather than simply go into hardcore rap cold. I explained this rough plan a few years back to an old roommate of mine who had come from a more urban background and had his own perspective on rap history. He told me that my plan was good and would probably take me where I wanted to go, but that if he were attempting to get somebody into rap, he would give that person two albums: Dr. Dre's The Chronic and the Wu-Tang Clan's Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. "Because," he said, "then you'd have the West Coast, and you'd have the East Coast." Although he may have been on to something, let me just say right now that if I had taken my friend's advice and listened to those two albums first, I would have put off my whole project and waited another five years before even trying rap again. Which is funny, because after taking a strict chronological approach, I actually like those two albums. But I wouldn't have liked them if I hadn't understood the context.

So let's just say that the project has been worth it, because not only am I no longer ignorant in regards to rap, but I have discovered that I actually like rap. Currently about half of the music I have been listening to is rap. Which is not to say that it will stay that way. But at the moment, I have found fresh meat and I am excited. My exploration has demolished many of my old preconceptions about the value of rap, such as:

1. Why don't they just sing?

Well, because they're trying to convey a different feeling. While singing is by nature relaxing, rapping is by nature more aggressive (although, of course, some rap is relaxing and some singing is aggressive). Rap is (mostly) music of the streets, and I don't think you could really capture the feeling of the streets if you sang with the soaring beauty of a trained soprano. You can also pack a lot more words into a song if you rap, and the best rap is thrilling precisely because so many words are coming at the listener so quickly. Besides, if you don't need to be able to sing to rap, then so many more people can potentially become rappers, such as certain lower-class artists who might not have had the same opportunities as middle-class artists have had, but who as a result might hold a more unique view of the world and whose music might be more worth our time. Which brings me to...

2. Anybody can do it

Well yes, technically anybody can do it, but as with singing, few people can do it well. After having listened to a lot of rap, I've realized that anyone who says that rappers aren't talented has not seriously bothered to listen to good rap. Are great rappers as talented as great singers? Probably not. But does that mean they're not talented? No.

3. It's not music

Didn't they say the same thing about jazz, rock n' roll, and punk at first? "It's not music." Well, that's because it's redefining what music actually is. In many ways, rap is the logical extension of the history of recorded music. Instead of making music out of live performance, and instead of making music out of overdubbed performance, why not make music out of pre-existing recorded performance? It's like rock n' roll cubed. I will say this: if an alien showed up on this planet and wanted me to introduce it to music, I would not start it out on rap. But I'm not an alien, now, am I?

4. It's unoriginal

Technically, even a normal cover version is "original" because a different person is singing the song than the person who originally sang it, right? The question is not whether music is "original" (because it's always original) but whether it's derivative. Bad rap is derivative. Good rap is imaginative. I think it's as simple as that. The best DJs can arrange samples in such a way as to craft better songs than the songs they're stealing the samples from!

5. It's so violent and misogynistic and negative

One epiphany I've had while listening to rap is that a lot of these lyrics you cannot take too seriously. So many of these guys were trying to uphold "street cred" images while deep down it seems they just wanted to hang out and party. Rap is also a reflection of the lives of the urban black community (with exceptions I'm sure), and if a rapper's everyday reality is guns and hoes, then he's going to have to rap about guns and hoes, isn't he? Actually, to be honest, this is the one issue I had with rap before I began this project that I have not yet fully resolved. Are rappers just making excuses for lazy songwriting by claiming their violence and misogyny is socially relevant? Hell, do rappers even have an obligation to be moral? And if so, which rappers are moral and which rappers are not? Also keep in mind that there is plenty of rap that does not revolve around the N word and the B word, which is how De La Soul can rap about hitting on girls in Burger King by pretending to be Tracy Chapman and how the Beastie Boys can boast about having more hits than Japanese home run king Sadaharu Oh.

So in the end, as with any artform, if you start making generalizations about rap you'll very quickly start to sound stupid. Like when I talk about video games. Now, I would not blame someone for not wanting to listen to rap. It is not for everyone. But I would blame someone for dismissing rap without listening to the best of it. As I probably used to do. But no longer. To my surprise and delight, rap is for me. And if you choose to join me on my Adventures In Rap, you may discover that it is for you too.