February 29th, 2008
I actually own this on CD-single, which is either keeping it real, or keeping it really retarded.
- From the first moments of the reel, one can immediately infer that the film is going to be of quality. Why? The stamp of quality from Mo’ Thugs Family Features. Like the ill-fated male fortuneteller scheme alluded to in “1st of tha’ Month,” the film company was yet another financial miscalculation for Bone. Though to be fair, the company did churn out several pictures of high repute, including Thug Scuba Diver, Ghetto Holy Roman Emperor, and Thuggish Ruggish Mortgage Broker.
- Ghetto Cowboys apparently love the harmonica. They too understand that the harmonica is the most undervalued instrument in rock. Well, that and the mandolin. (Oh, Arcade Fire, you’re so precious.)
- Counting your money seems to a prerequisite, which may or may not involve a mastery of the abacus.
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Posted in 10 Questions Raised | 10 Comments »
February 28th, 2008
Who knew these two were even working on a new album? Not like I’m complaining. All I know is that their new collabo “Broken Language” appeared in my inbox this morning, with little explanation other than the confirmation that it was indeed, a new Meth and Red track. I imagine it’s for a mixtape or something, as they’re rhyming over an old Smoothe Da Hustla and Trigger beat. It’s more of what you’d expect, but it’s always nice to hear these two on the same track. Blackout was sorely overlooked and if you don’t believe me, read Barry Schwartz’s On Second Thought piece for Stylus.
MP3: Redman & Method Man-”Broken Language”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 4 Comments »
February 28th, 2008
Sometimes, I feel sorry for the 13-year olds of today. I can’t even begin to imagine how disgruntled my adolescence would’ve been had I been forced to listen to “A Bay Bay” and “Low” everywhere I went. We got “Regulate,” and “Hip-Hop Hooray,” they got the Soulja Boy dance. And of course, there was “1st of Tha Month,” a song that pretty much defined the summer of 1995. Those were a weird couple of months. O.J. tried on the infamous “if it don’t fit, you must acquit” bloody gloves, Jerry Garcia died, and really not much else happened. It was the 90s, this was perfectly common. In fact, all I really remember doing that summer was watching a whole lot of Small Wonder, playing a lot of Tony LaRussa Baseball, and listening to E. 1999 Eternal. I’m still not sure whether it was supremely awesome or the worst summer of my life.
In particular, I listened to “1st of tha Month” more than anything else. It was hard not to, the thing was everywhere, from the radio, to MTV and Rap City, to my basketball practices in the afternoon. I even distinctly remember one day in my sweltering summer school computer class when a sub came and we spent the entire period listening to E. 1999 Eternal on flimsy Discman headphones and flipping through the liner notes, baffled by the hazy mysticism of the Misterouija board, the street map of E. 1999 Eternal and the mournful RIP message to Eazy who had died in March.
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February 27th, 2008
Whether consciously or not, rappers have understood the concept of branding since the on-and-on-to-the-break-of-dawn days. You can listen to everything from the “The Breaks” to “Crank That” and figure out pretty quickly that they were performed by Kurtis Blow and an autistic 4th Grader with a rudimentary understanding of Pro Tools, respectively. You don’t see that sort of self-promotion in other genres. Thom Yorke doesn’t ad-lib “Radiohead, up in this bitch!” in the middle of “Paranoid Android.” Jimi Hendrix never wrote hooks like “J-I-M-I/How do you stay fly” Though Benny Goodman once write a pithy couplet big-upping the fact that he was the”Good-Man.”
The thing is, it’s good business sense. You can’t buy someone’s music if you don’t know who they are and logically, you’ll increase your notoriety the most by repeating your name 15-plus times in the course of a three minute song. Of course today, most every pop star is a brand, with their own clothing line, fragrance, and unique sexually transmitted disease. But rappers have been doing this sort of stuff forever and out of the thousands of mostly worthless odes to themselves, “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” is one of the greatest, every bit as as good as “Nobody Beats the Biz,” “Who Am I (What’s My Name)” and “Ice Ice Baby.” (relax, it’s a joke.)
Yet it takes on an added resonance with its video, one of the most gully affairs ever filmed that doesn’t involve someone named Freekey Zeekey. Shot in ‘94, it’s a bare-bones ode to Bone Thugs’ Cleveland ghetto (I’d write “C-Town” ghetto, but I’m probably a bit too white to get away with that). The video tells you everything you ever needed to know about Bone Thugs. Who are they? Thuggish. What else are they? Ruggish. What does ruggish mean? Who cares? (though I always fancied it to be a combination of sluggish and rugged.) Either way, the song’s awesome. The sound of five innovators who discovered that the only way to put a fresh spin on Eazy E’s hood nihilism was to do speed-rapped thug gospel, with a touch of barbershop. They were like the B-Sharps, but much higher.
Nicole Richie: The Early Years
“Thuggish Ruggish Bone” is the sort of video you’d never see today, with practically every major label rapper concerned with depicting their faux-billionaire life style. By contrast, “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” is straight-up grimy, depicting Cleveland as somewhere between Major League and a lower rung of the Inferno (if you squint hard enough you can see Willie Mays Hayes in one of the group shots). Murky gray Cleveland freeways melt into stark urban decay and we see grainy shot after shot of Bone stalking through their hometown, past liquor stores and bail bonds joints, crew intact, burning tires in junkwards, shirtless and menacing.
It’s hard not to see the imprimatur of Eazy-E. Say what you want about the man. That he can’t “scrap a lick” so you know he’s got a gat, that he “fucks with his road dogs,” but Eazy knew how to market and package a rap group as well as anyone. “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” is an updated “Straight Outta’ Compton.” The lyrics are pitch-black, nothing but talk of getting high and remorseless killing. The look is similar. Oversized baggy t-shirts, graffiti-scarred walls, Loc sunglasses and a whole lot of very scary looking dudes scowling. Not to mention, put Eazy E in any video and I’m willing to give it a +5.
Wildly original, Bone’s whirlwind raps seem effortless, but are nearly impossible to mimic. Want to feel stupid? Try rapping along to a Bone Thugs song. Needless to say, this made for outstanding laughs on the Bar-Mitzvah circuit in 1994. I suspect that part of the reason why Bone don’t get much critical love is that they haven’t had much of an influence on subsequent groups. But I’d argue that Bone Thugs were so unique and inimitable that any group that tried to copy them would look totally ridiculous (though Crucial Conflict’s “Hay” and Do or Die’s “Po’ Pimp” are wonderful exceptions to this rule). More importantly, they made great songs, which I will continue to needlessly over-analyze in the next two days. But arguably none were better than this, their first Ruthless single, which taught 3,432,124 8th graders that it was perfectly alright to use “ruggish” as an adjective.
Download:
MP3: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony “Thuggish Ruggish Bone”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 9 Comments »
February 26th, 2008
Listening to Edan’s “Sound of the Funky Drummer” mixtape on this fine evening and heard “Funky Drummer” for the first time in a while. Thought I’d share.
MP3: James Brown-”The Funky Drummer”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 6 Comments »
February 26th, 2008
Maybe there was a trace of hyberbole when I kicked off my Times piece by declaring that Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is the most underrated group in rap history. Then again, I’m willing to ride this point out. Of course, other possible answers may include Organized Konfusion, Ultramagnetic, Camp Lo and others. And no, UGK no longer count as underrated. In fact, in the aftermath of Pimp C’s death, they’ve officially become overrated. Really guys, “Intl. Player’s Anthem” aside, Underground Kingz just wasn’t that good.
But while there are roughly 3,321 bloggers currently considering naming their first born son, Bun, I’ve never heard a single word about Bone in the two years I’ve mucked around this so-called world wide web. Naturally I’m as guilty as anyone. I’ve probably written 52,212 words on Ghostface (last week alone!) but never wrote about Bone until today. This despite them being one of my favorite all-time groups, in addition to having once decided to only answer to the name of Layzie Bone for two weeks in the 10th grade (this is not true. However, I was extremely lazy in the 10th grade.)
Granted, Wish, Bizzy, Krayzie, Layzie and Sleepy never delivered a stone-cold classic, something that you can point to as inarguable testament of their genius. However, E. 1999 Eternal is damn close and Creepin’ On The Come Up might well be the best rap EP ever made. Plus, “No Surrender,” has been adopted as John McCain’s official campaign theme song. The link to my Times review is below. There were Thugs, there was harmony, though sadly there weren’t any bones. Not everyone’s perfect.
LA Times: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Live Review
MP3: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-”Foe tha’ Love of $”
Posted in LA Times | 5 Comments »
February 25th, 2008
I’ve been meaning to write about Fresh Cherries From Yakima’s debut LP, Buttons For North Carolina for some time now, but it’s an elusive record to wrap your head around, a gnarled, slippery work that leaves you vainly groping for the proper adjectives. It’s an acoustic art record of ghostly, skeletal folk songs, sliced open occasionally by a thin blade of gurgling electronic static and fleeting, plaintive piano lines. It’s mood music, bad mood music, hissing shadows on warehouse walls, carrying an unsettling, serpentine slink in its rhythm. Martin’s lyrics are both clever and caustic, always steeped in a sense of longing, obsessed with scorned lovers and the boozy aftermath.
Buttons For North Caroline is the exact antithesis of easy listening. It’s concerned with exploring the weird fringes of sound. There’s a good chance you might not like it. Hell, I’m not even sure how much I like it. I couldn’t get through it until the fourth or fifth listen and to be perfectly honest, if some random unsigned Myspace singer/songwriter sent me this, I’d have turned it off after five minutes and deleted it from my hard drive (if I’d even listen at all). Of course, I couldn’t do that, Douglas Martin isn’t just a peer (his Fresh Cherries From Yakima is probably the best musician-run blog this side of John Darnielle’s Last Plane to Jakarta), but also a friend, as much as you can be having never actually met someone in real life. So yeah, conflict of interest, blah, blah, blah. I know.
But I’m glad I didn’t fling this into the digital ether. There’s something here. Songs that grate on first listen burrow their way into your head, lingering like bad dreams. They’re the antithesis of pop, but they aren’t jejeune, obnoxious caterwaulings from the Kimya Dawson school of song-writing either. There’s a grace and raw elegance to Martin’s words, a vivid sense of originality, and an unmistakable pain conveyed not through juvenile confessional, but from the whiskey-warped timbre of his thin, haunting voice that creaks and rattles like the weary foundation of a 200 year-old house. It’s more art than music and sure, that’s maybe the most pretentious I’ve ever written on this blog (doubtful), but there’s a grotesque beauty to Fresh Cherries From Yakima’s music that leaves me to believe that greater things are in store for Martin. Now if he’d only take off those silly ass neck scarves….
Download:
MP3: Fresh Cherries From Yakima-”Whiskey and Warhol”
MP3: Fresh Cherries From Yakima-”Good Morning Stranger”
Posted in Are You From the Lester Bangs School of Thought? | 2 Comments »
February 25th, 2008
Don’t get me wrong, Pusha T and Malice are very good rappers. And I certainly don’t blame them for not wanting to be lumped into “your coke-rap genre.” Truth be told, they can rap rings around the likes of Young Jeezy and Rick Ross (though be fair, both of those heavyset clowns rap about as well as they run. Too bad Rae already named an album Immobilarity). But really, the blogosphere fellation of the Clipse that has occurred over the last two years is downright embarrassing. These guys write the same song over and over. Hell Hath No Fury and We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3 are the Blue Steel and Le Tigre of rap records. It’s the same look. They might be good rappers but they’re very poor artists. To quote Jacobim Mugatu: I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. The full review is in the LA Weekly. Follow the link below. It’s in the computer.
LA Weekly: We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3 Review (Scroll Down)
Download:
ZIP: The Clipse-”We Got it 4 Cheap Vol. 3 Mixtape (Left-Click)
Posted in LA Weekly | 15 Comments »
February 24th, 2008
Haven’t thought of this cut from The Panther soundtrack in over a decade. In hindsight, it’s got to rank among the best posse tracks ever. I mean Biggie, Bone Thugs, Coolio, Busta Rhymes, Redman, Ill Al Scratch, Big Mike and Buckshot? Gadzooks. Granted, it has neither Rick Ross threatening to tip over a speedboat nor Khaled shouting “We the Best,” but it’ll have to do.
Download from The Panther Soundtrack: MP3: Notorious BIG, Bone Thugs, Coolio, Busta Rhymes, Redman Ill Al Scratch, Big Mike, Buckshot-”The Points”
Posted in Videos | 3 Comments »
February 22nd, 2008
Last week, DJ Khaled announced the creation of his We the Best Music, a new vanity label that will be distributed and released under the Def Jam umbrella. In a press conference to promote the pact, Khaled repeatedly proclaimed “we the best” and that “we taking over internationally.” As I find Khaled neither “the best” nor a viable candidate for global supremacy, I challenged him to a debate. Most graciously, Khaled accepted the offer and informed me, “you the worst.” I knew right then that I was in for a difficult time. It’s hard enough to debate when your opponent has hired Rick Ross to school him on the ways of elocution, let alone when he is a cunning linguist capable of eluding the sand traps of conventional English grammar.
Moderator (Birdman): May you each make an opening statement to prove who be the #1 stunna. (Makes bird call)
Khaled: We the best. We takin over!
[Audience roars with applause]
Passion of the Weiss: Who’s the best?
Khaled: We
Passion of the Weiss: Why?
Khaled: Because….I’m so hood.
Passion of the Weiss: I always thought you’d look good in one of those tropical-colored hipster hoodies. Fair play.
Baby makes unwanted and lascivious eye contact with Passion of the Weiss and Khaled. Khaled tries on a hoodie and continues to chant “I’m so hood” to deafening approval from the room.
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Posted in Great Debates in History, Best Of | 16 Comments »
