A Brief Note To the Guy At The Bar Rapping Along To Every Word of Puffy and Mase’s “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down”
Image via Generation Prime
I mean honestly, couldn’t you have at least contained your obnoxious buffoonery to “The Choice is Yours,” or “Electric Relaxation” or “Hip Hop Hooray,” or any number of the infinitely better songs that the DJ subsequently played. Where is your sense of dignity, sir? Furthermore, why are you wearing a Yankees Cap in LA. Last time, I checked you weren’t Jay-Z. Or even Fonzworth Bentley.
Also, guy cultivating the “Flight of the Concords Look”, you weren’t fooling anyone.
Worst overheard pick-up line of the night. “Actually, I interned at NBC.”
I should probably stay in more.
Download:
MP3: Puff Daddy’s-”Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down”
Suggested Remedy For Bar Baggery:
MP3: Cypress Hill-”Hits From the Bong”
Stumble It!
August 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I’m actually wearing a Flight Of The Conchords shirt right now, am I a douchebag?
I should probably get out more.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Not unless you’re trying to look identical to them. It didn’t help that half the bar was convinced that they were part-time models.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I support any and everybody’s right to rap along to “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down.”
I don’t care what anybody thinks. I will Harlem Shake my ass off to that song.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Is it okay if I sing every word of Matthew Wilder’s sweet, sweet jam at the bar?
August 29th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I had to look up flight of the Concords on Wikipedia and I’m still confused. And I spent all my money going out on wednesday, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
Incidentally, any bar with a DJ that blends Hits from the Bong into Son of a Preacherman gets my patronage.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
This made me spit grape soda all over my couch.. through my nose.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
That pic is too funny…it looks like the “Douchebag” costume from a halloween catalog I’ll get in the mail next week.
And thanks for getting me re-hooked on Cypress this week…
August 29th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This is the way every guy in my high school who liked Mase dressed. Their collective douchebaggery got Mase’s Harlem World 2 voted best rap album ever in a school newspaper poll.
God bless those shiny shiny suits…
August 29th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
He’s a douchebag, but Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down is a great, great song. As are the songs you mention, and I’ll grant you that as examples of rap artistry they’re way better, but Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down was a generation-defining song for rich white 80s babies like myself.
August 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
I mean it is a good song, not “great great,” considering it’s at best the third best version of that beat, behind “The Message,” and “Check Yo’Self.”
August 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Yeah, well, there happen to be a lot of classic versions of that beat. That’s like saying No Idea’s Original isn’t great because it’s only, like, the 28th best use of that Barry White sample. And The Message’s one of the 5-10 most important rap songs ever, so no shame being worse than that. Part of why it’s so great is the context in which it came out. It didn’t really get much play until Biggie got shot, so when it did start getting played I assumed it was an oblique tribute record and was really impressed that instead of putting out some whiny eulogy to his best friend, he makes this really defiant song that’s kind of paranoid at the same time, saying that, though for all he knows he could get shot too, the death of his best friend and the biggest commodity on the label wouldn’t stop him. The fact that it was actually recorded before he died just makes it seem eerily prophetic (or if you’re into conspiracy theories, suspiciously so).
August 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I never see this guy. It must be where I live because I KNOW they exist.
LOL.
One.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
i just hope he didn’t sound too awful on the hook. i mean that part especially is a prime opportunity for slurred drunken retardation
August 31st, 2008 at 10:24 am
+ “can’t hold me down” is like finding a letter from one of your old girlfriends from high school: it makes you remember why you liked her, but ehhhhhh.
+ “considering what a ‘douchebag’ reallly is, i never understood why a guy wouldn’t want to be called one.” quote from douglas martin’s mom.
August 31st, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Yeah, or, like finding a letter from one of your old girlfriends in high school and realizing you never should’ve left her.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:31 pm
tray:
Your timeline is wrong. They played this alot months ad months before biggie was shot back when puffy’s album was titled “Hell up in Harlem” biggies death delayed the release of No Way Out. Puff was already on his way to having a big hit with that joint. After biggie died and Puff did “I’ll be missing you” to much commercial and crossover success he then had a string of big singles that we all know by heart. But “can’t nobody hold me down” was the urban club hit out the box
August 31st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Zilla for the block.
August 31st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Can’t argue with that, but being an 11-year-old kid in the suburbs at the time, I didn’t know what the urban club hits were. I can only tell you that - so far as I can recall - it wasn’t played constantly on Philly pop radio until he got shot.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
But Jeff, what we all REALLY want to know is where in the name of Biggie were you partying at? Inquiring minds need to know so we can avoid that joint like the plague! The way you describe the scene it sounds like you’re at Westwood BrewCo or some equally scary “college” bar…
September 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Only if you stop making vaguely psychotic comments here and every other place I write.
And tell me why 30 Seconds To Mars is so bad.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
…But it’s the vaguely psychotic comments that make the world go ’round, baby. You don’t want a bunch of yes-people in here telling you how great you are all of the time, do you? Well, do you?!?
Why does 30 Seconds to Uranus suck so bad? Anyone with that kind of time seriously needs a second job. Getting beaten to a pulp by Edward Norton in “Fight Club”?
Priceless…
September 4th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I have no problem with constructive, insightful critiques of me and my writing. In fact, I appreciate them. Mean, hateful calls for me to lose my job, I take issue with. Send me an e-mail. Let’s build. (No Bridge to Nowhere).
September 5th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Huh. I guess I didn’t take you for the sensitive type, given your penchant for being ‘mean’ in your writing…
I do apologize for(and honestly don’t remember)any calls for you to lose your job, since I’m never one to fuck with someone’s livelihood.
I do, however, do take great offense to some of your writings, hence the ‘vaguely psychotic’ comments. It’s like your fellow scribe Ian Cohen says about not being afraid to call out the wackness.
And in the same way you have no issue shitting on what I consider great music, I have no issue taking the same approach to an opinion I find to be lacking in substance, credibility, sense, etc.
Ah, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, and I don’t play like that.
All the best with your pursuits. (pro homo).
September 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Here’s my problem. If you read my comments section, you’ll notice that quite often myself and the people commenting disagree. Which is all good. Me and Trey Stone agree on practically nothing re: hip-hop but I respect him because he makes his points in a sober and usually clear manner. Unfortunately, in the past you’ve had a tendency to make personal attacks on both me and my writing without defending any of your positions. To say nothing of calls for publications to fire me (which to my recollection you’ve done at both the LA Weekly and the LA Times).
Ultimately, I have no idea what you find “great music,” that I “shit on,” because you’ve seemed more concerned with character assaults than articulating substantive rebuttals to my writing. As I said, I’m all for that. The point of this blog beyond sharing (what I think to be) good songs and enjoying some cheap laughs is trying to have an open-minded discussion of music and hopefully find some sort of greater understanding.
Why get so worked up? It’s a just a blog and this is just music, it’s something to be enjoyed not intensely loathed (barring Young Jeezy and Rick Ross records).
I’d like you to chime in here and wherever I write, but I’d appreciate a modicum of decency in the tenor of your commenting. In return, you’ll be alloted the same respect.