Tosten Burks prefers No Shave Novembeard to Movember.
There’s a slim line between a revival and revivalism. Take a mid-90’s MC and the producer for Jurassic 5 – a group that made a career on old-school homage – and it’s easy to be skeptical that the collaboration between SlimKid3 (of The Pharcyde) and DJ Nu-Mark would be as obnoxiously faux-vintage as Movember in Brooklyn.
But instead, with “Another Day, Another Dollar,” we get humility. Wizened, pure keyboard noodling and workman rap. These two have aged gorgeously.
It’s great because it organically feels like the Golden Era instead of forcing Golden Era clichés down your throat. It’s just jazz-hop loops and some street-corner poetry rather than an argument that jazz-hop loops and street-corner poetry are way better than Odd Future. There are no pretensions of any kind here.
“Welcome to a world where the ends don’t meet the means/Quite as sweet/Some lie, some cheat,” Tre Hardson says, speaking as someone for whom the words “in my younger days” now refer to a much different time than the days of going to school carrying lunch in a bag.
Now, SlimKid3 is the teacher on the stump rather than the student. It works beautifully because he delivers the street Psalms without sounding like a pastor or Common, which is probably redundant. “All trying to eat, with their ear to the street/Looking for a pulse, trying to find a beat.” With observations like this, Tre shows the difference between preaching and spitting truth.
On another level, this is a song that talks about the struggle of being famous and then being not famous, of going from a “Yo MTV Raps” mainstay to a footnote on blogs read by high schoolers who have never even heard of the show. It’s legitimate fame-rap that makes the pandering spotlight-sadness of current platinum-selling artists sound dumb. “I’m letting you know/Fortune and fame with nothing to show…” isn’t Drakeian melodrama as much as it is mere acceptance of the ups and downs of life.
Little people know that it’s hard to be a big person – that’s why we admire them. We get that it’s hard work making it to the top. We respect the hustle. But while poor Aubrey sings about the pain of being on top of the mountain, SlimKid3’s crucial distinction is pointing out the hardships of the climb up and climb down. Because “dolla dolla bill y’all” is much more digestible as a cry of struggle when it actually refers to one dolla dolla bill.
