Kayaro Blog: The return of the funky one!

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

The return of the funky one!

Lately all I do is reminisce about the golden age of emcees. You know, the dookey gold chains, bombing the 7 train, the high top fades, acid wash jeans, fat laces, “Yo MTV Raps”, etc. etc. So I’ll share my hip-hop flashbacks with you.

(Professor School D)

I used to judge emcees by their flow, style, lyrics, and content. If you bit somebody’s lyrics, you didn’t have a dj, if your beats sound like “Casio’s Greatest Hits” or you had a girl singing the hook, fugetaboudit! These days, as long as the emcee has a little rhythm and doesn’t sound too off beat, I give them a pass. The longer I listen to hip-hop, the less picky I become. I actually like Afroman, Chingy doesn’t bother me (the joint with Snoop was the shiznit! don’t hate), and unlike most hip-hop fans, I actually looked forward to the all white girl group Northern State. Why, you may ask? It’s simple.

Hip-hop’s vision has been clouded by “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”. Now, the objective is “make money, money, make money money money!” The result is a gang of emcees trying to match “the sound” that majors(the true original gangsters) are willing to put money behind, i.e., cars, rims, clothes, booze, guns, blunts, stunts, crime. Every once in a while someone like Jay-Z, Nas or some new emcee with a mean rhyme game comes out, and you can’t front his/her skills at all. But most emcees today are wack, dick riders, and they act like they are saying something new because they use slang you never heard of. With all of the clones being dumped on the streets by the Universal Sony BMG Empire, it’s like a breath of fresh air when someone comes along and tips the applecart, even if they sound like a Beastie Boys throwback on helium. I know that it’s all an attempt to recreate the glory days. But until that happens, I will accept the rest of the the lame hip-hop that is here in the meantime with a smile on my face. I will do it out of respect and undying faith in our cause. I mean there used to be a time when we had no rappers getting music awards. Now, they all are!! In order to get to this point, some sacrifices had to be made. So long live uninspired hip-hop! The true fuel to the next underground hip

If I can’t critique hip-hop like I want to without fear of retaliation for speaking my mind, then you can’t complain when Nelly, Chingy, The Neptunes, and R. Kelly keep hypnotizing you with banging beats, stale processed lyrics, and get all the awards. Peace to the pioneers of rap. If you don’t know any of these people listed in the links below, do like Flav said…”Read a book, learn about your culture!”