Respect His Authoritah
I was also intending to write about Peter Kruder at the Heineken Green Room Sessions yesterday, but we got bored when he got a bit too acid-jazzy for our tastes, and went to Phuture instead, where I informed some tall drunk loser who looked all of 17 that if he wanted to use my bum as a grinding surface, he should probably give me some fucking flattery first.
After moving further into the crowd and getting Dom to take her cap off so that the loser couldn’t find us again, I was ambushed by a sudden and unexpected epiphany about Ludacris’s Southern Hospitality: it is the shit.
I’ve always had a thing for authoritative MCing – Chuck D is the obvious example to trot out here, and is probably the reason for this fetish in the first place, given that Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions is the first rap album I ever bought. Other MCs who float my “authoritative” boat are KRS-One and Roots Manuva, but I never really paid much attention to Ludacris. He’s always just been there, another of those people halfway down my “too much music, too little time” list, but when “Cadillac GRI-LLS, Cadillac MI-LLS, check out the oil my Cadillac SPI-LLS” (look, I didn’t say he was a poet, I just said he sounds authoritative when he raps) blasted out of the club speakers, multiple Michelle rap buttons were pushed.
The other thing that really does it for me in this song is the way the last word in each line is (only just) after the beat instead of right smack on it. I can’t quite describe why it makes such a big difference for me, but rapping with words smack on the beat reminds me of the Beastie Boys (eg. “Don’t! You! ask me to SMILE! I’ll stick around and make it worth your WHILE! etc.”), who I (shock! horror!) quite often find boring.
The last thing that really gets my booty shaking in this song (and quite a lot of others) is its extreme misogyny, but I can’t quite explain that in any rational way. I just derive wild joy from yelling “All my women in the house if you chasing cash, and you got some big titties wit a matching ass.” It probably has something to do with feeling empowered in my female sensuality or whatever.
*sigh* I feel as though I’ve been born in the wrong era – long live the ’80s, and hard rock, metal, acid jazz and funk.
If you have eclectic music taste there’s never a “right” era to be born in anyway. So many bands I love had their biggest hits before I was even born, but none of that matters that much as long as all their seminal records are still available. (I admit it is, however, a bit of a bummer to me that Freddie Mercury is dead and Simon & Garfunkel aren’t on the best of terms.)
Besides, there are recent releases that suit your tastes as well! Prince’s new album is well funky, acid jazz is on every yuppie’s sound system, the real metal scene has almost always been completely separate from the mainstream anyway so nothing has changed there, and as for the 80s and hard rock, I need point you no further than The Darkness.
After reading about Peter Kruder being a bit too acid-jazzy, I decided to give him a miss when it was his turn to play in KL. That, and also because I couldn’t find anyone willing enough to go with me to check out some, uhh, ‘chill-out’ music.
Hope I made the right decision!
Simon and Garfunkel may not be on the best of terms, but they are touring together. They’re playing in Hyde Park on 15th July, and several other places on other different days. I’m very upset, as I’m in Spain when they’re in the UK and in the UK when they’re in Europe.
I only just saw this reply. On the contrary, I think there are huge repercussions with being born in the wrong era – namely, being able to find people who share your tastes, or having to suffer a deluge of hip-hop and drum machine beats, with some rapper droning over them.
Also, you end up living in a world somehow groups like Outkast are considered very “credible”.
Dom, Dom…I could just transpose your last sentence to the mid-19th century, where you’d be bemoaning the fact that you live in a world where somehow artists like Beethoven are considered very “credible”.
And perhaps I’ve been mixing with the wrong people, but in my experience meeting people who like 80s music and hard rock have been a dime a dozen. I find it much, much harder to find people who like indie rock, hip-hop, drum’n’bass, electronica and classical music. And even harder still to find people who like them all!