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.

Whoo! Whoo! It’s The Sound Of Da…Disappointment

An open letter to DJ Jazzy Jeff:

This is the second time you’ve done this to me. For the second time, I’ve gone to see you DJ at Zouk and you’ve taunted me cruelly with only the opening of KRS-One’s Sound Of Da Police but none of the verses.

The first time, I tried to tell myself it was the cool way to do DJ sets – drop some obviously famous beats so that the crowd will go wild with recognition, but then switch to something else more obscure fairly fast so you don’t look like you’re just playing a The Best Hip-Hop Album In The World, Evah! compilation. And to a certain extent, this often works for me quite well. I no longer feel the need to “Jump around! Jump around! Jump up jump up and get down! Jump! Jump! Jump! etc.” but I’m still happy enough to dance to the first verse.

The problem, and of course this is totally subjective, is that what applies to Jump Around doesn’t apply to Sound Of Da Police, okay? Hearing the intro is simply not enough. I demand KRS-One’s righteous bellow of “STAND CLEAR! Don man a-talk, you can’t stand where I stand you can’t walk where I walk. WATCH OUT! We run New York, police man come we bust him out of the park!”, I long to be in a club full of people gabbling that meld from “oberseer” to “officer” in the second verse, and as he ends the third verse with “My grandfather had to deal with the cops, my great-grandfather dealt with the cops, and then my great great great great…” hell yeah I want to join in and complete the line by yelling “WHEN IT’S GONNA STOP??!”

[The fact that I am an affluent yellow girl whose only real encounter with the police ever was making a report when I lost my wallet as a teenager, and that they were really rather nice at the time, should not negate my right to profess undying love for this song. Or even to shout along in simulated rage.]

So please, Jazzy. If I ever see you play again, give us the whole song. You already played your part in inflicting Will Smith on the world, thereby depriving mainstream radio for years of any hip-hop worth listening to. Are you willing to shoulder the blame for this further cruelty?

Post-Masters Bliss

And today it all ended. I wrote my last sentence in my last Masters exam, hoped fervently it would actually be my last Masters exam (last week’s exam was very, very bad. I might fail), freaked out with Gwen a bit about the toughness of the paper and scooted off feeling like I had wings on my heels.

Made a beeline for Gramophone. I haven’t bought a CD in way too long. Found DJ Spooky’s Under The Influence in the used section for S$7.99, and snapped it up goggle-eyed. Was delightfully distracted in Tang’s for the next few hours (note to non-Singaporeans: this is not the orange kryptonite you drank when you were a kid, it’s a department store), and bought shoes and a top. Would have bought a second pair of shoes except for the fact that they made farting noises when I was trying to walk in them.

Met Luke and Yuping for dinner and extended chat. Walked home from the bus-stop by the spooky route because I was feeling inVEENcible. Came to my room and put on the DJ Spooky, which is a daaaaamn fine mix album, great tunes, great flow, great mixing, or admittedly it might just be because I’m feeling great.

You know how you hear a song again when you haven’t heard it in a while and you suddenly wonder how on earth you went all that time without listening to it? Saul Williams’ Twice The First Time is on this album. I’m turning it up, Saul is off on his “and I be riding on the wings of eternity like HYAH! HYAH! Sh-clack-clack, GET ME THE FUCK OFF THIS TRACK!” trip, and now the beat kicks in, now I’m remembering how even Alec (not exactly a fan of what he calls my “hippety-hoppety music”), bought Xen Cuts almost on the strength of this track alone, now I’m hearing Saul say “Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain-top have you heard hip-hop,” and I’m thinking, Benny? Let’s climb Mount Kinabalu and bring some Rakim.

MC Misogyny

Continuing the shameless dearth of intellectual content on this website ever since I started studying for exams, I just wanted to say I love summer hip-hop videos. Lots of bared skin, abundant booty, dance routines that make the most of all of the above, and, of course, that indispensable ingredient of summer hip-hop (some would say all hip-hop, but that just means they don’t actually listen to enough of it): misogynism.

I want to make a mixtape and call it Misogynists’ Party. It will feature classic tracks such as Baby Got Back, Rumpshaker, Hot In Herre and that new masterpiece by Nelly, P.Diddy and Murphy Lee, Shake Your Tailfeather.

Public Enemy (Forum, London)

I’ve seen Public Enemy live, muthafuckaaaaas……

Ahem. Sorry, I realize not everyone reading this will regard such experiences as seminal. But let me take this in steps. First, they’re PUBLIC ENEMY, MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAS! Second, back in the days when for me, buying an album, any album, was an investment of staggering financial significance, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was the first hip-hop album I ever bought. I know the same could be said for countless other wannabe music eclecticists who did….did..did…..did believe the hype, but let me point out that I spent these formative years in Singapore, where most Beastie Boys albums (and Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope, for crying out loud) were banned until recently. Dammit, it took real commitment for a kid like me in Singapore to become an annoying music snob. Third, it became increasingly obvious in later years that my taste in MCs seems to have been indelibly moulded by the stentorian sounds of Chuck D. To this day, there is no MC I find as compelling.

Public Enemy have still got it. By the time Nick, Benny and I had got absolutely knackered from the sheer intensity of their performance, Griff was still doing quintuple kung fu kicks across the stage, Flav was crowd-surfing, and Chuck D was still sprinting everywhere bellowing. Some bits got a little self-indulgent, like Flav promoting his new album, and going on and on and on at the end about how the war was fucked, and how we had to raise our fingers in the peace sign, and then join them to signify togetherness, and then clench our fists to signify the power of togetherness, but I guess that’s something you have to expect from a rap group which are about more than gold chains and ho’s.

Other worthy features of the evening were masterful performances from supporting acts Killa Kela and Kool Keith. Killa Kela’s gotten even better since the last time I saw him. I suppose people in the beatboxing loop would say he’s still got some way to go before he reaches the dizzy heights of Rahzel or Doug E. Fresh, but I ain’t never heard of them beatboxing speed drum’n’bass before, ‘aaaight? Also noteworthy was his rendition of Britney’s I’m A Slave 4 U complete with gasping orgasmic vocals.

So that was another ridiculously worthwhile gig for the list. I’m seeing El-P and Murs next week, and I haven’t even written about the amazingness of Magoo on Saturday. And Calla are playing at the Water Rats in May. And I’m seeing Nick Cave in June. There are many other ways in life of being a sad geek, but all this certainly works well enough for me.

The Roots (Jazz Cafe, London)

The Roots. At the Jazz Cafe. Last night. Seamless. Seminal. Wow.

That’s the condensed version. Let the gibbering version begin by saying I’m a little worried: I might just have seen the best gig of my year already, although I’m hoping Sigur Ros and Massive Attack will prove me wrong. And there’s always the hope of a Pavement reunion tour (ha bloody ha)…

We begin with the venue. If you were more than 20 metres from the stage you’d have been really unlucky. I’m so glad I jumped at the chance to see them at the Jazz Cafe instead of in the vastness of Brixton Academy on March 29.

I suppose the quickest way to describe the performance is that The Roots live are every bit as amazing as you’ve heard they are. Half the time they’re a band that rocks harder than any of the NME’s latest “The ______s” darlings. The rest of the time they’re pretending not to be a band any more but a collection of classic records in the dextrous hands of a turntablist, except that they’re live musicians rather than recorded sounds, and Rahzel’s not using his hands. He’s “scratching” MC Black Thought’s rapping. He’s sampling. He’s cross-fading. I run out of DJing knowledge to describe most of what he’s doing, but the important thing I need to stress here to the uninitiated is that he’s using his mouth. The only other time I’ve seen live beatboxing was Killa Kela doing a solo gig at Cargo, which didn’t prepare me at all for the way The Roots fit it all together. Other highlights included their alternate ragga, ska and heavy metal versions of You Got Me, their ‘tribute’ to Jam Master Jay where they pretended to be Run DMC posing for a photo session, and the call-and-response bonus track from Phrenology for the encore.

Okay. I now redescend to essay-writing hell, but God bless The Roots for that brief foray into hip-hop heaven.

Scratch: Not Really Worth Scratch

Call me a music snob, but I suspect the reviewers who were falling all over themselves to pour platitudes on Scratch are somewhat unfamiliar with hip-hop beyond the flatulence of Puff Daddy and Will Smith.

I wasn’t impressed by its “look ma, I can speed the film up and cut quickly from scene to scene” cinematography (if you could call it that) – MTV does it a lot better, and it’s so tired and overdone by now anyway.

I wasn’t impressed by its organization or editing, in that I think it could have conveyed much the same experience in half the time it took if it had left the more inane interviews on the cutting room floor. For instance, I really wasn’t interested in Mix Master Mike and Qbert talking about how the universe and various imagined alien cultures inspire them. Instead I’d have really liked to hear from Krush, who features in a clip but isn’t interviewed, or anyone else in Japanese hip-hop, which is mentioned more fleetingly than it deserves. In the section on “battling”, we’re informed that when you compete in the DMCs, you’re no longer competing against one other person, you’re competing against everyone else in the competition. This is hardly profound. You could say the same thing about a yodelling competition.

I thought the clips it did show of scratching were often boring and samey, and hardly explored the sheer ingenuity with which some artists use it. Kid Koala doing Drunken Trumpet, anybody? It showed Beck’s DJ demonstrating the record he made composed entirely of guitar sounds, but didn’t go on to show how that becomes Smoke On The Water in concert. It showed a clip of beatboxers completely out of the blue, but provided no commentary or follow-up. I don’t even see why beatboxing would be that relevant to the subject matter of the documentary in the first place, but if they were going to put a clip in, they might as well have put some more in, because it was bloody amazing. I could go on, but won’t.

Surely I liked something? Well, yes. I always like good beats. Qbert had a gorgeous face (pity about the height). I liked the uniting theme of how everyone seemed to have been influenced by DXT scratching on the Grammy performance of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit. I liked the jam session at Qbert’s house with Shadow and others. The clip of Jurassic 5 was well-placed and did a good job of explaining the ideal, arguably, of a DJ working symbiotically with the MCs. And I liked laughing at Cut Chemist, who is either naturally inarticulate or was just really out of it. On balance it was probably just about worth the trek to Hammersmith (Riverside Studios), but only just.

[Bizarrely, at the IMDB entry for this movie (linked above), “if you like this title we also recommend…Mother Teresa.”]

Hot In Herre Head

Not since Erotica has an idiotic ditzy oversexed refrain so persistently tormented me. Nelly’s latest work of artistry features the eloquent chorus of:

Nelly: It’s getting hot in herre
So take off all your clothes
Random scantily clad ho’: I am…gettin’ so hot
I wanna take my clothes off

And it refuses to leave my head.

Wrong Wu-Syntax

The Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator is highly dissatisfactory and clearly ill-conceived. My Wu-Name is apparently Lazy-Assed Destroyer, which just goes against all MC naming conventions. Consider: the unchanged spelling of “lazy”, the unnecessarily grammatical “ed” on the end of “Ass”, and above all, the “er” that ends “Destroyer”.

I think my Wu-Name should have been Lay-Z Ass Destroyah.