On Friday due to circumstance I ended up watching Notorious on Mission instead of Court. Probably one of the most awful, disheartening experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. Almost 12 years later the Hip Hop fans in San Francisco were vocal, rapping along to "Hit em up", shouting "Westside" whenever the opportunity presented itself and jeering when the fatal shots were fired. I can't say this with any certainty but I'm fairly certain no one was cheering in Brooklyn when Anthony Mackie got shot down. That being said, unless you're a joyless asshole I'd recommend watching the film in a less hostile environment. Gravy looks like a California Raisin and I can spit a more convincing Biggie flow but you will leave the theater with a smile on your face assuming it's not filled with morons wearing print hoodies who over pronounce their consonants. The fake Lil Kim is nicer then the real one and getting a little off mic time with Big, however tired the biopic format, is a pleasant stroll down memory lane for stans like me. As it is Sunday morning and I am here on the West Coast allow me to rise above and promote a little bi-coastal unity, dedicated to the fun and funky West Coast Hip Hop we know and love.
For me the fun of writing in this style, that is for and around A People’s History, is pursuing things I like in Hip Hop and what specifically makes it good. For that reason, Jim Jones presents an interesting challenge. His voice is frankly ugly, not grimy or guttural in the Jada or Jeezy mold, simply awful. A horse croak that lies flat on a beat. His flow is often deliberately off time, I’m still not sure what a good Jones verse sounds like, and content? Still, I enjoy his work on occasion, and for some reason the greater New York area does as well. “Ballin” was the biggest song of 2006. I’ve seen old ladies on line at a kosher grocery store in Midwood pantomime shooting fadeaways. Double up on that for “Pop Champagne”.For every critic out there tearing a hole in Ron Browz, try to remember how laughable “I’m in love with a stripper” seemed whenever the fuck it came out and how you wondered why that dreaded moron sweated Akon so hard. The song is a stripped down banger, and if you want proof try hanging out in the Journeys off Union Square for a half hour sometime this week. (Plus, dude produced “Ether”)
So what is it about the Capo that makes him compelling or remotely worthy of attention? In my opinion Jones wins with Personality Rap, a genre that has absolutely nothing to do with any classically valued ability on the mic and is all about salesmanship and presentation. It’s a style that’s prevalent in the periphery of New York’s hip hop scene. Sheek Louch, late Noreaga, Lil Cease, Tony Yayo. (some Personality Rappers are better than others) All rappers I should hate but occasionally drop songs I enjoy. And they do it around their verses and hooks, with intros, outros, jokes, quirks and ad-libs. They sell you with humor and warmth. They’re people you enjoy hearing on a personal level, and Jim Jones has found a new way to exploit this talent and remain relevant.
Jones has turned a position as Cam'ron's hypeman into a fairly respectable career. He's had a handful of smash hits, a few albums that don't suck and he won a battle with Jay-Z. You can’t talk about The Diplomats without talking about Cam. Present in his post Come Home With Me work is an embrace of an individuality, a weirdness Hip Hop historically works towards suppressing in the interest of cool. For your consideration: The willingness to wear pink, tight jeans, (unthinkable when the Dips began doing it pre-Hipster rap in New York) what amounts to basically an entire seperate slang language and songs about irritable bowel syndrome. Jones has basically taken that and made his aesthetic out of it, excelling with random punchlines and silly, self-aware, ostentatious style. (A one man play about his life?)
Case and point is the slew of remixes Jones has popped up on this season. What’s important to keep in mind is his selectiveness. Jones has his finger firmly on the popular pulse at the moment and more than his physical verses, his mere willingness to branch out and appear on these unlikely songs endear him to a listener considering Jones as a whole. Like a guy showing up at every rooftop party in Williamsburg regardless of whether the crowd is shrink fits and dunks, unwashed Levis and their girlfriend’s flannel or button downs and ACGs. Let’s take a look at three notable examples.
Kid Cudi- Day & Night
Kid Cudi is an artist I knew absolutely nothing about and made a conscious effort to avoid based solely off the circles in which his name had been ringing out. One of my boys practically forced me to listen to this and I’m glad he did. On paper this song should suck. It’s Kid Cudi and Jim Jones over a sped up “This is Why I’m hot” with a spacey, shimmering organ emerging from time to time. I don’t exactly know what to call the verses but I know it’s not rapping. The song is an emoish ode to smoking weed and being introspective. All that being said, this cranks. They say we’re post irony, Kid Cudi’s career might be a litmus test. (He does a fairly faithful rendition of “50 ways to leave your lover” on a recent not bad mixtape) You have to respect Jones for playing the elder statesmen and reaching out to an up and coming artist on a pretty unorthodox contribution. But, in what will become a theme, Jones understands the base he’s reaching out to. He’s catering to a new generation of listeners with diverse tastes and styles, not afraid to shuffle Cudi in with Bon Iver and unapologetic in doing so. To borrow a phrase from the stoner basketball heads at Free Darko, Liberated Fans. The generation gap is far too vigilantly held in New York in my opinion and everyone loses as a result. Jones’ verse here is typically light and engaging as he takes a slightly more earthly approach to Cudi’s theme, and for anyone who hasn’t taken notice he’s supplanted Jeezy as the best ad-libber in the game. In fact, Jim’s ad-libs have replaced the punchline for what you pay the most attention to in his verse. (“Sorry Judge”) I’m not even sure whether I can say I like this, but my lack of certainty and inability to define what exactly this is excites me. All I know definitively is this is the perfect song for a cold, solitary walk home from the train.
Jazmine Sullivan- Bust your windows (Remix)
I profiled this song a few weeks ago, and when I saw Jones dropped a remix I clamored with anticipation. This song is ripe for the kind of subverted turn-around 50 Cent used to be famous for with remixes of songs like "Fat Bitch" and ”Get on your knees”, taking something fairly heartfelt and genuine and poking fun in that specifically hood asshole, anti-hero manner he pioneered. Instead Jones runs with the concept. This is clearly an unofficial remix, he drops two verses that clock in somewhere around twenty seconds a piece. Most likely the least interesting contribution here but the most indicative of the approach I’m attempting to document. His mere presence is the point; if you feel a lack of investment, that’s because he’s not investing. It would appear Jones is reaching out to another branch of his demographic, or perhaps the very same that is amped to hear him over “Day N Nite” and “Electric Feel”. Not to say his work is awful, there’s a fairly intelligent extended metaphor relating to grimy behavior and tarnished clothing, and of course “Not the Lambo!” is definitely an in-joke right now with a group of friends who love Byrd Gang somewhere in Harlem. (Or Brooklyn, or Cincinnati, or Oregon) But it’s a cameo.
I'm officially back on my first Lawrence binge since Sophomore year of college. I have to believe there is some shit going on behind the scenes between Primo, Nas and Jay we don't know about. Perhaps he over-charged when he was at the top of the game and they were coming up, maybe he was a general dick. All speculation but something isn't adding up. I'm not an intense hater of the spotty production you occasionally hear the two disciples rhyme over but if Premier is to be believed they aren't answering phone calls and blatantly dissing his offers. I mean it's not like the man has runoutofdopebeats. Regardless, this was a great album, Primo handled a majority of the production and for me brought it no harder than he did here. Besides the "Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers" intro the scene where Tyrone mercs that crackhead with the monster is easily the greatest moment of "Clockers". (the awful Spike Lee film not the awesome Richard Price novel)I'm out to the Bay till the inauguration tomorrow afternoon, expect one last post for the haters before my plane takes off.
NaS - Still Dreaming - NaS Feat. Kanye West I am pleased to say that for me, this album has aged well. I wrote a piece for Oh Word last year about Nas’ Renaissance, in it I describe HHID as “an art record, taking an appreciative glance back at the history of the medium and contemplating an artists place in and responsibility to it.” And I think that summation stands up. Judge Untitled and Hip Hop is Dead as harshly as you want, as I get further away from them what I begin to appreciate is the conceit as a whole. These aren’t exactly concept records, but records that use the album as a conversation. Does Nas definitively articulate Hip Hop’s death or bridge the racial divide once and for all? Is that even possible to do with an album? Stop expecting the man to feed a village with a fish and appreciate what’s there. And there are few songs on HHID or in Nas’ recent catalog more satisfying than this one. There was a time I wanted to connect the theme to “Still Dreaming” to the greater narrative of the album, a critique of imagined gangstas, but now I just love it for being a dope ass concept song. Kanye makes a straight forward and appropriately dreamy soul beat out of Diana Ross’ “The Interim” and shockingly kicks things off with a verse about insecurity in relationships. I hope as his star continues to ascend into the stratosphere Kanye will be open to event collaborations with artists like Nas because it yields memorable results everytime.
This is truly a strange time for Hip Hop. In the interest of full disclosure, I decided to check this album out thanks to an endorsement from Noz, but beyond posting one of the worst songs on the album he never spoke on it, so. Plies is one of those blatantly, unapologetically silly ringtone rappers you and your boys use as a piñata when you’re not on guard writing on the internet, being objective and open minded.
Plies, which first of all might be the worst rap name I’ve ever heard, doesn’t really flow so much as he shouts in drawl. It’s this nasal, whiny bray delivered excruciatingly slow in simplistic couplets that suggest it’s meant for mass consumption. And most of the Plies songs you’ve ever heard are that bad. On The Realist, Plies third album in 17 months, there are several songs so laughably bad they confirm every worst fear and suspicion you had coming in. These songs are about women and Plies status as a sexual deity. Plies is also one of these guys who considers rap a hustle, who Peter Rosenberg eloquently lashed out against the other day. Plies stands by rap as a profession, and actually on the defiant, gorgeous “Heard Of Me” boasts about his ringtone sales as he bashes the major labels trying to jerk him. Tribe, the Lox and more traditionalist outfits have been bemoaning the major label system for years, do we fault Plies for beating it?
Plies is from East Dunbar Florida, a place that from Brooklyn certainly evokes an exotic mixture of hood and country I remember best from the awesome Year of the Bull, a documentary about an outside linebacker on a High School football team in Liberty City, Miami. On “Co-Defendant”, a song all about how paranoid and unfriendly Plies is because he doesn’t want so called friends to end up becoming the song’s title, he displays the area in which he truly excels as an MC. It’s all very straight forward, personal detail concerning how he’ll chill with people but won’t bring them to his crib, he won’t fuck with overly friendly people, generally an anti-social anthem. The point is you’ve bought weed off at least one guy like this, and whether or not Plies has gone through what that guy has you come away from this song feeling like you understand his paranoia a little better.
Beyond his roots and his place on Slip-N-Slide Records, you can really feel the presence of Trick Daddy on Plies music. He just might be Trick’s spiritual heir, with the word “goon” replacing “thug” and technical virtuosity being replaced with raw emotional power. In some ways on songs like “Family Straight” his lack of technical prowess works to his advantage. Without crafty delivery or clever punchlines dressing up his content, the song comes across as a charged, distraught relation of some very personal problems. In other words, the simple delivery suggests honesty and straightforwardness, which for me is a completely new way to earn authenticity.
2nd Chance - Plies But what really snapped my mind in half and made me want to sit down and write a post about fucking Plies is when he attacks a subject close to my heart that I’ve almost never heard mentioned in Hip Hop and he addresses at length: Institutional Racism. Plies apparently has a brother and some boys doing serious time, and as a result dedicates a few songs to their plight. There’s a real heartfelt, bittersweet sadness to “Gotta Be”. While the song is dedicated to those who’ve managed to avoid getting knocked, the implication in the production and delivery is there are many who haven’t. My favorite song, the one I’m posting and am most convinced will sell you is “2nd Chance”. Plies talks about disproportionate sentences, the unfairness of a system in which money goes a long way towards determining how much time you serve, and the most affecting moment in which he imagines being up on the bench with a gavel, sentencing a judge’s child and wishing the judge could understand how it felt. Plies has a fairly laughable style and is prone to making you wince with his braggadocio and threats. He makes awful love songs and if you happen to be on an above ground train around three o’clock in the afternoon you’ll almost definitely hear his voice if a middle school boy or girl receives a phone call. But on “2nd Chance” his helpless frustration is tangible, and he’s absolutely right.
Classic riff from a virtuoso. A couple notables have been over this, Jazzy Jeff mined it for "Touch of Jazz", Salt-N-Pepa, Heavy D. At times I get an itchy trigger with my iPod, this always plays front to back.
Lot's of shit on deck, I've been neglectful, I know. Now comes the point in the season where winter gets old, slushy and gross. You stay in the house unless you have to work and count down the days till mid March. You, the reader will be the beneficiary of my solitary confinement.
One of my favorite things about New York is how when songs blow up here they're absolutely ubiquitous. You walk down the street and it's pounding out of every other car, playing out of a display boom box at Virgin, being sung and danced to by a group of pre-teens on the train. Right now this is that song. Jadakiss can be maddening, the last half year or so he's confined himself to R&B joints or his own shit that sounds R&B. While the results aren't always as miserable as one might assume (I kind of like his work on Neyo's "Right by my side") I miss the days when songs like "Put ya hands up" could get heavy rotation. Jada's a technician, one of the few punchline rappers who are also capable of content, as he delivers here effortlessly over a smooth jazz loop. I had been dreading the release of Notorious, but an interesting looking new preview, coupled with the absolute Biggie mania breaking out all over Brooklyn, significant as he's never far from the collective consciousness as it is, has me thinking I just might be over at the Court Street cinema January 16th. A very pertinent question being discussed at the moment is what kind of music would Biggie be making if he were here today? I like to think it wouldn't be so far from what his Yonkers protege specializes in, microphone proficiency with no made up shit.
Posts
