You know what family? I am still so much in Love with Hip Hop!... Everything about her is ME!
I remember first hearing Nucleus' "Jam On It" bumping repeatedly in a carport during one summer in the late 80's. The beat was infectious, the rhymes seemed IMPOSSIBLE!.. These were the koolest people You ever wanted to meet or BE!..LOL! Being down south, I remember strolling down the street and hearing "All I have in this World, All I Have in This World" bumping out of somebody's make-shift home stereo speaker laden trunk...Scarface Oh my God!
I rememver being in Junior High School repeating over and Over the words to the D.O.C. Shocked the shit out of a few High Schoolers like "DAMN!, Little dude sounds just like him".. yeah those were the days!. I remeber by best friend gave me a mixtape (not CD) of some of the hot cuts at the time... Sat and Pepa "Tramp", Eazy E.. (never knew so many curse words existed) Too Short (nasty, nasty), too much to name!
As we reached our teeens we started listening more to P.E., (remember '98 Oldsmobile) Ice Cube had seceded from N.W.A and took us ALL with him. He dropped singles that were so relevant to how we were living that we listened to him like we listened to our father! WE bumrushed the T.V. (whenever we could, Moms wasnt havin that rap crap in her crib) trying to get to MTV or Rap City..
I got older and was influenced by the "Shook Ones" video, Nas' Illmatic...
I left the state of Arkansas, and traveled, finally ending up in Brooklyn NY, and I finally understood WHY East Coast tunes were so hard...the concrete jungle the industrial Banging snare... repetitive motion, lights ablur, mixed cacaphony of people and pain and tears and MUSIC, from islands and places I had never heard of... I was there the year the WU dropped 36 Chambers, and the year A Tribe Called Quest dropped Midnight Maurauders...
Incredible to me how so many styles of one music genre could co-exist with little confusion.. I could listen to The Chronic and flip the tape over and listen to ShowBiz and AG in the next moment, then it was back to JERU, "Come Clean"
I Love H.E.R. yall, now I'm wondering where she is.
Can yall help me find H.E.R.?
See among the Souljah Boy'z and the Lil Wayne's I've lost the intensity of the music, and I know some will hate the shit out of my ass for this but... Wayne would have been laughed off the stage in '93... Half steppin"?
So now, here I am, 36, 10 years worth of saving and buying piece by piece in studio equipment to get heard by the people and the people suddenly want skinny jeans and SWAG?..
It's hard for me to believe that yall...I'm sorry..
We have always been an artistic and creative people, but nowadays creativity puts an artist in a certain group or subgenre...Hipsters, backpackers? I'm absolutely mortified!
So now the choices that lie before me are, conform to get heard, i.e. get swaged out, Sell my music my soul or my dream... become a Rock and Roller... Hell they get to represent into their 60's, while my favorite artists are spitting retirement bullshit at the age of 26?..
My father said in 88 that Hip Hop, Rap was a fad... and it actually oulasted his prediction by about 21 years! But with the quality of so-called music that hits the charts these days, maybe his prediction will come true...The credibility of our artistry is falling and falling lower and lower everyday
Can anybody Tell me where I can find H.E.R.?
Damn, I miss H.E.R.
see my poetry @ wreckabswords.blogspot.com
ONE!
