The Rhymes of Our Lives

Allow me to share with you the default song-in-my-head since 1999. It's the track that comes to mind after all others have faded away.

Black Star "Definition"

Where Brooklyn? (See that?)

peace.

Watch The Throne: Not For Beginners

I was supposed to write this review two nights ago, but I had to decompress for a couple days after watching this. Go see it and you'll understand.

I've read comments and reviews from all over the map about this album. Some praise Jay and 'Ye's chemistry, some claim there is none. Half say Jay's lyrics were better, the other half claim Kanye got the nod. The Monday-morning quarterbacking goes on and on with no real consensus as to what we actually have on our hands here. After listening to this album for pretty much an entire week, all I have left to offer is one question and one observation. Let's take them in turn.

Question: What did you expect?

Did you expect Kanye's ear for production and composition to be anything less than stellar? If you did, then I'm very sorry to disappoint you. Because the production on this album is, quite simply, some of the best I've heard since OutKast released Stankonia. Given what I've been able to gather about their respective creatives processes, I have to assume Kanye took the reigns with most of the instrumental/accompaniment aspects of the project. And yes there was input from a laundry-list of great hip hop sound men like Q-Tip, Swizz Beats, The Neptunes, 88-Keys, RZA, and Pete Rock. But ultimately, the orchestration of this album's luscious and dense sonic landscapes feels much more like a continuation of Kanye's trajectory on "...Dark Fantasy" than Jay's on "Blueprint 3". There is a clear sense of experimentation on many of the tunes on the album, but that's to be expected. What's not experimental about two powerhouses of hip hop attempting to building cohesion from substantially dichotomous individual aesthetics?

Did you expect Jay not to rhyme about being rich? Did you expect 'Ye not to rhyme about being a genius? Have you been listening at all?

Jay's been rhyming about being rich since he was broke in 1995. The name of the record label he helped begin is called Roc-A-Fella Records. Like he said on "Jockin Jay-Z":

Haters like, "Hov, why you still talkin' money sh*t?"

'Cause I like money, b*tch!

And Kanye's had a high opinion of his brilliance since the beginning, even before his career firmly began. One of the emcees at the epicenter of Kanye's birth as a full-fledged artist is Talib Kweli. Last summer, Kweli was interviewed by hardknock.tv discussing the early stages of Kanye's thrust into hip hop stardom. Have a look here. This pretty much sums it up.

Having said that, the lyrical diversity on this album is much more than I expected. With tracks like "New Day", "Murder to Excellence", and "Made in America" Jay and 'Ye are exploring parts of their thoughts and experiences that could only be revealed with exceptional attention paid to their personal ethics and journeys through life. And it's not like these are throw away tracks. They embody all the energy, commitment, and engagement heard throughout the entire record.

'Ye is rhyming like the government is about to cut off his oxygen.

Jay is rhyming like he's speaking to the United Nations.

These cats are writing as boldly and aggressively as they ever have.

Did you expect a ton of guest artists? I know I did. I'm happy their were few, and employed for specific effect. Kudos to them for not going overboard here.

Did you expect this to instantly be a classic record? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. I'm not quite sure yet. While I certainly believe ...Throne to be a wonderful work, I'm still having trouble putting all the pieces together. Right now the album feels to me like a collection of two or three brilliant individual projects, like Jay and 'Ye could have released three EPs over the course of a year rather than one LP all at once. And as I mentioned earlier, this is most certainly an experimental album. However, I will say this; I expect many great things to be born from their efforts; videos, tour dates, follow up albums. The more these two work, the more refined their focus. This is certainly a good beginning.

As for my observation...

I've been walking and riding around listening to this album for almost a week now. It's been a gorgeous summer in Philadelphia, beautiful people are jogging along the river, and the general feeling of August is quite palpable. However, as I've experienced this past week with ...Throne as my soundtrack, something simply didn't feel right.

At first I couldn't put my finger on it. I mean, beautiful summer weather and good hip hop music have always seemed to fit hand in hand. But somehow, this particular album struggled to fit the pace and rhythms of the season. It was as if I was driving on the interstate all alone in perfect comfort, but with some jackass riding in my blind spot. It must have taken me four days to figure it out, but I think I finally have a fix on it.

Summertime hip hop releases are usually reserved for the party rockin', licence plate-rattlin' mega-hit singles that pulsate through the community. Fat Joe had one with "Lean Back". Sean Paul sneaked up on us with "Gimme the Light". And do you remember Lumidee? I'll bet you don't. But do you remember this? I'll bet you do.

And that's just it. Summertime hip hop has always been pleasantly youthful and, honestly, a tad bit disposable. It's supposed to be. It's designed to expire in September, making room for the more controversial and introspective releases of the fall, winter, and spring. It's the parts of the year between summers where I feel classic albums best work their magic.

To illustrate this, I randomly picked 20 albums that have all been considered some of the best music to emerge from hip hop culture. Then I looked up the release date of each album, ignoring the year. I will list them all here.

The Fugees The Score - February 13

Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded - March 3

The Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death - March 25

Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - April 14

Nas Illmatic - April 19

Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted - May 16

Pete Rock and CL Smooth Mecca and the Soul Brother - June 9

Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt - June 25

Eric B and Rakim Paid in Full - July 7

N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton - August 8

Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - August 25

Black Star Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star - August 26

The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die - September 13

A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory - September 24

Common Resurrection - October 25

OutKast Stankonia - October 31

Wu-Tang Clan 36 Chambers (Enter the Wu-Tang) - November 9

Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill - November 15

Snoop Dogg Doggystyle - November 23

Dr. Dre The Chronic - December 15

Out of 20 albums, only four of them were truly released during the summer. I'm not counting Miseducation and ...Black Star due to being released so late into August. Those are really autumn albums; that's the season in which they made their greatest impact.

Of course, I felt as if this could have been a fluke. How could it be that so few of the albums hip hop considers timeless are released in the summer? Additionally, the number of summer albums on this list equals 20%. So am I just fooling myself because the year can be equally divided into four parts? Would the next count add up to 25% and debunk my finding? So I picked twenty more classic albums, but I won't bother posting the list because my findings were exactly the same. Four out of 20 were summer releases, with the other 16 heavily weighted in the late fall and early spring. And yes, they were random. You're just gonna have to trust me.

Why am I saying all of this? Well, I believe Jay and 'Ye could have done themselves a favor and waited to release this album later in the year, perhaps mid-November or so. It's just not a summer album. Their risks are too large, the orchestration too rich, and the lyrics are too well crafted for the simple-minded feeling of summer. Watch The Throne is not an album for beginners, dummies, or folks with no sense of humor. Textually and aurally, there's simply too much to digest while the sun's out. No one's really going to turn on their brains until kids go back to school and the first blast of Arctic air comes rolling in from our neighbors to the north. And I feel the disparity and conflict seen in the various responses and reviews reflects this. No one knows what to make of it because they're all just thinking about getting out to the beach (including me!).

Personally, I'm just going to put this one away for a while and come back to it after I bleed my radiator. It's too dope for me right now.

peace.

A Journey to the Broken Angel

As it progresses, any developing cultural or social movement invariably discovers its own identity through a variety of unique and distinguishing characteristics. Most of these developments include inventions and evolutions in apparel and fashion, language and lexicon, dietary patterns, musical styles, and so on. For me however, the most enduring, most compelling, and most tangible cultural symbols involve the landmarks and locations of pivotal and momentous events in a culture’s history.

There's nothing like being there; and it's just that. Being. There.

If you're a rock n' roll junkie, then it's The Dakota or the Riot House. If it's jazz that turns you on, there's nothing like the Cotton Club. For the gearheads of the world, the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Nürburgring is your Mecca. And political aficionados should never turn down a trip to The Watergate Hotel or Dealey Plaza. It's about seeing, touching, feeling it for ourselves or else it will only exist in theory.

Hip hop culture has a few of these places as well, like D&D Studios (although you ain't NEVER gettin' in there) or Rucker Park. And a few months ago I took the chance to visit what I feel is arguably the newest on the list of hip hop cultural landmarks, The Broken Angel.

It is one erie place.

The Broken Angel was the home of Cynthia and Arthur Wood from 1972 through 2006. It's located at the intersection of Downing Street and Quincy Street in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Its legacy in hip hop history was cemented in 2004 when it became the backdrop of a concert/block party that was organized and hosted by Dave Chappelle, and documented by Michel Gondry in the 2006 film Dave Chappelle's Block Party. In the film, Cynthia and Arthur invite Dave and his camera crew into their home to show them the inner workings of the building. It's one of the most entertaining parts of the film as we witness the couple's compassionate, albeit slightly eccentric, quality and demeanor. Towards the end of the film, there's even a shot of Cynthia in the window of the Broken Angel waving a peace sign to the crowd, which I've always felt was one of the indelible images of solidarity in the movie.

So I'll leave it to you to look up more on Cynthia, Arthur, and the Broken Angel. This is the story of how I got there.

Mariana had to leave. The needle on her record player had broken and we needed to head over to J&R Audio by the WTC because that was the only place she thought we could pick up a new one. So by the time I reached her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant she was perched on the stoop, demanding me to hurry my a$$ up because the bank was about to close. So I shuffled into her place to set down my bag, she locked the door, and we hustled our way to Fulton Street.

After handling her business at the bank and "politely" assisting a young lady find her destination on Fulton St., we got on the C train to Manhattan. We got off at Chambers Street a few blocks north of Ground Zero and made our way down to J&R, which is situated at what's essentially Park Row and Broadway.

Everything is huge in New York, including this audio store. It took us two or three tries to enter the correct section of the building, and even then we really didn't find it without help. And one would think an audio store in New York would and SHOULD have everything under the sun, but alas Mariana's needle was not in stock. So dejectedly, we exited the store and decided it was time to eat.

Now, Mari had a pregnant-woman's craving for cheese fries right about now, even though she hasn't had a boyfriend in a while. However, I would assume this is purely by choice because a woman as beautiful as Mariana can be in a relationship almost anytime she wants. I can only deduce all the men she's encountered recently have been woefully sub-par. C'mon NY...

She suggested we head to Madison Square Park to get burgers and cheese fries at a well-known spot called The Shake Shack. While standing in the quarter-mile long line (it moved fairly quickly, so don't be discouraged) we continued our usual discussions on all things hip hop. We're both huge fans of artists like The Roots, Black Star, Common, J Dilla, and Kanye West. And as we sat to enjoy our slightly overpriced but incredibly delicious burgers, our conversation shifted to Block Party. As is the nature of these exchanges, one thing led to another and we mutually agreed to seek out the location of this magnificent day in hip hop history. We finished our food, scared off the giant attack squirrels, and hopped back onto the subway.

We got off at the N/Q/R stop at DeKalb Avenue and opted to take the bus down Fulton towards Downing Street. It seemed we were on the bus for an unreasonably long time and we worried that we had missed our stop. So we got off somewhere between St. James Place and Grand Avenue to hoof it from there. We approached a huge laundromat with some cool-a$$ middle-aged cats hangin' outside and asked them if they knew the way to Downing Street. Personally, I was hoping we didn't get the same "politeness" that Mari had offered the young lady from earlier in the day. But they were truly friendly and pointed us in the right direction. We got to the block about 10 minutes later.

There are very few places in New York as quiet as the corner of Quincy and Downing in Brooklyn. It's one of those spots that seems to exist solely on its own; as if arriving there means departing the rest of the city. We walked up to the impressive red door of the Broken Angel, with the name of the building and the address adorning it in a grayish-white hue. There was very little traffic. I don't think we saw one car round the corner the whole time we were there. We read the sign on the bulletin board just to the right of the Angel's door and discovered Cynthia Wood had unfortunately passed away due to complications with cancer. We stood by the daycare center where Dave and the others had visited, using the roof as an observation area. We took turns imagining the stage and quoting unforgettable lines and verses from the documentary. We made sure to take some time making fun of Common's role in the show, because we've always been puzzled as to why he seemed only to serve as everybody's hype man. Weird...

I've often wondered if the people that live on that block are getting tired of folks showing up and doing that type of stuff. But in the moment, we didn't care about any of that. We were just a little late to the party, that's all. We wanted to have our fun, too.

We left just before the streetlights starting coming on and walked the almost-two miles back to Mari's apartment in Bed-Sty. We were glowing. We touched the history of our own culture, and it was a really good feeling. Somehow, we felt more firmly connected to the inspirations that have been fueling our lives for quite some time now. When we got back, we threw in Block Party and watched a bit of the concert footage. I suppose it was our way of "double-checking."

But really, there wasn't any need. We knew what it looked like.

Due to the fading light, these were the only pictures that were decent. We took these with Mari's iPhone.

peace.