This is one of the most amazing and heartwarming videos I've seen in quite a while.
You know, I've heard my share of complaints from older folks about their inability to understand hip hop lyrics. Many say the words are too indistinguishable or that they move too fast for them to decipher what's been said. For me, this video beautifully illustrates a core aspect of rap performance that is much more important than lyrical comprehension. Rap lyrics are the textual conduit for the rapper's percussive and melodic aesthetic. In fact, I would argue that what an emcee says in a verse is rarely as important as how s/he musically shapes the verse into something pleasing and exciting for the listener.
"It's not enough to know which notes to play, you have to understand why they need to be played." George Carlin commenting on the blues
This brilliant kid has already made this discovery (as kids will do if we simply leave them to their explorations). As soon as he reaches the age of adding lyrical content to his already sophisticated sense of musical awareness (and if he keeps rapping), he's going to be an absolutely magnificent emcee.
Murs may be one of the best rappers you've never heard of. In fact, I would go so far as to say he may actually belong in the No Wack Verses Club. Honestly, I've never known Murs to write anything other than outstanding stuff.
Here's a freestyle like you've never seen (for all of my folk guitar-loving friends).
While I was in graduate school, I got really into the blues; specifically the works of Robert Johnson, Son House, and John Lee Hooker. There was something primal and tangible about their music. My response to their recordings was much more about the feeling I experienced than my intellectual understanding of the words they sang. That's the attraction of blues, isn't it? It's the musical exploration of both immense joy and undeniable pain in a very foundational and visceral way.
For me, Black Thought's sense of hip hop performance does much of the same.
You see, I feel Thought is an emcee who has an acute understanding of the primal impulses that make hip hop what it is. At its core, hip hop music is a celebration of a society's ability to retain its confidence and sense of self worth in spite of the seemingly insurmountable conditions it faces. It is the flower growing from the concrete; the unmistakable feeling of painful, aggressive jubilation that can only live down in the bowels of a culture successfully resisting the oppression of the ruling class.
Black Thought deliberately, and quite artfully, accesses these sensations in his lyrics and performances with a clarity and abandon few emcees can duplicate. Every time he performs, it's as if he was at a block party or playground cipher; he moves his listeners with a provocative optimism that is so incredibly of-the-people. Truthfully, I know of no other rapper (including most of my favorites) who consistently evokes such a fundamental sense of what it means to be an emcee.
As is the protocol for this month, I'll be back on the next post to discuss this a bit further. For now, enjoy the talents of Black Thought: specialist in microphone incineration.
Complex Magazine has compiled the 50 best hip hop radio freestyles.
While some might argue that radio is now a dying medium, it's undeniable that the AM/FM dial was the first outlet to bring hip-hop to the masses. Starting in the early 1980s, pioneering DJs like Mr. Magic, Red Alert, the Awesome Two, and Lady B gave a voiceless community the chance to be heard, and inspired future generations to pursue rapping as their full-time occupation.
Since that time, many legendary hip-hop radio shows have sprung up around the world, and during those late-night or early-morning time slots a new art form was born: the radio freestyle.
Many of hip-hop's greatest beefs were spawned live and direct over the airwaves. In the pre-MP3 era, cassette copies of these one-of-a-kind performances passed hand to hand, cementing reputations, and becoming the stuff of legend. Nowadays it's all done digitally, but the objective remains the same-total domination, no mistakes allowed.
I'm usually not a fan of these lists ranking artists or performances, but this one seems uniquely appropriate. During the years when I began to discover my place within hip hop culture, the music was moving through an period of creative and cultural uncertainty. We were a few years removed from the golden era, caught in the spectacle of East Coast vs. West Coast, and witnessing a surge of material emerging from southern artists like OutKast and Goodie Mob. As I explored hip hop more and more, these freestyle sessions served to maintain hip hop's artistic underpinnings; freestyles are the roots that fend off the erosion of rap music's relevance.
There are plenty of stand out performances on this list. However, for me the most impressive clip is #47, Q-Tip and Black Thought's "Dilla Dedication" freestyles. Perhaps it due to this month's featured emcee, but I was especially taken by this performance. Additionally, Black Thought freestyles are less frequent than you may think, so it's great to hear him rhyme in this forum. And on that day, Tariq went absolutely berserk!
I remember living in Atlanta when Slum Villiage's sophomore effort Trinity (Past, Present, Future) was released in 2002. The big news with Slum Village at the time was the departure of J Dilla and the addition of a new emcee to the group, Elzhi. In those days, I would frequently visit the Saturday night radio show of my good friend Marcel and hang out at the station until the wee hours. It was during one of those visits when Marcel tossed me a station give-away copy of Trinity. I popped it in the cd player of my Jeep Cherokee and had a listen.
I think it took me until track four, "La La", before I fully integrated this gravity of Elzhi's introduction. But after I heard El say, "Gat slangin' with my arm in the shape of an 'L', lettin' my fingers walk/I never been down to earth, I just been deep in thought," I knew I was witnessing the emergence of an incredible artist. And even though Elzhi had been making the usual rounds in the Detroit hip hop scene, his involvement with Slum Village between 2001 and 2010 thrust him into the view of the most well-respected music makers in hip hop. He is the proverbial "favorite rapper's favorite rapper".
One thing to note about Elzhi's process is that he is a writer; he rarely, if ever, works in spontaneous rhyme. Therefore, finding a clip of him performing a non-written freestyle is next to impossible. (If you come across one, let me know!) So here's a quick clip of a written freestyle of his that was posted to youtube about a year ago. Check 'em out. He's ill.
Yes, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way right now. She's a white girl. And it doesn't matter.
My homie Marcel made a quick mention of Eternia on facebook about a week ago. The only bits of info I retained from what I read was "emcee" and "Canadian" and thought, "Oh! Maybe she could be my Emcee of the Month for May since I'll be in Canada the whole time." However, to be honest I thought I'd have to fall back on k-os or Kardinal Offishall; established cats with material.
WRONG.
Lemme tell you something. This girl embodies everything pure and primal about being a rapper. She actually reminds me of all the things that were wonderful about so-called "underground" hip hop of the late nineties; passion, hunger, playfulness, humility, and sophistication. Generally, the more visible artists of that period were quite lazy and took themselves way too seriously, which put a bad taste in the mouths of many hip hop fans. Fortunately for hip hop, the Bush Administration has allowed us to rediscover our focus; just ask Questlove.
Here's an Eternia freestyle from way back in 2005. And I'm telling you, since then she's only gotten better.
This cat's freestyles are so dope I had to post another one. This one went down with Funkmaster Flex on Hot 97.
You gotta love Flex's growl ad-libs.
Honestly, I haven't heard anybody this aggressive on the microphone since Canibus. And quite frankly, Joell seems to be much more stable than 'Bis ever was, especially before he went to the Army. Furthermore, 'Bis never really had a sense of humor, so he would never come up with something as silly and fun-loving as "YAOWA!"
I think the most telling aspect of this clip, however, is Joell's message at the end.
"From here on out, let's start rhyming again New York...Rhyme...Ya'll need to rhyme from here on out."
I hope those emcees in question heard this. This is what rhyming sounds like.
Way back in September of last year, Joell Ortiz was the seed from which the idea of this blog grew. I was on one of my usual youtube cruises when I came upon this:
Immediately I copied the link and stuck it in an email to my homie Marcel. My exact message to him was, "[Joell Ortiz is] my rap hero for the month of September." His reply was, "Yes, [Ortiz] is in the no-wack-verses club." (So far, the club consists of Joell and Black Thought. We'll get into that soon.)
Joell's combination of pure joy and unapologetic aggression is undeniably engaging. He rhymes like he's having the time of life. So now that Emcee of the Month is up and running it's only right I revisit Joell and his astonishing sense of hip hop. I can't wait to share some of the wonderfully provocative gems he's given to the culture.
I first saw Jean Grae at the House of Blues in New Orleans in 2006. My homie Mark and I drove down from Baton Rouge for the show, which turned out to be one of the best ever; The Soul Rebels, Jean Grae, and The Roots. Yea, it was super-live.
We got there early and made our way to the front row, where we stayed for practically the entire night. The Rebels came on first and, of course, they were rockin'. However, they only got a 30 minute set. I felt they were robbed. They really didn't even get warmed up.
Jean came out next. Now, before we went down I had looked into some of Jean's stuff and thought it was pretty dope. She found good production and wrote with definition and specificity. Her work was solid, through and through. However, my skepticism kept my expectations of her live performance low. Big mistake.
Jean Grae is a master of ceremonies in the most fundamental sense, and she rhymes as if she's daring the next emcee to be better. Mark and I witnessed as she absolutely cemented herself on the edge of the stage and proceeded to stake her claim on the entire room. She got everyone moving, and most of us didn't even know who she was. Her rhymes are incredibly precise and ricochet through a crowd like a bull whip in the Grand Canyon. By the end of her set, we were all believers.
She's dumb nice wit' it.
Here's a quick freestyle she did at The Duck Down 15 year anniversary back in July.
A few months ago my homie Marcel sends me a copy of a mixtape from these new southern California rap cats named Pac Div (short for Pacific Division). He says, "You need to check these cats. They for real." I'm like, "That's what's up. I'll get to it."
However, it's no secret to Marcel that I'm notorious for sleeping on new music. If I'm listening to music, I'm usually playing stuff from three or four years ago, if not longer. I think I might have played the Trinity album by Slum Village for an entire year and half. There's something comforting to me about listening to familiar lyrics and instrumentation. I like to rap along with the track, move to musical elements I can anticipate, and search for hidden nuances in established material.
I'm also pretty lazy about putting new stuff on my iPod.
So as I was trying to figure out which emcee(s) I'd like to highlight this month I thought back to that Pac Div mixtape sitting on my desktop. So I unzipped the file, threw it on my Pod, and had a listen on my way to work Tuesday.
Man, am I glad I did. 'Cause these cats are solid.
Pac Div is a hip hop group from Palmdale, California consisting of a pair of brothers, Like and Mibbs, along with their longtime friend BeYoung. Hip hop duos or trios are becoming a rarity in hip hop these days, so it's refreshing to see new groups emerging with a emphasis on collaborative longevity. Usually when I listen to emcees from the west coast, I'm hindered by the difficulty of adjusting to the west coast dialect, which isn't frequently heard in my music catalog. It's a challenge I need to address. I grew up listening to east coast and southern hip hop, so the west coast dialect almost sounds foreign, demanding me to give particular attention to the textual elements of the rhyme.
However, with Pac Div I found it much easier to listen to them without my habitual response to California rappers. Their dialects aren't any less pronounced than most of their west coast counterparts, but the arrangement of their instrumentals coupled with their exceptional lyrical ability allowed me to fall into the pocket of their music in very natural, organic way. I'm sure people in traffic were wondering what had me bobbing my head so hard!
Check out this freestyle session with Pac Div on The World Famous Wake-Up Show with Sway and King Tech. Yea, these cats are ill.
Every so often a song will emerge from the massive boiling cauldron of hip hop music and ignite the rawest of emcee flames, setting of culture-wide cyphers that can last for weeks, or even months. Most of the time it happens during the summer; the party season. The record is almost always an unexpected hit, and each new incarnation seems more unimagined than the one before.
Such was the case a few years ago when Lil Wayne released his record "A Milli", which stood hip hop on its ear in the summer of 2008. It wasn't long after its official release when a plethora of emcees used the instrumental to record their own versions of the track. And quite frankly, how could they resist? Yes, the song is stripped-down, monotonous, and repetitive. But there is a darkness and mystery to it that is undeniably intoxicating.
The list of emcees that recorded verses on the track was extensive, including Jay-Z, The Game, Jadakiss, Papoose, Drake, and...you guessed it, Asher Roth. As always, youtube is your friend if you'd like to hear them all. But Asher's is just below, so have a listen. Oh, and listen to the original, too. It will definitely give Mr. Roth's contribution more context.
