I tend to forget how much I like Fat Joe. He's a technically above-average MC, with what I would call a classic, battle-influenced New York flow, heavy with wordplay, metaphors, and punchlines, and when he wants to, he can make some bloodcurdlingly credible threats.
The reason I forget how much I love Joe is that while he's a great MC, he makes a lot of shit. His biggest commercial hit of all-time is still the absolutely terrible "What's Luv?", a duet with that breathy-voiced waste of skin Ashanti and the shirtless wonder, Ja Rule. Every time he makes some incredible, awesome piece of Goodfellas-on-wax type of gangster shit, he seems to have this inexplicable need to balance it out with a rap-ballad or an inane party jam.
"Hey Joe" features Señor Cartagena at his absolute best, and flips a Jimi Hendrix sample to make the chorus. The song has been making the rounds on the web for a couple months, but the video just came out this week.
Oh, and by the way, if MuchMusic showed videos like this one, I would still watch it as religiously as I did when I was 13. Just saying.
OK, while "The Message" is sort of a novelty tune, it does prove my point that "bassline house" and "UK funky house," are basically just re-warmed two-step garage.
It's also a lot of fun.
For those of you who don't quite get what's going on here, UK-based producer/MC Smasher has gathered together some of the better known names of the old UK garage/two-step scene and put them together on one massive reunion track.
(I'm sure he didn't have too hard a time. I can't imagine these guys are very busy these days.)
Is it a collection of old two-step clichés? Yes. Is the video unbelievably budget? Yes.
Do I really like it? Is it, is it wicked? Yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say I'm lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it like this.
People tend to think of me as a hip-hop guy, with touches of electro thrown in for balance. While I can't say I'm surprised, anyone who knows me really well knows that this is a little inaccurate. In fact, my rock-fan cred is pretty deep.
I was a full-blown punk rocker for much of high school. I almost peed myself when I went to see Iron Maiden live. I count The Smiths among my favourite bands. I've rediscovered The Stranglers lately. I own a Discharge album, for fuck sake. I have Youth of Today on vinyl.
I just don't like much new rock. There's some stuff in the last decade or so that's caught my attention. I like pretty much anything that could be dubbed dance-rock or disco-punk -- think DFA Records, The Faint, CSS. I enjoy a lot of the blues-inspired stuff, like Soledad Brothers and The Black Keys. I really like all that British angular stuff, like Art Brut and Bloc Party. I think Fucked Up may be the greatest thing to come out of Toronto in years.
I just think that nine-tenths of modern indie-rock sounds like it was made by pussies, for pussies. I don't care if it makes me a bad white, Torontonian 20-something, Broken Social Scene make me throw up in my mouth. Honestly, it's all so soft. It's fine if you're a weepy, anemic bitch, but that's about it.
God, make something that sounds painful, or intimidating, or something. Just don't make music that sounds like it was made by a bunch of weepy, anemic art students.
If you're not sure where to start, listen to this song by The Raveonettes. It's about being in love with a heroin addict, and it sounds like old Jesus and Mary Chain.
OK, so this is the flip side of Get Fresh Tuesdays. Instead of searching for something new, I'm going to highlight some old favourites that have recently recaptured my attention.
1) Del the Funky Homosapien and El-P - "Offspring" (2000)
When I was about 19, I sort of "retired" from the punk rock scene. After five or so years of going to all ages shows, sewing band patches on my hoodies, and protesting something every weekend -- and getting blind-drunk afterward, I burned out. I was sick of being part of a subculture that claimed to be about "rebellion," but actually placed incredibly tight restrictions on what you could listen to, wear, and be interested in. Being a basketball fan was massively uncool, the only acceptable sport to watch was English soccer. If you listened to anything other than punk -- and no pop punk, you dirty sellout -- classic ska, and certain types of pre-dancehall reggae, people looked at you like you were insane.
Most of my friends in the scene were moving on to even more restrictive subsects of punk: skinhead, psychobilly, d-beat. Instead, I left.
I started listening to a bunch of different thing, particularly the Rawkus Records-style alt rap that was coming out at the time. (Truth be told, I'd been listening to that sort of stuff for a while and hiding it from my punk friends.)
I bought Del's Both Sides of the Brain in summer between my last year of high school and my first year of universtiy. This collabo between Del and El-P was my favourite song on the album. I would listen to it over and over again on the way to class. I'd sit in my res room and scream along with the lyrics.
This is song is like a time machine for me. It instantly makes me 19 again, and if there's one thing my life needs, it's more 19.
2) "Raspberry Beret" - Prince (as Prince and the Revolution) (1985)
So, I don't want to get to serious and maudlin on a blog dedicated to quality tunes and idiocy, but my Uncle Giles died about six weeks ago. He was my mum's younger brother, one of eight children, born in the UK and raised in Canada. He was both an athlete (rowing, rugby and football) and a musician (guitar, keyboard, bass, and vocals.) He had a few songs receive airplay on local alt-rock station CFNY in the late '80s and early '90s. He also struggled with substance abuse issues, which may have contributed to his death.
My inheritance from Uncle Giles consisted of about a dozen CDs, which have turned out to be a massive windfall of enjoyment. One of them was Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides compilation.
I've always liked Prince, but I never thought of myself as a full-fledged Prince fan until I got a hold of this album. The man is a genius, and some of his early material -- and The Hits/The B-Sides features only early-to-mid career material -- may be some of the best pop music of the last fifty years.
I feel like my words can't do justice to the greatness that is young Prince, so instead I'll just say thanks to Uncle Giles.
3) X - "Los Angeles" (1980)
I don't actually have a really in depth explanation as to why I chose this song. It's just one of my all-time favourite songs.
It's also the song that's gotten X accused of some rather unpleasant shit.
The first verse of the song features the line "She started to hate every nigger and Jew/ every Mexican that gave her a lot of shit/ every homosexual and the idol rich."
Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote about the song in 1981, as part of a bigger article on racism in the Los Angeles punk scene.
"The opening lines of X's searing 'Los Angeles' ('She had started to hate/ Every nigger and Jew/ Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit/ Every homosexual and the idle rich') tell us not that the subject of the song has her hangups but that the objects of her rage are types, not like us, deserving of the contempt they get: crimes against nature. The song has enough musical bite to make any nigger, Jew, Mexican, homosexual or idle rich want to hear the tune again, and then think 'That's not me, I'm not like that,' and that is the true black hole of the number, and of L.A. punk: attacked, one may side with one's attacker, and accept the terms of the attack."
Unfortunately for Greil, who's actually one of my bigger inspirations, he got it wrong. In We've Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk, the members of X explain that the song was, more or less, about a girl who had a lot of hang-ups, and how her hang-ups were eating her alive.
The song was written about one of Exene's best friends, who was her road buddy in her move from Florida to LA. Unfortunately, the friend didn't take to LA nearly as well as Exene, and suffered a sort of breakdown. Part of that breakdown involved an ugly slide into racism.
This sort of shit is why X is one of the best bands of all time. They're able to write beautifully crafted, poetic lyrics about deep, complex shit, and then throw it over top of a rip-roaring rockabilly-punk hybrid.
